Musk resigns as Twitter CEO, Linda Yaccarino takes over

[Big Jim P]

Fascinating how quickly neoliberals have gone from lionizing Elon Musk to attacking him, but that's because he didn't toe the right line. If he had just stuck to union-busting, like Bezos and Schultz, while piously pretending to give a crap about the working class and progressive causes....if only he hadn't gone after the morons running Twitter.

Just like they did when Trump dared to run as a republican.

[Ifreann]

Musk quite explicitly isn't going to have more freedom of speech on Twitter, he's been clear on that. His plans to somehow remove bots and spam from the site fly in the face of the free speech absolutism people ascribe to him. Musk certainly says that he supports free speech, but the thing to understand about that is that it's a lie. He's lying to try and make people think he's cool because he's a deeply pathetic person, especially in the wake of another failed marriage.

And it's very strange that you think that the way Musk is going to try and get Twitter to generate more money is to have more freedom of speech. Most people would have thought first of more prominent advertisements or paywalling new or existing features. Subscribe to Twitter Blue to get quote-tweets back, that kind of thing.

Bots aren’t anything to do with free speech. Bots are fraud. Free speech has never been a defense to fraud.

Of course using bots to post online should be protected by absolute free speech. If Musk is going to restrict people's ability to use a million instances of a computer program to express themselves on Twitter then he is necessarily not a free speech absolutist.

[Antipatros]

Bots aren’t anything to do with free speech. Bots are fraud. Free speech has never been a defense to fraud.

Of course using bots to post online should be protected by absolute free speech. If Musk is going to restrict people's ability to use a million instances of a computer program to express themselves on Twitter then he is necessarily not a free speech absolutist.

What if we pay a bunch of people (scammer call center style) to essentially act as human bots? I wonder if Elon is going to ban that too?

[Vassenor]

Of course using bots to post online should be protected by absolute free speech. If Musk is going to restrict people's ability to use a million instances of a computer program to express themselves on Twitter then he is necessarily not a free speech absolutist.

What if we pay a bunch of people (scammer call center style) to essentially act as human bots? I wonder if Elon is going to ban that too?

Consdiering around a quarter of his Twitter followers are bots? Not likely.

[Gravlen]

They're so unhappy about it that they'll go to court to make sure it happens...

wait... Maybe the people crying all the way to the bank aren't doing so out of anger and sadness?

Unless his claim about the %ge of bots is true, in which case they pay him and most likely face criminal proceedings.

No.

What Twitter says is this:

We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the fourth quarter of 2021 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. In making this determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated.

He's already been warned that the number of false or spam accounts among the mDAU can be significantly higher than 5%. The language has been couched sufficiently in the reports so there's little reason to think Twitter will lose in court, especially since Musk decided to forego doing due diligence. He fucked himself over.

Would Musk be able to sue his way out of the deal?

Should Musk choose to go to court, he might claim that Twitter misrepresented the state of its business by estimating in regulatory filings that bots make up 5 percent or less of its user base.

Filing such a lawsuit would be easy enough, but proving that the bot issue justifies ending the deal would be much harder. Under the merger agreement, Musk would have to show that any misrepresentation had a “material adverse effect,” an onerous standard that courts have rarely found to be met. He also explicitly waived doing due diligence on Twitter in his offer to the board.

“It is tough to argue in court that a material adverse event has occurred if you cannot show how it has impacted earnings—and the impact has to be large,” said Gustavo Schwed, a New York University professor and former executive at Providence Equity.

Twitter deal leaves Elon Musk with no easy way out

What criminal charges you're expecting could be filed over this is beyond me.

[Thermodolia]

He's the world's richest man, he's a target for this fact alone. It should be obvious that this could be an attempt to extort/claw away some of his money. If he's guilty, its a problem that it's still true that people will use any excuse they can to get at his money. There will automatically be doubt cast because he's so high status. He could be like Jabba the Hutt in amassing a private army if he wanted to blow through a lot of his fortune on his own.

Given how badly Tesla's stock has cratered recently is he still actually the World's Richest Man?

Well he sold 80% of his Tesla stock so he’s still the worlds richest but now he’s going to have to pay a huge tax bill if he doesn’t close the twitter deal.

[Thermodolia]

Their agenda is making money, same as his.

By buying it from them. With billions of dollars.

Damn, you got 'em, bro, you owned them big time.

Sure, they made bank. But they're clearly not happy, anyway. Why is that? I think that you can guess.

They are all so unhappy that they all endorsed the Musk deal and pushed musk to buy twitter

[Ifreann]

Sure, they made bank. But they're clearly not happy, anyway. Why is that? I think that you can guess.

