6 ms·

> A very odd set of events and no explanation regarding Elon's change of mind. I don't know about the regulatory guidelines which would or would not have barre

by pen2l 5y ago

> A very odd set of events and no explanation regarding Elon's change of mind. I don't know about the regulatory guidelines which would or would not have barred Elon from exercising any sort of control in the board, but my sources from Twitter are telling me that folks were not happy about the prospect of Elon wanting to change Twitter to be in his image and it's likely this that the higher-ups communicated to Musk and told him to please back away (hence the 'I believe this is for the best' affirmation line from Agrawal himself).

axg11 5y ago
Elon's companies have a unique and very different culture in comparison to Twitter. Of course, Elon was not set to be CEO, but to your point, the prospect of "Elon-ification" of Twitter was going to upset a lot of employees. The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up?
- voidfunc 5y ago
  > The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up? He's still the largest shareholder and he has a lot of soft power to sway opinions in the public sphere.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up? That is weird, trolling doesn't seem like Elon's thing at all.
  - dobs_bob 5y ago
    Where have you been? The man lives to troll.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      You missed the sarcasm.
    - stickfigure 5y ago
      I read parent as sarcasm.
    - nkozyra 5y ago
      I'd argue he lives to be seen as a troll. As an actual troll he hasn't really done much but post tired memes until buying a large stake in Twitter. Time will tell whether he's actually going to do anything interesting with this stake but based on track record I'm going with no. Most of what qualifies him as a troll could be gleaned from a ten minute crash course in /b.
      - vba616 5y ago
        Well, is 'qualifying as a troll' really about appealing to the connoisseurs, the academy of trolling experts? Or is it about making the most people the angriest? It's like arguing about whether McDonald's is good food. Some people think that suggesting an Edit button is telling. "Here is the only imaginable use of an edit button. You post a tweet saying “I love puppies” with a picture of a cute puppy. A thousand people retweet your tweet; a thousand more quote-tweet it with comments like “what a good boi!” A week later, you edit the tweet to say “I think the Nazis got a bad rap,” with a picture of Hitler. Years later, a professor is denied tenure because someone digs through her old tweets to find that she called Hitler “a good boi.” This is absolutely the only purpose for the edit button, and oh man does accomplished Twitter troll Elon Musk know that. " (Matthew Levine last week)
        hajhatten 5y ago
        There are fixes to this though. Limit the time the tweet is editable, and postpone publishing tweets until that timer has run out. Or show a history of what the post has looked like.
        KptMarchewa 5y ago
        Or just make edit button append text at below tweet, immediately visible in contrast to next tweet in chain.
        hajhatten 5y ago
        Why not both? If you want to edit posts after the initial deadline, that could be the next step.
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      One of the symptoms of autism is the inability to recognize sarcasm (<http://www.healthcentral.com/autism/c/1443/162610/autism-sarcasm/ http://www.healthcentral.com/autism/c/1443/162610/autism-sar...>) without the help of idiotic, illiterate signals like "/s".
  - xwdv 5y ago
    Elon is a massive troll, to the point that I bet he has accounts on random networks dedicated to trolling people anonymously.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  The board did not want him, but he is still the majority shareholder and may actually want to accumulate more shares than would have been possible if he had joined the board. Maybe he'll use his influence to replace the board with people who are less politically polarized. Maybe his new board will re-write the charter so he can eventually become CEO. I don't think this game is over.
  - riffic 5y ago
    largest shareholder, not majority (51%) shareholder.
    - anonymousiam 5y ago
      Game on! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/elon-musk-launches-43-billion-hostile-takeover-of-twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/elon-musk...
- pmorici 5y ago
  Not joining the board doesn’t change the fact he is the largest single Twitter shareholder. He didn’t buy that stake because he thought it was a great company as is.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  What kind of culture do his companies have?
- esalman 5y ago
  You'll get it if you realize he is trolling.
noduerme 5y ago
>> hence the 'I believe this is for the best' affirmation line from Agrawal himself He also says in the previous paragraph that they [had?] believed that having Musk on the board would "be the best path forward." It's sort of a Rorschach test. You could divine either opinion you wanted from the post.
- pen2l 5y ago
  The CEO's job, much like a politician's, often involves giving out statements that are a series of Rorschach tests. That's what you do to appease and assuage multiple parties simultaneously.
  - pm90 5y ago
    Maybe that’s why Dorsey left
- gordon_freeman 5y ago
  It seems to me that Parag welcomed initially for Elon to be on the Board but then the tweetstorm Elon sent on Dying company, Twitter SF HQ, removing ads from their Subscription and accepting Doge for it, and the current Board/CEO may have thought that all this would be too much to handle so they may have pushed him out of the Board? Sounds like this tweet storm over the weekend may have contributed to this outcome.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Good thinking if they did. Letting him onto the board of Twitter would basically be like letting a cokehead run a drug cartel.
  - vintermann 5y ago
    When it's Elon, you got to wonder if he did the whole thing to embarrass them. They can't stand him, but for a brief while he made them pretend to welcome him.
heavyset_go 5y ago
From an article titled "Elon Musk to address Twitter staff after internal outcry"[1]: > Employees raged on internal message boards, expressing fears Musk will sabotage their culture and make it hard to do their jobs [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-twitter-employee-outcry/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-tw...
- jmeister 5y ago
  He also tweeted that “no one shows up” to the Twitter HQ in SF. I think the contempt is mutual.
  - EtienneK 5y ago
    Yup. Also he is hinting at mass layoffs: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512974273606045702?s=21&t=1B7hpiFqWt_vz_gPoA5J3Q https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512974273606045702?s=21...

