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Are you tired of this man or are you tried of the unrelenting media coverage of every single thing he does? The media uses his name to drive ad revenue - he us

Are you tired of this man or are you tried of the unrelenting media coverage of every single thing he does? The media uses his name to drive ad revenue - he uses the media for free coverage. I would agree he has had too much time in the limelight and many people are getting exhausted of his coverage. I think that caricature is pretty off base. He bought something that was damaged and its value went off a cliff. What kind of person would pay full freight for Twitter as the tech valuations plummet - only a fool would stay locked into that deal.

dc-programmer 4y ago
He self-publishes his SEC defying schemes and polemics on Twitter all the time. He also reacts to these media stories you mention in ghastly ways. Truly an awful person.
hans1729 4y ago
>[first paragraph] This post is probably not on top of HN because “the media” uses him for ad revenue, just saying. >[second] That’s not even close to the full picture. Its not like he went into a shop with cash to buy a car. Not saying that the gp is 100% correct either, but gross simplifications don’t help the discourse. Edit - To clarify: if he believed in the purchase as an investment, temporary tech valuations would not matter, what would matter is the quality of the product relative to the changes he wanted to make in the company. Twitter is very much intact, it didn’t materially change since the situation began.
- boringg 4y ago
  Valuations always matter - even if you are temporarily the wealthiest person on the planet.
gordon_freeman 4y ago
I used to admire him until probably a year ago and always liked him for saying what it is but recently I've had enough of him. I feel like he has no empathy for people and he has no class anymore. Just look at the 10% layoff email he sent to Tesla employees and see if you can find any empathy in this email.
- mlindner 4y ago
  The much circulated email was the email sent to the executive team, not the employees. And the layoff isn't 10% of all workers. It was 10% of salaried workers, a much smaller amount. This goes exactly to the point of the person you responded to. The media blows up smaller news items into bigger ones for clickbait.
  - sshine 4y ago
    > And the layoff isn't 10% of all workers. It was 10% of salaried workers, a much smaller amount. Could you clarify what the set complement of a salaried worker is?
    - rchaud 4y ago
      Salaried workers are office-based. Hourly workers are factory-based.
      - bmitc 4y ago
        That actually clarifies the whole circus Musk pulled. He announced that anyone not coming back to the office (which obviously does not apply to factory workers) is effectively tendering their resignation. Then Tesla announces just days later that a 10% layoff of salaried workers is going into place. This is typical Musk behavior in that he tries to control narratives by pre-empting them. By sending this email out and then announcing layoffs later, it sets the narrative that it's an employee problem, and not a Tesla or executive problem. From what I saw of some reports of Tesla employees, Tesla doesn't even have enough desks and parking spaces for everyone to come back to. Musk knew what he was doing.
  - Hypocritelefty 4y ago
  - bmitc 4y ago
    The hoops people will jump through for Musk is continually surprising.
davidbarker 4y ago
I think many (including myself) find this Twitter purchase symbolic of his general demeanour — rather than a careful and calculated decision it appears to be an impulse purchase. The value of Twitter may have decreased since he made his offer, and he may want to back out, but he (impulsively) made an agreement to purchase it, so backing out comes with the responsibility of $1 billion.
- boringg 4y ago
  Maybe it is indicative of his demeanor or maybe it isn't - that is your own perspective. Maybe it is impulsive - he certainly is impulsive - though to be fair his impulses (if that is the case) have been pretty accurate though maybe his lucky streak has come to the end. Honestly I think it's comical that people are complaining that he's not paying up for twitter when valuations went off a cliff and twitter hasn't divulged bot data (when CLEARLY that's what he was doing all along (see my comments eons ago saying that he was pointing to this as an exit strategy). Twitter could have put that information forward and kept the $1B but they knew either (1) don't know or (2) they didn't want to for fear of damaging their company. It's like all of a sudden Twitter is the good guy and Elon is the bad guy when at the end of the day this is two business entities interacting and positioning themselves.
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    >Honestly I think it's comical that people are complaining that he's not paying up for twitter when valuations went off a cliff and twitter hasn't divulged bot data We aren't complaining, we're mostly confused how the world's smartest man would make a bid on a product not based on actual valuation, but instead on the inflated current public market price. He's free to back out of the deal, but some people aren't falling for the victimization. His bid was a mistake, and he should own it. >twitter hasn't divulged bot data Once again, this should have been part of a due diligence process that the Musk team deemed unnecessary.
