Remember he filed as a passive owner of 10%, with no intentions to become active. LOL SEC LOL USA LOL ALL OF US!
There are a lot of people who are going to be disappointed by the reality of musk Twitter who thought it was the second coming.
Nah, Elon knows exactly what he bought and why IMO. He bought influence over elections, he bought political outcomes, he bought right wing/libertarian clout. He’s not buying TWTR to make a profit, if it happens it’s an added bonus. Think of this like any other billionaire buying a news organization to try to shape political discourse.
There was $14 billion spent on the 2020 election and $4 billion spent on 2018. That’s just in the US. Social media is going to be a growing part of that, and he’ll be able to make sure that the ideas that he finds most favorable not only are allowed on the site but flourish with the algorithms.
2 Likes
Portion of it was credit versus his Tesla stock, then like 12.5 in loans and something else.
I don’t know.
Facebook has massive network effects and a fully built out, very sophisticated ad business.
Twitter arguably has some network effects, but a completely unmoderated twitter is going to cause everyone other than MAGA nut jobs to quit. But your average stupid old Trump voter isn’t even on twitter, the user base is overwhelmingly young and liberal. The switching cost is literally $0.
This could easily blow up in his face.
Enjoy your trillions Supreme Lord Musk!
4 Likes
I am not as convinced of this yet. I mean, for one thing it’s pretty easy to just follow who you want to follow or make some lists and read those, and I guarantee you journalists aren’t going to be allowed to just quit Twitter, so that’s still going to be the easiest place to get news aggregated.
Besides, what are the main social media options? Musk’s Twitter, Zuck’s FB/IG, Chinese TikTok? Where are liberals taking a stand going to actually go?
Plenty of Boomers are on Twitter. Something like 20% of them and it’s sure to go up now. Plus tweets get covered by journalists. Shit, if you’re right, even driving liberals off Twitter hurts the left by taking away a network they use more than the right.
It could, my main point is just that I don’t think he’s buying Twitter expecting it to cash flow for him. He thinks it’s worth $44B as an influence tool and for clout, and I wouldn’t bet against him on that when we’re spending $18 billion every four-year cycle on elections.
Also, business-wise, he’s pumped up TSLA stock and shitcoins on Twitter repeatedly. Maybe he’s also considering that he can force the algos to be tweaked so everyone sees his tweets pumping whatever altcoin he buys and he can pump and dump that shit even more effectively.
Twitter is a weapon for him to use to create value or change political outcomes, it doesn’t have to be a cash flowing business.
3 Likes
So also if TSLA crashes to what it’s actually worth, he can just tell that lender to fuck off and take some TSLA stock, right? Leverage on top of leverage?
If Tesla stock starts crashing the lender will demand cash and liquidate the shares if necessary.
Another piece of this is he’s probably going to have to make the debt service payments personally because the company doesn’t make enough money to even pay the interest.
Also, twitter employees are basically all liberal and probably hate this fucking asshole.
I’m willing to leave Twitter for any other service that gives me a never ending feed of news and opinion that ruins my sleep.
2 Likes
I mean, Twitter could close up shop tomorrow, and $44B could effectively vanish into the air, and Elon wouldn’t even notice. The only real downside is that Twitter is the thing keeping Tesla’s stock up, but even if everyone goes to a new Twitter clone, he could go there and still troll.
Now that might actually be a problem.
All the other stuff falls under “LOL fuck you, LOL no, LOL I’m a billionaire,” territory. I mean so what he has to service the debt? That’s the only actual payment he’s making! He’s not coming out of pocket for $44 billion, he’s servicing it to the tune of $1B a year.
He’s worth $264B and he’s used Twitter to convince people to drive up the price of dogecoin of all things. Never mind that he can probably figure out some cool accounting tricks to dump debt into Twitter to make his other companies more valuable, then eventually take Twitter through bankruptcy or something and ditch a shit load of debt in the process.
I find it very hard to believe that Twitter employees who were fine with Jack will find Elon a bridge too far.
2 Likes
Or like in the case of Amaya you run the company into the ground trying to chase the debt.
somebody better create a poison pill RFC!!
ha! does this make elon sad? seems like he overpaid if trmp isn’t coming