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As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other sayin
by hooande 5y ago
As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other saying "This would be in the best interest of shareholders, but let's screw them over instead"
This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financially. But in general this was a pointless distraction and public fiasco that served no one.
I have no idea what he was doing or what his goals were. It looks like he was upset that people he liked were getting banned by twitter and was afraid that he'd run afoul of their rules himself, so he tried to buy the company. And despite being one of the richest humans to ever live, he failed at that.
This is just a head scratcher and a massive L. I don't see another way to view it.
- a-dub 5y agofrom what i understand it's a matter of ideals combined with the technologist's desire to see the machines (all types, including sociopolitical) work correctly. he wants to see the first amendment function with autistic precision. he wants to remove any messy personalization because it interferes with that purity. he wants fully transparent moderation and proof of fairness. he doesn't like the idea that one organization has such control and he likely wants to turn the company into a dao. he's searching for a problem to apply cryptocurrency technologies to. what i think he doesn't get are the messy realities of the real world. we're already on the cusp of world war iii, can we chill for just a few minutes?
- lettergram 5y agoI think musk believes we wouldn’t be on the midst of WWIII if free speech was allowed.
- psyc 5y agoI have this recurring fantasy in which some Satoshi figure creates a decentralized global bulletin board, such that anybody can post and view anything anonymously and untraceably, and nobody - not the U.S. government, nor the CCP, nor the Mossad, nor the NSA - can stop it short of dismantling the whole Internet and starting over. Nobody can blame anybody, because nobody can stop it. Not because I think such a thing is technically possible. Certainly not because I have any fancy argument for why such a thing ought to exist morally! But simply to sit back and watch the world lose its fucking mind over it. To see the whole psyche of human kind projected into public view, and the accompanying apoplectic, impotent outrage. I might also settle for a really quality sci-fi novel in which this takes place.
- hooande 5y agoThis is 4chan. Your recurring fantasy is 4chan
- joncrane 5y agoAbsolutely not. They regularly turn over IP logs to law enforcement for various reasons.
- tsol 5y agoSo it was 4chan before they made enough trouble to get law enforcement attention. In the beginning it was just a bunch of pissed off nerds posting anime that no one took seriously
- psyc 5y agoNot even close. 4chan was vulnerable to censorship from day one, and succumbed to it completely over Gamergate, of all things.
- sweetbitter 5y agoThe moderators' biases shape 4chan and which userbase it has, not the users' own subjective choices. Similar but not quite.
- haliskerbas 5y agoSurprised that he wants to see the “social machine” work but is fine mocking the homeless, the poor, or the hungry. In my opinion the fundamental needs of humans being meant is part of the social machine. Not rich people getting to whine.
- chernevik 5y agoYou have absolutely zero awareness of the ideas of those you disagree with.
- arrosenberg 5y ago> he wants to see the first amendment function with autistic precision I really wish we'd stop defining social media broadly as a first amendment issue. Elon Musk has the right to speak his mind without fear of government reprisal, he doesn't have a constitutional right to broadcast his asinine opinions to millions of people.
- burnished 5y agoI'm not getting the impression that his actions are the result of a highly polished corporate public personna, I think his actions make way more sense if you imagine that he's just some regular, kinda bright, really eccentric asshole with more money than god. Like, you can probably imagine at least one person you know acting this way if they discovered a genie.
- pbreit 5y ago"asshole" What has he done to deserve that label?
- WaxProlix 5y agoYou should do a google search before posting on HN. Dude's done tons of really mean, rude, or questionable things. At many levels. It's not on the OP to prove it to you with exhaustive sources or whatever when you can just look around you and get examples. But since you want an actual link, here: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=elon+musk+douchebag&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=elon+musk+douchebag&ia=web
- pbreit 5y agoI'd grant the "pedo" thing. But I'm not sure what else. Link didn't provide anything of merit.
- imilk 5y agoThere are very few things you can do that are a bigger asshole move than calling the person who bravely rescued a bunch of children a pedophile because you didn't get to be the hero.
- jdminhbg 5y agoNot to defend childish Twitter name-calling, but the reason he did it was that the dude picked a pointless fight with him first. Let he who has not escalated an insult battle throw the first stone.
- pbreit 5y agoAn L for Twitter inc, perhaps. OP did not say shareholders would win their lawsuits. Elon obviously has zero interest in a financial return. It's clear he genuinely believes Twitter could be better, especially around free speech.
- kixiQu 5y agoIf you lose a bunch of money and don't change the "free speech" policy of a website, isn't it still an L?
- pbreit 5y agoHe's already won by spotlighting Twitter's poor record.
- saghm 5y agoI haven't seen anyone convinced one way or another based on these recent events that wasn't already; in other words, this offer changed no one's opinion. If pointing out that you think there's an issue to other people who already believe that issue exists is a win, then sure, he's already won.
- garbagetime 5y agoWhat's his loss going to be? Like, $500,000,000? I doubt the money matters that much to him.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vimy 5y agoThese are just the opening moves. It isn’t over yet.