by pen2l 5y ago

axg11 5y ago

Elon's companies have a unique and very different culture in comparison to Twitter. Of course, Elon was not set to be CEO, but to your point, the prospect of "Elon-ification" of Twitter was going to upset a lot of employees. The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up?

voidfunc 5y ago
> The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up? He's still the largest shareholder and he has a lot of soft power to sway opinions in the public sphere.
CharlesW 5y ago
> The part I don't get: why is Elon still tweeting ideas for improving Twitter and shaking things up? That is weird, trolling doesn't seem like Elon's thing at all.
- dobs_bob 5y ago
  Where have you been? The man lives to troll.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    You missed the sarcasm.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    I read parent as sarcasm.
  - nkozyra 5y ago
    I'd argue he lives to be seen as a troll. As an actual troll he hasn't really done much but post tired memes until buying a large stake in Twitter. Time will tell whether he's actually going to do anything interesting with this stake but based on track record I'm going with no. Most of what qualifies him as a troll could be gleaned from a ten minute crash course in /b.
    - vba616 5y ago
      Well, is 'qualifying as a troll' really about appealing to the connoisseurs, the academy of trolling experts? Or is it about making the most people the angriest? It's like arguing about whether McDonald's is good food. Some people think that suggesting an Edit button is telling. "Here is the only imaginable use of an edit button. You post a tweet saying “I love puppies” with a picture of a cute puppy. A thousand people retweet your tweet; a thousand more quote-tweet it with comments like “what a good boi!” A week later, you edit the tweet to say “I think the Nazis got a bad rap,” with a picture of Hitler. Years later, a professor is denied tenure because someone digs through her old tweets to find that she called Hitler “a good boi.” This is absolutely the only purpose for the edit button, and oh man does accomplished Twitter troll Elon Musk know that. " (Matthew Levine last week)
      - hajhatten 5y ago
        There are fixes to this though. Limit the time the tweet is editable, and postpone publishing tweets until that timer has run out. Or show a history of what the post has looked like.
        KptMarchewa 5y ago
        Or just make edit button append text at below tweet, immediately visible in contrast to next tweet in chain.
        hajhatten 5y ago
        Why not both? If you want to edit posts after the initial deadline, that could be the next step.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    One of the symptoms of autism is the inability to recognize sarcasm (<http://www.healthcentral.com/autism/c/1443/162610/autism-sarcasm/ http://www.healthcentral.com/autism/c/1443/162610/autism-sar...>) without the help of idiotic, illiterate signals like "/s".
- xwdv 5y ago
  Elon is a massive troll, to the point that I bet he has accounts on random networks dedicated to trolling people anonymously.
anonymousiam 5y ago
The board did not want him, but he is still the majority shareholder and may actually want to accumulate more shares than would have been possible if he had joined the board. Maybe he'll use his influence to replace the board with people who are less politically polarized. Maybe his new board will re-write the charter so he can eventually become CEO. I don't think this game is over.
- riffic 5y ago
  largest shareholder, not majority (51%) shareholder.
  - anonymousiam 5y ago
    Game on! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/elon-musk-launches-43-billion-hostile-takeover-of-twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/elon-musk...
pmorici 5y ago
Not joining the board doesn’t change the fact he is the largest single Twitter shareholder. He didn’t buy that stake because he thought it was a great company as is.
deltaonefour 5y ago
What kind of culture do his companies have?
esalman 5y ago
You'll get it if you realize he is trolling.

noduerme 5y ago

>> hence the 'I believe this is for the best' affirmation line from Agrawal himself He also says in the previous paragraph that they [had?] believed that having Musk on the board would "be the best path forward." It's sort of a Rorschach test. You could divine either opinion you wanted from the post.

pen2l 5y ago
The CEO's job, much like a politician's, often involves giving out statements that are a series of Rorschach tests. That's what you do to appease and assuage multiple parties simultaneously.
- pm90 5y ago
  Maybe that’s why Dorsey left
gordon_freeman 5y ago
It seems to me that Parag welcomed initially for Elon to be on the Board but then the tweetstorm Elon sent on Dying company, Twitter SF HQ, removing ads from their Subscription and accepting Doge for it, and the current Board/CEO may have thought that all this would be too much to handle so they may have pushed him out of the Board? Sounds like this tweet storm over the weekend may have contributed to this outcome.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Good thinking if they did. Letting him onto the board of Twitter would basically be like letting a cokehead run a drug cartel.
- vintermann 5y ago
  When it's Elon, you got to wonder if he did the whole thing to embarrass them. They can't stand him, but for a brief while he made them pretend to welcome him.

heavyset_go 5y ago

From an article titled "Elon Musk to address Twitter staff after internal outcry"[1]: > Employees raged on internal message boards, expressing fears Musk will sabotage their culture and make it hard to do their jobs [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-twitter-employee-outcry/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/04/07/musk-tw...

jmeister 5y ago
He also tweeted that “no one shows up” to the Twitter HQ in SF. I think the contempt is mutual.
- EtienneK 5y ago
  Yup. Also he is hinting at mass layoffs: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512974273606045702?s=21&t=1B7hpiFqWt_vz_gPoA5J3Q https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1512974273606045702?s=21...