Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[HVC]

Not sure if it's tied to the same exodus but IBM just left when they found out their ads next to pro nazi ones.

[HVC]

How much of his own money is tied up with the debacle? Don't think he'd really care if and when twitter goes belly up.

[OttoVonBismarck]

How much of his own money is tied up with the debacle? Don't think he'd really care if and when twitter goes belly up.

My understanding is of the $44bn deal, Musk agreed to put up $33.5bn of the purchase.

Investment banks put up the difference (which they have subsequently had trouble offloading, because during the time they were processing it the market sentiment on Twitter massively collapsed and it is seen as very junk grade debt.)

Of the $33.5bn Musk put up, I believe $7bn was from his equity partners--entities like Oracle's Larry Ellison, the Saudis. That left around $26.5bn to cover from Musk. Now, Musk already owned around 9.5% of Twitter publicly traded stock, which was folded into the deal for around $4bn, so Musk basically had to come up with around $20-22bn of real cash to close out the deal, which AFAIK was financed by selling TSLA shares.

I don't think the nominal value of the money is probably what he cares about, he is probably annoyed he had to move that much money out of TSLA since it is certainly the more valuable investment and more likely to have high future returns (although he is working vigorously to undermine Tesla's market standing as well.)

[The Minsky Moment]

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

I would say speech has many facets. Klansman and neo-Nazis want the freedom to exploit powerful tech platforms to spread their noxious message.  Large advertisers want the freedom to deliver their own messages to potential customers free from assocation with Nazi propaganda.  Both freedoms can't be exercised at the same time; either one or the other has to accept some disappointment.  It's up to the platform to decide which speech to privilege. 

[Jacob]

Seems to me that Twitter privileges the spreading of Musk's inane verbal wankery.

[Gups]

The New York Times is reporting that advertisers are leaving X in droves as a result of Musk's endorsement of the antisemitic post.

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

No, it's the fault of an organisation called Media Matters and he is going to sue them the split second the courtsopen on Monday. Thermonuclear style.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

He sounds more and more like Trump every day.

[Syt]

Surely he doesn't want to take them to task for exercising their right to free speech in their reporting etc.?

[HVC]

Media Matters is going to regret this bigly

[The Brain]

Are they on North Norfolk Digital?

[crazy canuck]

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

I would say speech has many facets. Klansman and neo-Nazis want the freedom to exploit powerful tech platforms to spread their noxious message.  Large advertisers want the freedom to deliver their own messages to potential customers free from assocation with Nazi propaganda.  Both freedoms can't be exercised at the same time; either one or the other has to accept some disappointment.  It's up to the platform to decide which speech to privilege. 

Very true.  But entirely inconsistent with the views, musk has expressed regarding speech.

It's why I qualified my comment that he was learning something. I don't think he's learning anything at all, but rather this episode has confirmation of his own beliefs, that all speech should be free and without consequence.

At some point he had to collide with reality.

[crazy canuck]

The New York Times is reporting that advertisers are leaving X in droves as a result of Musk's endorsement of the antisemitic post.

Musk is learning, or rather finding out, in real time that speech does have consequences, no matter how freely it is exercised. And I suppose more to the point, if not exercised in a way that is thoughtful.

No, it's the fault of an organisation called Media Matters and he is going to sue them the split second the courtsopen on Monday. Thermonuclear style.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/18/elon-musk-to-file-thermonuclear-lawsuit-as-advertisers-desert-x

He sounds more and more like Trump every day.

Yep

[Jacob]

He doesn't believe Media Matters should have free speech?

[The Minsky Moment]

Put aside the non-existent merits of such a lawsuit.  Media Matters is a non profit whose entire annual revenue wouldn't be enough to run The Company Formerly Known As Twitter for a day.  This is a nonsense business model.

How about a nice game of chess, Elon?

[Jacob]

I guess his goal is to destroy them?

[Sheilbh]

Hell of a scoop:
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/19/2023/twitter-bets-big-on-ceos-son

We know Yaccarino can't control Musk, but it sounds like she's got no interest in even trying to build a credible platform either.