Throughout this blog’s coverage of Elon Musk’s back-and-forth courtship of Twitter, I remained skeptical about the Tesla billionaire’s chances of buying the censorious social network. After all, Musk has expressed openness to letting infidels air their blasphemies against the Death Cult. Up to this point, the cultists have preferred to detonate their captured platforms rather than let them fall into unclean hands.
But it looks like the status quo has changed, if breaking reports are to be believed.
Elon Musk is about to own Twitter
An accurate pun, whether intended or not.
Twitter is reportedly planning to accept Elon Musk’s offer of $43 billion to buy the company as early as Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported that the two sides “worked through the night” in order to finalize the details. Musk initially made his bid on April 14th, calling it his “best and final offer” at the time. The deal will be valued at $54.20 a share.
At first, it seemed unlikely that Twitter would allow Musk to complete his hostile takeover. It was unclear if the Tesla CEO even had the funds to buy the company in the first place. Even if he did, the board adopted a “poison pill” that would make it difficult for Musk to increase his stake much beyond the 9.2% that he already owns.
According to the Journal, Musk is planning to spend $21 billion of his own money. In order to gather these funds, he will likely need to sell stakes in his other businesses, such as Tesla and SpaceX. The other $25 billion will come from investment banks.
As WSJ points out, the company did change its tune when the stock price began to climb. The deal had seemed dead on arrival, but the company was suddenly open to negotiations. Musk then made a series of video calls to select shareholders to pitch them individually. He argued that Twitter won’t be able to reach the stock price he is offering without him.
Reading between the lines, the rise in Twitter’s stock price isn’t the proximate cause of the board’s 180. It’s what that stock bump signifies. The board has a legal obligation to maximize value for investors. Musk has now demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one can add more value to Twitter than him. At this point, the board knows that if they don’t sell to Musk, their investors will launch a class action suit and take them for everything in a slam dunk court win.
Don’t pop the champagne just yet. Twitter could try selling to another buyer, though it’s unclear who could make a better offer. A more likely spoiler tactic would be the feds stepping in and thwarting the deal based on trumped-up charges of financial shenanigans.
Even if the deal goes through – which looks more and more likely by the minute – there’s no guarantee that Musk can restore Twitter to its 2014 Wild West glory.
As usual, all we can do is wait and see.
Here’s a fun giant robot book to read while you’re waiting.
It’s confirmed.
https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1518632272395657218
Now to see what this leads to.
For now, thank God!
“Sure,” said Elon, “I MIGHT relax the policies on censorship, but every user will require a Tesla chip in their brain. You can program them however you like—for a price.”
“You jest!” doubted Parag.
“Do I?” asked Elon. He promised, “From one autist to another, I’ll be generous.”
I know a lot on the right are celebrating Musk buying Twitter, but I have some nagging thoughts in my head.
What will the catch be? There is always a catch.
I used to work in a third party claims office. We would take calls from insurance customers, file their auto claims, and set them up with a repair shop. I would tense up when the vehicle was a Tesla. Tesla makes those things in such a way that only they can repair them. That is even for a piece of glass.
I can’t help but think that Musk will make Twitter into some object that looks nice on the outside, but if you need to fix something, it will be difficult to do and only the people with problems will notice. Everyone else will be distracted by the shininess.
Even the worst-case scenario you described is far preferable to the current state of Twitter.
Yep. Even some walled garden would be better than Twitter’s current anarcho-tyranny of Woke rage mobs.
rage mobs, bugmen, and bots.
First, I’m still not sure how he makes money on the deal, but the guy made electric cars cool and reusable rockets a thing so what do I know?
Second, I am enjoying the laminations of the woke staff. The Bee did a satirical video about it that in hindsight seems understated.
Teddy Spaghetti and the Castalia gang are upset; Elon won’t unban Teddy, and Ivan Throne got himself banned despite Elon’s new management.
Teddy isn’t technically wrong, however. Elon didn’t become the wealthiest man in the world by living a Godly life, so we need to treat his acquisition of Twitter as an “enemy of my enemy” stepping stone instead of the final victory.
I think that the past five years have pretty well established that the only people with enough ambition, connections and drive to make a social media website are also inevitably people with fragile personalities and huge egos. Even without getting into the issue of whether it would be a good idea to make a platform where no one would get banned (it wouldn’t), it’s not going to happen. It’s always going to be the case that if you go after the sacred cows of the owner or his buddies, then you are out the door.
That’s not to say that some owners aren’t better than others. Musk is definitely a lot better than the former administration of Twitter.
He’s already purging the bot nets responsible for astroturfing the Narrative. Some big Death Cult accounts have lost thousands of followers.
On a personal note, the deep shadow ban that’s hobbled my account for years has been lifted. The difference is astonishing.
I don’t doubt that Musk is going to do things better than they are now, and that one way that he’ll particularly make things better is by reinstating (by revoking actual bans as well as shadowbans and throttling) many accounts that offended the death and pop cults. It’s a win. And of course the rattling of the death cult’s cages is a win even if there was no actual action behind it.
But I see Musk much in the same way that I see Vox Day or Nick Fuentes. All of them are definitely doing some great things for sane, Godly, people, but you’d also be a fool to fully put your trust in them. (Of course Musk is different in that ideologically he has much less skin in the game, but he blows everyone else out of the water in terms of resources.)
It’s been less than a week. Give him time to replace the Trust and Safety cultists.
Honestly, I won’t lose sleep if Vox never returns to Twitter. I, too, am amazed at the positive changes that have already resulted from Elon’s acquisition.
He may not have to replace them. From their wailing, I think they are about a week away from mass suicide. These guys make the Heavens Hate cult look a meeting of the school math club.