They are all so unhappy that they all endorsed the Musk deal and pushed musk to buy twitter

Hell, they're going to force him to buy Twitter if he can't find a way to actually break the deal. This idea that they're not happy makes no sense at all.

[Diopolis]

The elephant in the living room is that twitter would be extremely profitable if it would reduce its (ridiculous)personnel costs. Considering this seems to be a cornerstone of Elon's agenda, the fact that he's attempting to welch indicates that there's legal difficulties to laying off twitter employees.

[Archinstinct]

Bots aren’t anything to do with free speech. Bots are fraud. Free speech has never been a defense to fraud.

Now we're getting into a space where this is debatable.

Have you ever seen accounts which automatically post useful updates? For example, these:
https://twitter.com/earthquakebot
https://twitter.com/freegamefinding
https://twitter.com/dscovr_epic

How about bots that provide services to users, like this?: https://twitter.com/colorize_bot/with_replies

Should we blanket ban accounts like this? Or should we create a set of rules that "good" bots can follow? What should that ruleset look like?

This is the current ruleset: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-automation

A blanket bans on twitter bots is the only real solution. Either that or all bots must be registered and approved by the board of twitter itself.

[Ifreann]

The elephant in the living room is that twitter would be extremely profitable if it would reduce its (ridiculous)personnel costs. Considering this seems to be a cornerstone of Elon's agenda, the fact that he's attempting to welch indicates that there's legal difficulties to laying off twitter employees.

Lol, if Twitter started laying off staff the place would fall apart.

---

Now we're getting into a space where this is debatable.

Have you ever seen accounts which automatically post useful updates? For example, these:
https://twitter.com/earthquakebot
https://twitter.com/freegamefinding
https://twitter.com/dscovr_epic

How about bots that provide services to users, like this?: https://twitter.com/colorize_bot/with_replies

Should we blanket ban accounts like this? Or should we create a set of rules that "good" bots can follow? What should that ruleset look like?

This is the current ruleset: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-automation

A blanket bans on twitter bots is the only real solution.

Not very free speech.

Either that or all bots must be registered and approved by the board of twitter itself.

Why the board? Lol.

[Necroghastia]

Now we're getting into a space where this is debatable.

Have you ever seen accounts which automatically post useful updates? For example, these:
https://twitter.com/earthquakebot
https://twitter.com/freegamefinding
https://twitter.com/dscovr_epic

How about bots that provide services to users, like this?: https://twitter.com/colorize_bot/with_replies

Should we blanket ban accounts like this? Or should we create a set of rules that "good" bots can follow? What should that ruleset look like?

This is the current ruleset: https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-automation

A blanket bans on twitter bots is the only real solution. Either that or all bots must be registered and approved by the board of twitter itself.

I'd rather keep @PossumEveryHour, thanks.

[Archinstinct]

A blanket bans on twitter bots is the only real solution. Either that or all bots must be registered and approved by the board of twitter itself.

I'd rather keep @PossumEveryHour, thanks.

Everybody knows penguins are superior to possums.

[Forsher]

The elephant in the living room is that twitter would be extremely profitable if it would reduce its (ridiculous)personnel costs. Considering this seems to be a cornerstone of Elon's agenda, the fact that he's attempting to welch indicates that there's legal difficulties to laying off twitter employees.

Lol, if Twitter started laying off staff the place would fall apart.

They already have fired two executives...

[Jello Biafra]

Of course they're happy, they're getting paid well over the odds for the shares in Twitter, assuming Musk doesn't find some way to break the deal. The people who are unhappy with Musk taking over Twitter are people who use it, who rightly fear that anything he does to try and wring more money out of the site will make it worse.


It is no compliment to Musk that what moves him to action is a belief that a website's moderation policies aren't being enacted consistently, but not people dying for want of food or medicine or shelter.

More freedom of speech will make it worse for whom? Those who can't stand an opposing viewpoint?

For those who can't stand to be bullied.

[The Rich Port]

All of this prattling about free speech is already ignorant of what actually is free speech.

There is no such thing as complete free speech. Slander and libel are not legal. Inciting riots isn't legal. The only determination being made by Twitter (a private goddamn group who people keep trying to regulate, the irony) is what THEY consider to be dangerous speech, and their criteria have remained consistent and reasonable.

Frankly, we could use more regulated speech considering the amount of dangerous falsehoods spreading around the public discourse, both from corporations trying to cover up their grabs for power and control and distortions of science in the name of profit and the wacko groups a lot of them support spreading anti-empirical conspiratorial nonsense.

