Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale (Update: WSJ report details Musk’s relationship with Putin) (1 Viewer)

[SaintForLife]

Elon Musk struck a deal on Monday to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion, in a victory by the world’s richest man to take over the influential social network frequented by world leaders, celebrities and cultural trendsetters.

Twitter agreed to sell itself to Mr. Musk for $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the company’s share price this month before he revealed he was the firm’s single largest shareholder. It would be the largest deal to take a company private — something Mr. Musk has said he will do with Twitter — in at least two decades, according to data compiled by Dealogic.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Mr. Musk said in a statement announcing the deal. “Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

The deal, which has been unanimously approved by Twitter’s board, is expected to close this year, subject to a vote of Twitter shareholders and certain regulatory approvals.

The blockbuster agreement caps what had seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial Mr. Musk, 50, to buy the social media company — and immediately raises questions about what he will do with the platform and how his actions will affect online speech globally.

Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale

Twitter agreed to be taken over at $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the share price before it was revealed that Mr. Musk had been buying up the company’s stock.

www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org

If Musk does what he claims he wants to do it will be a big improvement and good for free speech.

 

[MT15]

Ah, the beached whale meme makes more sense. No narcissist can stand any ridicule at all.

Also, there’s this:

 

[bird]

Ah, the beached whale meme makes more sense. No narcissist can stand any ridicule at all.

Also, there’s this:

But Elon is such a smart businessman surely he was aware of this. Here is hoping that he gets hammered.

 

[superchuck500]

Still waiting

 

[superchuck500]

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

 

[superchuck500]

So here’s the thread or a thread:

 

[SamAndreas]

Elon Musk is a filthy rich guy from South Africa and it shows.

 

[MT15]

So here’s the thread or a thread:

I will be willing to bet this guy is putting out a thread of crap. He’s a partisan hack, if I’m being generous. A Russian asset if I‘m not.

If Elon wanted to put forth an aura of respectability for this - let a credible news organization release it. The WSJ comes to mind.

 

[MT15]

Okay, I read to tweet #12. I’m not reading all that shirt. He starts out making assertions with zero proof. As if it’s just a given that content moderation was skewed politically and his “proof” is that employees of Twitter contributed more to democratic causes than republicans.

1. This doesn’t prove that content moderation was applied unevenly or that Twitter’s internal rules and checks and balances weren’t followed.

2. His table of political donations refers to all Twitter employees, not the content moderation team.

This guy is heavily partisan. This thread is

 

[superchuck500]

I will be willing to bet this guy is putting out a thread of crap. He’s a partisan hack, if I’m being generous. A Russian asset if I‘m not.

If Elon wanted to put forth an aura of respectability for this - let a credible news organization release it. The WSJ comes to mind.

It’s pretty weak anyway. Says twitter fielded requests about content moderation from both parties. Says the Hunter Biden links were all originally deleted on the basis of being hacked material and internally that began to draw questions immediately and there was this ongoing internal debate where many in the company disagreed that the action was appropriate - but the longer it went on the harder it became to reverse course.

It’s not ideal but it seems to show a company (private actor not bound by the first amendment) with staff that indeed skewed Democratic but in an environment where content moderation requests from political actors wasn’t unusual. And then with this big story quick decisions were made, not even at the top, and while internal debate carried on they stuck with it.

Republicans are gonna sell this as the worst thing ever but really? They’re going to investigate the Biden campaign for making content moderation requests to Twitter, a private company? So what? And the main screen shot about “Biden camp requests” are apparently Hunter Biden dick pics that people had posted from the story.

 

[MT15]

It’s pretty weak anyway. Says twitter fielded requests about content moderation from both parties. Says the Hunter Biden links were all originally deleted on the basis of being hacked material and internally that began to draw questions immediately and there was this ongoing internal debate where many in the company disagreed that the action was appropriate - but the longer it went on the harder it became to reverse course.

It’s not ideal but it seems to show a company (private actor not bound by the first amendment) with staff that indeed skewed Democratic but in an environment where content moderation requests from political actors wasn’t unusual. And then with this big story quick decisions were made, not even at the top, and while internal debate carried on they stuck with it.

Republicans are gonna sell this as the worst thing ever but really? They’re going to investigate the Biden campaign for making content moderation requests to Twitter, a private company? So what? And the main screen shot about “Biden camp requests” are apparently Hunter Biden dick pics that people had posted from the story.

Thanks for taking one for the team. Taibbi is just not a credible source any longer. If he ever was, I was unaware of him until he started shilling for the far right.

 

[SamAndreas]

Taibbi is, and always will be, a house cat's name.

 

[MT15]

This guy is debunking the Taibbi thread. I will just post the beginning - (he deleted the first tweet in the thread because he didn’t cover up the nude picture.)



As you can see Taibbi isn’t being honest about the way he is characterizing Twitter’s actions in the Hunter case. They were neither extreme nor extraordinary.

 

[MT15]

Lol

 

[MT15]

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

Taibbi writing a book called "Griftopia" is peak irony.

 

[UriUT]

Here's an interview of a former twitter exec who didnt sign a nda. The article is interesting and included the following in reply to musk's tweet on hate speech.

But a new report from the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate found the daily number of tweets containing hateful terms was "substantially higher" in late November, compared to the baseline before he bought Twitter. The number of tweets with the n-word tripled in that time, for example.

The interview itself I thought was more interesting. It included the part where twitter would fight to hold user info secret from authoritarian governments. Many include activists or even LGBT users who secured a lifestyle they cannot otherwise have in a foreign nation. He laments the possibility that those safe guards, of which the employees who once protected users are now gone.