- jv22222 5y ago> I have no idea what he was doing Would it be illegal for him to launch a Twitter competitor, take 40 million followers with him, and sell all of his Twitter shares on the same day? Perhaps that is the strategy? A 1-2-3 punch to launch his own network.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- imilk 5y agoWho would join his new network that isn't already on gab, parler, gettr, or truth social besides Telsa fanboys and a bunch of crypto enthusiasts?
- jpcfl 5y agoHe is a futurist, and believes that without free speech, human kind is doomed. I agree.
- bmlzootown 5y agoThe important question is this -- why does he believe those things? This is the same man that at one point tried to say that he was the founder of Tesla. Saying things that I agree with doesn't mean that I should inherently be in favor of said person doing X, Y, or Z.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jpcfl 5y ago> why does he believe those things? Just look at the conditions in any society without free speech and you'll find your answer. More abstractly, free speech is required for free thought. Without free thought, we're all thought prisoners to whomever controls the information we received. Musk's contention with Twitter is that they have been positioning themselves as that entity.
- krainboltgreene 5y agoHe has actively suppressed the speech of others.
- jpcfl 5y agoOne, Elon Musk is not a social media platform. And two, how?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dtjb 5y agoDoes free speech require a company to give me a megaphone to their private platform and users? Does twitter not have a right to exercise their speech?
- browserman 5y agoAfter considering it for a bit, my opinion is that it's mostly a political ploy; if he buys it, he'll bring back Trump et. all, expecting that once the GOP is back in power, they'll make any trouble he may be expecting with the SEC and the National Labor Relations Board go away I think there are probably other factors at play too. His ego, of course. And also the general desire, also evident among VCs like Andreesen, to discipline the Silicon Valley workforce and remind the uppity code-monkeys who's really in charge.
- FFRefresh 5y agoIt's really fascinating seeing all the conspiracy theorizing going on with this offer. You have a number of really creative threads going on here. To step through this... So we have someone with a net worth near 300 billion dollars that is going to go through all this trouble to: -Unblock one user -Which will then trigger an American political party to like him -This political party will then make it less likely the SEC will bother him, potentially saving him tens of millions of dollars (or 0.01% of his current net worth) in some hypothetical scenario What a theory! This same political party and twitter user was in power when the SEC fined him+Tesla $40 million in 2018. How do you make sense of that with your theory? If politics was his main driver, why wouldn't he just use his wealth to directly incentivize politicians?
- browserman 5y agoI don't think it's a straight quid pro quo or that he's on a secret Signal chat with Trump or anything. Just part of a broad alignment of the tech oligarchy with the Republican Party on anti-labor and anti-regulation lines.
- FFRefresh 5y agoAgain, why would Elon Musk, with net worth near 300 billion dollars, go through all this trouble to maybe save 0.01% of his net worth in fines in some hypothetical scenario? The ROI seems absolutely terrible for that theory. And why when Trump and the Republican party was in power in 2018, did they allow Musk+Tesla to be fined if there is such a tight relationship along 'anti-regulation' lines between the SEC and the President/political party in power? And again, if he cares about political influence, why go through all this trouble and why not just directly incentivize politicians?
- tdehnel 5y agoYou say “free speech” mockingly in quotes as if it’s not the one right that literally all your other rights depend on.
- M2Ys4U 5y agoIt's not, though. In fact free speech is in direct contradiction to other rights, and these have to be balanced against each other for society to function. Take the right to privacy, for example. My right to privacy necessarily entails restricting your right to disseminate information about me. Or the rights to life and bodily autonomy - the prohibition on inciting violence is a restriction of free speech.
- tdehnel 5y agoWho advocated for those rights and why were they allowed to?
- CompleteWalker 5y agoIn the recent Ted talk Musk talked about needing AI-complete solutions for projects like full self-driving and Optimus (tesla bot) to succeed. He also wryly mentioned that there was a plan b if his Twitter bid wasn't accepted. He's heavily invested in AI and machine learning, could he be interested in twitter's data?
- throwntoday 5y agoI think he's more interested in the power of twitter as the public square. There's no doubt Trump won his presidency through that social media presence (and his non-stop rallying of course). That kind of power is more useful than say buying the Washington Post. I would be more interested in him implementing certain features like a journalistic credibility score for outlets and individuals. Base it on number of retractions, mistakes, and outright lies. Surely a score like that might put certain fake news propagators in line. This is something he pitched before although as a standalone website. Integrating into twitter seems more useful.
- imilk 5y ago> I would be more interested in him implementing certain features like a journalistic credibility score for outlets and individuals. Base it on number of retractions, mistakes, and outright lies. Surely a score like that might put certain fake news propagators in line. Which then raises the issue of who scores the scorer. You already have people throwing fits because the garbage they post gets labeled as misleading or not true. So how would this be any different besides you liking the person in charge of the scoring?
- throwntoday 5y agoCould be done with ML perhaps, or via consensus. I did list retractions for that reason, as there is a point where even an outlet needs to admit they got something wrong, but burying it at the bottom of a year old article no one will ever see is a dirty move. Either way it's not my problem to solve, just something I would like to see.
- 5y ago