    - boringg 4y ago
      He is not the worlds smartest person - maybe the worlds most ambitious person. And I'm not necessarily saying HN complaining - I'm referring to the general public narrative
itsoktocry 4y ago
>He bought something that was damaged and its value went off a cliff. He waived due diligence now is complaining about something that should have been obvious in advance, and in fact was one of the things he said was an issue with the platform that he'd fix. >What kind of person would pay full freight for Twitter as the tech valuations plummet The kind of person that signs a deal. Were he and his team not smart enough to offer fair value for the company? What kind of person absolves a billionaire from rules we all have to follow?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > What kind of person absolves a billionaire from rules we all have to follow? Twitter have two options if Elon refuses to close. They can sue him. Or they can settle. The former will be a multi-year boondoggle for everyone involved. Nobody wants that. But neither does either side want to settle for less than they can get. Both are thus positioning to make it seem like they'll make the boondoggle the boondoggliest if they're forced to face it. Twitter isn't great at theatrics. Elon is. Thus, he's taking the lead. That said, it remains in both parties' rational interests to appear willing to pursue their aims to an irrational extent in the courts, so the other side settles for less than that. Keep that in mind over the coming weeks. Point is, yes, when you're a billionaire, signing a contract means something different from you or myself because the cost of enforcing a $44bn deal is minuscule compared to the cost of the deal. (And in this, he's far from unique.)
  - itsoktocry 4y ago
    >Keep that in mind over the coming weeks. Sure, I agree. But the OP's interpretation of events is dead-wrong. This isn't the media picking on poor Elon. The guy dove head-first into something without thinking through consequences, now he and his supporters are claiming to be some kind of victims in this. Twitter did nothing wrong here.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Twitter did nothing wrong here I have nothing but respect for Elon's work at Tesla and SpaceX. But Elon Musk is a known quantity in terms of counterparty behavior. Nobody should be surprised this is happening, least of all Twitter's Board.
Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
> unrelenting media coverage of every single thing he does? Oh stop it! I lived in Los Angeles, that place is too big and populated by too many sharks. You only become famous if you really, really want to and deploy resources in a way that is optimized to reach that goal. Musk wanted to be famous ever since the Paypal days. There's a reason why you don't hear media obsessively reporting on 3 time Oscar winners Daniel Day Lewis and Jack Nicholson anymore. They have concluded their respective press tours (Lewis at least temporarily and Nicholson for a good 10 years, ever since he made "The Departed") You need to seek press to get press, you don't stumble into it.
- boringg 4y ago
  Agree with you. It's a 100% part of his strategy to get earned media and now maybe he's addicted to it. I would wager that the risk to his earned media strategy is he is going a bit off the rails in the last 6 months and staff might not be as interested working for him in the future. I don't think it has scared off investors yet as it appears he has the midas touch in the business world.
jklein11 4y ago
The terms of the deal waived any kind of due diligence or fluctuation in market price. The price reflected those terms. Musk recognized that there is a price that Twitter has to pay to enforce this contract. He is hoping that between the costs of enforcing the contract and the risk that the contract is enforceable, twitter walks away from the whole thing. Short term this seems like a pretty rational thing to do. In the future, if I were looking to do a deal with Musk, I wouldn't give much of a discount for waving due diligence, and make sure that I am protected from him pulling this kind of stunt.
sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
> He bought something that was damaged and its value went off a cliff. Disingenuous. He knew about the bots. Everyone knows about the bots.
- daenz 4y ago
  There's "knowing that there are bots" and then there's "knowing that a significant amount of engagement is bots." I think most people hear Twitter's "less than 5%" and think bullshit.
  - sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
    > There's "knowing that there are bots" and then there's "knowing that a significant amount of engagement is bots." I think most people hear Twitter's "less than 5%" and think bullshit. Disingenuous again. Most people knows a significant amount of engagement is bots, as you yourself agreed.
    - daenz 4y ago
      Not sure where the "again" is coming from. I'm not the same person. >Most people knows a significant amount of engagement is bots No, I don't think most people know that. They know there are bots, and they suspect there's a lot. That's why I said there's a difference between the two.
juve1996 4y ago
I'm not blaming the media for him. There are plenty of billionaires out there not in the daily news. He brought this on himself.

