Elon Musk and Twitter Reach Deal for Sale (3 Viewers)

[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.

 

[superchuck500]

I don't think, or most people for that matter, Musk is purposely putting certain ads next to these kind of Tweets. i have no doubt it's random as can be according to your browsing history, cookies, etc. . the advertisers don't care why or how there ads are getting next to these hateful racists dangerous tweets. but they ARE and that's all they care about, being associated with the Tweets they are next to, whether they are run by terrible people themselves or not.

I think that’s really the point. I think It is very difficult to believe that massive companies like IBM and Disney chose to suspend their X ad programs because Media Matters said "Look! Your ads next to Nazi content." What is far, far more likely is they have been watching developments at X since Musk bought Twitter and this has been a slow moving wreck. Musk's own direct behavior on the site hasn't been encouraging, it has underscored concern that the site's new management may drive mainstream users away, and may place advertisers at risk of being associated with disagreeable or even reprehensible content. Advertising on the site was already in free-fall - just a fraction of pre-Musk ad placement. It's far more reasonable that recent activity was only the straw that broke the camel's back and not a sudden change of sentiment.

Musk dismantled Twitter's system of authentication and replaced it with a pay-for-priority system that changed how information is presented and consumed on the site. Musk may believe that this is more "democratic" but it substantially reduced information quality on the site while simultaneously amplifying those who chose to pay for it . . . which tended to be users excited about Musk's new direction (with a similar worldview) and opportunistic misinformation spreaders looking for any chance to gain visibility and paying for X presented just that opportunity.

It has been obvious for months that information quality on X was going down the tubes. The days following the Hamas attack were a perfect example - with Musk's blue check accounts (mostly those who pay for it) getting amplified, but presenting junk information (like "news" posts with imagery from video games purporting to be from Israel, and other spreaders of inflammatory content). This is precisely when the exodus from the site began in earnest - and certainly those companies that continued to advertise on X had to be growing concerned that continuing to place ads on X only raised the possibility of some kind of negative association, while also presenting a diminishing return as the site's dominance in the information-based social media sphere diminished.

And Musk not only failed to recognize the growing concern at these companies, but he actually contributed to even greater concern. His public comments and tendency to post vague but supportive tweets expressing fringe or even concerning content only added to the atmosphere and then I think his endorsement of the tweet carrying clear antisemitic rhetoric removed any benefit of the doubt he may have had . . . the Media Matters report likely only seemed a reasonably expected result of the new X, and in line with those existing concerns rather than some shocking new development.

This isn't censorship of Musk and his site, nor is it demanding that Musk censor his site. He can do what he wants with it. But corporations don't want to place advertising that comes with substantial risk of negative association. I think that's the biggest problem with Musk's attack on Media Matters - it was just one domino in a line that were already falling, in no small part by his own content. I understand why he would take offense if Media Matters was very deliberately curating a situation where corporate ads were next to highly objectionable content - but he certainly doesn't dispute that it's possible (he admits it's possible, he only argues that it's highly unlikely for most users) but I'm not sure that really matters. It's a big picture situation and the big picture is not appealing to mainstream corporations.

He can have whatever kind of site he wants but he isn't owed ad placement.

 

[MT15]

Yeah, I caught that from the link you posted. It's a ridiculous argument.

It’s not only ridiculous. It’s targeted to specifically inflame people who are racist and anti-Semitic. And now that it’s been exposed as the lie that it is, I expect SFL will just never mention it again.

 

[MT15]

 

[J-DONK]

You have to love that this self described genius, never understood who/what really censored speech on twitter. Everyone else on the planet understood advertisers don't want edgy "content". It's why network tv is so boring. He for sure didn't have a plan to make Twitter into a paid version of 4 chan either.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Elon Musk’s new lawsuit against Media Matters, which X Corp. filed late Monday, has been dismissed by legal experts as a frivolous effort to bully a prominent critic into silence.

But some Republicans apparently see this as a feature, not a bug: They are allying themselves with Musk’s effort for precisely this purpose.


Musk’s suit charges that Media Matters deliberately and deceptively harmed X (formerly Twitter) with a widely-publicized investigation showing that posts containing pro-Nazi content appeared on X alongside advertisements from leading companies. That, along with a surge in antisemitic content, has advertisers fleeing the site, sparking a slide in ad revenue.


Republicans are eagerly rushing to Musk’s rescue — and not just rhetorically. Two GOP state attorneys general — Ken Paxton in Texas and Andrew Bailey in Missouri — have responded by announcing vaguely defined investigations into Media Matters.

Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller is urging Republican law enforcement officials to probe Media Matters for “criminal” activity. And Mike Davis, who is touting himself as Donald Trump’s next attorney general, has declared that Media Matters staff members should be jailed.


The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas, doesn’t deny that the juxtapositions between ads and pro-Nazi postings are real. Rather, it accuses Media Matters of creating an account following only fringe content and endlessly refreshing it until it finally generated the juxtapositions.

Those are “extraordinarily rare,” the suit says, but were deliberately engineered to disparage X, harm its revenue stream and interfere with its contracts with advertisers.