[Diopolis]

The elephant in the living room is that twitter would be extremely profitable if it would reduce its (ridiculous)personnel costs. Considering this seems to be a cornerstone of Elon's agenda, the fact that he's attempting to welch indicates that there's legal difficulties to laying off twitter employees.

Lol, if Twitter started laying off staff the place would fall apart.

If it came to light that this is true, that could also be the reason for attempting to welch.

[Ifreann]

Lol, if Twitter started laying off staff the place would fall apart.

If it came to light that this is true, that could also be the reason for attempting to welch.

I can easily believe that Musk would believe that he could see the solution to Twitter's financial woes when they could not.

[Skelly Man Dan]

Musk's current (self-inflicted) predicament makes me wonder what the world's richest would get up to if they weren't constantly self-sabotaging themselves.

[Ifreann]

Musk's current (self-inflicted) predicament makes me wonder what the world's richest could achieve if they didn't self-sabotage themselves.

Probably nothing? They're not rich because they're super competent or anything.

[Skelly Man Dan]

Musk's current (self-inflicted) predicament makes me wonder what the world's richest could achieve if they didn't self-sabotage themselves.

Probably nothing? They're not rich because they're super competent or anything.

Fair, though I meant it less that they wouldn't have idiotic plans and more that they wouldn't get in the way of their idiotic plans. Guess I should have clarified that.

[Hukhalia]

Frankly, we could use more regulated speech considering the amount of dangerous falsehoods spreading around the public discourse, both from corporations trying to cover up their grabs for power and control and distortions of science in the name of profit and the wacko groups a lot of them support spreading anti-empirical conspiratorial nonsense.

i agree with you entirely until this point. currently the world is in the grip of capital and its sock-puppet governments, to permit such an ideological climate to further regiment discourse would be disastrous

there is no such thing as an unbiased mediator

[Forsher]

Probably nothing? They're not rich because they're super competent or anything.

Fair, though I meant it less that they wouldn't have idiotic plans and more that they wouldn't get in the way of their idiotic plans. Guess I should have clarified that.

They're also hamstrung by their own greed. As this case demonstrates, if Musk wants to spend billions, he can only do that by sacrificing his wealth. Now, sure, this is how it works for ordinary people but I think most of the superwealthy are generally keen on keeping the stock prices driving their fortunes up, which means they can't use that wealth to do much of anything. They can play around in space because no-one gives a fuck but as soon as they start mucking around with actual businesses...

Now, sure, Tesla's stock was already going down before this thread was created (it's dropped 42.04% from 4 April) but from 25 April (this thread created 24 April) it's lost 33.48% of value. Musk apparently has 175 million shares, which means he's lost (since this thread was created) $174,653,500,000 - $116,182,500,000 = $58,471,000,000. This number is some 1.33 times what he's trying to buy Twitter for.

This is in addition to Twitter's price, which has dropped from 51.70 on 25 April to 38.29, i.e. a 25.94% drop. Musk apparently has 73,486,938 Twitter shares, which means he's lost an additional billion (nearly... $985,459,838.58) there.

In other words, Musk has lost more wealth than he's trying to "spend"... and he hasn't even spent the (largely borrowed) money yet! Little wonder he's trying to pull out.

I'd do a lot if I had $207.3 B in a bank account (there was even a thread about it, albeit using $181.2 billion USD, which was the then net worth of the Bezos, who was the world's wealthiest at the time) but no-one does.

Even if they're competent... and I think most of them are vastly more so than Elon Musk... they're too greedy to do anything with their wealth. Also:

i agree with you entirely until this point. currently the world is in the grip of capital and its sock-puppet governments, to permit such an ideological climate to further regiment discourse would be disastrous

there is no such thing as an unbiased mediator

They might arguably have more power by not using the wealth and just letting it sit on the table, as it were, a thing between themselves and governments, no-one specifically mentioning it but also not not thinking about it.

Me? I'd spend it. Mostly on trains. $164.16 billion US is what I cost 3/4 of an HSR network in NZ (there's two coasts on the North Island that people live on and most of the South Island is on one coast. $164.16 billion, in 2021, should do the South Island and the east coast of the North Island as far as Auckland, that leaves Northland and the North Island's west coast without HSR... hence 3/4). The rest is a bunch of vanity projects (most of which are movies).

[Hukhalia]

Me? I'd spend it. Mostly on trains.

model trains or actual public transport

[Forsher]

Aargh, you beat my clarifying edit...

Me? I'd spend it. Mostly on trains.

model trains or actual public transport

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=501551&p=38497172&hilit=forsher#p38497172

High Speed Rail