Twitter x Elon Musk

I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say on this drama, I just *have* to record this for myself to look back on in the future, as I believe it may be a historic moment if he succeeds in this shocking foray.

Elon Musk continued his trolling of Twitter today in a way no normal person can fathom doing. Prior (meaning only last week…), he bought 9.9% of the company for $3B and immediately started trolling the management team by polling Twitter whether the HQ should be turned into a homeless shelter (because nobody shows up). Someone posted a video of Carl Icahn telling a story of how he bought a company, couldn’t figure out what 12 floors of execs in New York did, and ended up firing them all, to which Elon replied, “exactly.”

It seems like at Twitter HQ, the <woke> employee base lost their shit at Elon assuming the role of Chief Product Officer (despite no official role at the company) by polling Twitter users about feature changes and announcing that ad-funded corporations can never be trusted to protect free speech. The board went on to retract an offer for Elon to join as a board member as a result. Elon, being the enigma he is, responded by announcing this morning that he has made a cash offer to take the company private for ~$43 billion in *cash*. Of course his offer deadline is 4/20.

In this moment, I believe this is a good thing. The platform can’t say in any way that it’s a protector of free speech, as it is generally a left-leaning platform that censors people at will. One can correctly argue that a private company can do whatever it wants with censorship, which is true. Elon’s hypothesis is that the company will be much valuable if its product supports free speech and isn’t ad supported (perhaps user supported). I think if one of these many social media platforms de-emphasized amplifying clickbait (which drives disinformation and ad revenue) and focused on the product vs all consuming efforts on “platform safety”, that would be a good thing for the world.

As far as immediate knock-on effects of a successful bid and closing of the deal, the obvious elephant in the room is Trump. One can presume with near 100% certainty that his lifetime suspension will be lifted, and that the course of future history will likely be far different than it would have been had Elon not made a play for the business.

Below are the simple filings Elon made for the takeover: