4 ms·

We see coloured smoke come out of the chimney. What the cardinals said is all speculation... even if they later leak something. To my ear, the most simple read

We see coloured smoke come out of the chimney. What the cardinals said is all speculation... even if they later leak something. To my ear, the most simple reading is (1) the board seat came with conditions (2) Elon didn't accept them. Twitter management undoubtedly has unresolved tensions, tense status quos, factions... As always with online forums, anyone hitched to the "free speech absolutist" wagon loses eventually. That clears the way for the other camps to gain influence. Elon's stock purchase has already upended truces, created a rally within previously defeated camps and a circling of wagons within previously superior camps. These are probably where the conditions came from. Great drama.

giraffe_lady 5y ago
He got fined a few tens of millions of dollars a while back for tweeting a market-manipulating weed joke. Literally, this is not an exaggeration at all. Then iirc the SEC put a restriction where his tweets about his companies had to be like, nominally vetted by an officer of the company or something, I don't remember the details. Anyway he basically just refused, but also afaik hasn't tweeted concrete financial lies since then either. Matt Levine has argued pretty convincingly that musk's highly visible online unpredictability is a net asset for tesla, but contingent on specific circumstances and still carrying risks. It's not surprising at all that other companies would find those circumstances don't apply to them or the risks aren't worth it.
- jaggederest 5y ago
  I really think it works better if you define the "fine" in terms of percent of net wealth. 1 basis point, or 0.01%
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    If you want! That's the least interesting detail of the whole story to me so I didn't remember it or feel like looking it up. Thank you though.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  To me there is a big difference between joking about the price being $420 and the "funding secured" tweet.
  - vmception 5y ago
    To me there is a big difference in finding issue with that, and finding the SEC to be the proper authority to do anything about it.
overgard 5y ago
I'm not sure you can relate twitter to a private forum... it's just too big and influential now. IMO it needs to be treated as a utility at this point. So yeah, free speech might not apply somewhere like here, but when twitter has presidents on it..
bin_bash 5y ago
> We see coloured smoke come out of the chimney. What the cardinals said is all speculation Can you ELI5 this metaphor for me? I know it's something about when the pope dies but my knowledge of Catholicism is very limited.
- BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 5y ago
  When a pope is or isn't elected (a vote on a single candidate), the Vatican releases either white or black smoke respectively to signal the result. We get to see the result of the election but know nothing of the discussion behind closed doors.

giraffe_lady 5y ago

He got fined a few tens of millions of dollars a while back for tweeting a market-manipulating weed joke. Literally, this is not an exaggeration at all. Then iirc the SEC put a restriction where his tweets about his companies had to be like, nominally vetted by an officer of the company or something, I don't remember the details. Anyway he basically just refused, but also afaik hasn't tweeted concrete financial lies since then either. Matt Levine has argued pretty convincingly that musk's highly visible online unpredictability is a net asset for tesla, but contingent on specific circumstances and still carrying risks. It's not surprising at all that other companies would find those circumstances don't apply to them or the risks aren't worth it.

jaggederest 5y ago
I really think it works better if you define the "fine" in terms of percent of net wealth. 1 basis point, or 0.01%
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  If you want! That's the least interesting detail of the whole story to me so I didn't remember it or feel like looking it up. Thank you though.
bin_bash 5y ago
To me there is a big difference between joking about the price being $420 and the "funding secured" tweet.
- vmception 5y ago
  To me there is a big difference in finding issue with that, and finding the SEC to be the proper authority to do anything about it.

overgard 5y ago

I'm not sure you can relate twitter to a private forum... it's just too big and influential now. IMO it needs to be treated as a utility at this point. So yeah, free speech might not apply somewhere like here, but when twitter has presidents on it..

bin_bash 5y ago

> We see coloured smoke come out of the chimney. What the cardinals said is all speculation Can you ELI5 this metaphor for me? I know it's something about when the pope dies but my knowledge of Catholicism is very limited.

BrS96bVxXBLzf5B 5y ago
When a pope is or isn't elected (a vote on a single candidate), the Vatican releases either white or black smoke respectively to signal the result. We get to see the result of the election but know nothing of the discussion behind closed doors.