It’s a weak case, as experts point out. The Media Matters article said it had “found” the juxtapositions, which X calls “false,” insisting they were “manipulated” into existence. But even if you question Media Matters’s presentation of the facts, it still wouldn’t show that it did “all of this to harm X’s market value,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.


“If Media Matters doctored the images and couldn’t replicate those results, then maybe there would be a claim here,” Vladeck told me, stressing that it did prove “possible to see those ads” alongside Nazi-related content. He noted that Media Matters plausibly wrote about these juxtapositions not to hurt X, but because they’re “newsworthy.”


When I asked Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, whether it’s misleading to say these images were “found,” he rejected the premise. He noted that Media Matters’s goal was to show that despite X’s assurances to the contrary, internal safeguards had failed to prevent those juxtapositions from actually happening.


“The point that we’ve been making is that the filters that they say exist are not working the way that they claim,” Carusone said of X. “Ads can and do run alongside extremist content.” That’s something those companies would surely want to know about — and avoid.


The lawsuit might get dismissed. But if not, Carusone said, Media Matters would probably pursue discovery, seeking to learn whether Musk and X executives “knew internally” that these juxtapositions were happening, what they communicated with advertisers about this, and how Musk internally discussed procedures for handling extremist content……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/22/elon-musk-lawsuit-media-matters-republicans/

 

[superchuck500]

I completely agree with the poster here - people in government need to stop making speech and information a government issue, because its always going to be an overreach and feeds right into the narrative that the “censorship machine” people talk about. Same for Paxton and similarly minded AGs.



And omg this justification is just cringe

 

[MT15]

When they say accountability, what does that mean? If it just means calling the CEOs to DC and lecturing them about being responsible, that’s very different than passing some sort of legislation.

What should be done to combat disinformation in social media? It puts the US at a huge disadvantage that Iran, China and Russia are happy to exploit.

Politicians always pontificate. From the left, it’s just words. The actual actions are coming from the right in these cases. Two state AGs have jumped to try to prosecute Media Matters as soon as Musk tweeted about them.

 

[SystemShock]

I completely agree with the poster here - people in government need to stop making speech and information a government issue, because its always going to be an overreach and feeds right into the narrative that the “censorship machine” people talk about. Same for Paxton and similarly minded AGs.



And omg this justification is just cringe

I get that, but calling "information" and "speech" some of the crap that goes through Twitter is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer enjoyed soul food.

 

[superchuck500]

I get that, but calling "information" and "speech" some of the crap that goes through Twitter is like saying Jeffrey Dahmer enjoyed soul food.

The Supreme Court calls it speech - that’s what matters.

 

[superchuck500]

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

I'm sure the person who wrote that review has a vendetta or just doesn't like Moosk.. because they are treating him unfairly or something something bohoo. Tweets from SFL to follow..

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

 

[SystemShock]

The Supreme Court calls it speech - that’s what matters.

Is there speech that is not protected?

 

[bird]

So I get notifications from Newsmax to keep tabs on what the Right is up to and I see that Eloon is griping about Newsguard which tracks misinformation.

 

[coldseat]

He's not the only one. I know a lot of people that went down that rabbit hole during the pandemic. People were just not mentally prepared to deal with the reality of an actual pandemic. They lost their minds and couldn't hold it together. Now they can't find their way back to reality. They're damaged beyond repair, it seems.

 

[Saint by the Bay]

He's not the only one. I know a lot of people that went down that rabbit hole during the pandemic. People were just not mentally prepared to deal with the reality of an actual pandemic. They lost their minds and couldn't hold it together. Now they can't find their way back to reality. They're damaged beyond repair, it seems.

It primarily impacted people who don't like being told what to do in that way. I find everyone I know who fell down that rabbit hole is either a raging narcissist or hates being given any form of rules.

Musk is both.

 

[UriUT]

I just don't see this covid changed him argument. His past history of mismanagement (he tried to change PayPal to x and drove the company to the ground) and narcissistic vengeance (personally canceling critics orders of Tesla, attacking people who wanted to unionize Tesla employees, attacking the diver that saved those thai children, etc) have not changed and we see it in real time at Twitter. The only difference is consequences. Tesla wasnt viable until around the covid years. He was heavily reliant on us subsidies, though still reliant these past few years but to a much lesser degree now (he's able to reduce prices to meet subsidies requirements and open a bigger demand price market).

If anyone can find criticism musk has made towards the CCP, or fought back against demands from modi or erdogan, ill be shocked. Yet he freely dunked on senators that ask for more taxes on the rich after they used him as an example. These senators rightly point out that the government investment in his industry staved it from death now should be taxed accordingly. Free from those pesky autocratic strong arm like the signals sent from the CCP, he doesn't have that same fear in the US. And just recently, after the blow back to his antisemitic stuff, he goes to Israel? This is a child that acts out from his true feelings and only after getting spanked does he pretend to act right. And I argue he's been acting for those years when Tesla was crap so that he can get what he wanted....very trumpian.

 

[brandon]

Is there speech that is not protected?

Yes.