dc-programmer 4y ago

He self-publishes his SEC defying schemes and polemics on Twitter all the time. He also reacts to these media stories you mention in ghastly ways. Truly an awful person.

hans1729 4y ago

>[first paragraph] This post is probably not on top of HN because “the media” uses him for ad revenue, just saying. >[second] That’s not even close to the full picture. Its not like he went into a shop with cash to buy a car. Not saying that the gp is 100% correct either, but gross simplifications don’t help the discourse. Edit - To clarify: if he believed in the purchase as an investment, temporary tech valuations would not matter, what would matter is the quality of the product relative to the changes he wanted to make in the company. Twitter is very much intact, it didn’t materially change since the situation began.

boringg 4y ago
Valuations always matter - even if you are temporarily the wealthiest person on the planet.

gordon_freeman 4y ago

I used to admire him until probably a year ago and always liked him for saying what it is but recently I've had enough of him. I feel like he has no empathy for people and he has no class anymore. Just look at the 10% layoff email he sent to Tesla employees and see if you can find any empathy in this email.

mlindner 4y ago
The much circulated email was the email sent to the executive team, not the employees. And the layoff isn't 10% of all workers. It was 10% of salaried workers, a much smaller amount. This goes exactly to the point of the person you responded to. The media blows up smaller news items into bigger ones for clickbait.
- sshine 4y ago
  > And the layoff isn't 10% of all workers. It was 10% of salaried workers, a much smaller amount. Could you clarify what the set complement of a salaried worker is?
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Salaried workers are office-based. Hourly workers are factory-based.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      That actually clarifies the whole circus Musk pulled. He announced that anyone not coming back to the office (which obviously does not apply to factory workers) is effectively tendering their resignation. Then Tesla announces just days later that a 10% layoff of salaried workers is going into place. This is typical Musk behavior in that he tries to control narratives by pre-empting them. By sending this email out and then announcing layoffs later, it sets the narrative that it's an employee problem, and not a Tesla or executive problem. From what I saw of some reports of Tesla employees, Tesla doesn't even have enough desks and parking spaces for everyone to come back to. Musk knew what he was doing.
- Hypocritelefty 4y ago
- bmitc 4y ago
  The hoops people will jump through for Musk is continually surprising.

davidbarker 4y ago

I think many (including myself) find this Twitter purchase symbolic of his general demeanour — rather than a careful and calculated decision it appears to be an impulse purchase. The value of Twitter may have decreased since he made his offer, and he may want to back out, but he (impulsively) made an agreement to purchase it, so backing out comes with the responsibility of $1 billion.

boringg 4y ago
Maybe it is indicative of his demeanor or maybe it isn't - that is your own perspective. Maybe it is impulsive - he certainly is impulsive - though to be fair his impulses (if that is the case) have been pretty accurate though maybe his lucky streak has come to the end. Honestly I think it's comical that people are complaining that he's not paying up for twitter when valuations went off a cliff and twitter hasn't divulged bot data (when CLEARLY that's what he was doing all along (see my comments eons ago saying that he was pointing to this as an exit strategy). Twitter could have put that information forward and kept the $1B but they knew either (1) don't know or (2) they didn't want to for fear of damaging their company. It's like all of a sudden Twitter is the good guy and Elon is the bad guy when at the end of the day this is two business entities interacting and positioning themselves.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >Honestly I think it's comical that people are complaining that he's not paying up for twitter when valuations went off a cliff and twitter hasn't divulged bot data We aren't complaining, we're mostly confused how the world's smartest man would make a bid on a product not based on actual valuation, but instead on the inflated current public market price. He's free to back out of the deal, but some people aren't falling for the victimization. His bid was a mistake, and he should own it. >twitter hasn't divulged bot data Once again, this should have been part of a due diligence process that the Musk team deemed unnecessary.
  - boringg 4y ago
    He is not the worlds smartest person - maybe the worlds most ambitious person. And I'm not necessarily saying HN complaining - I'm referring to the general public narrative

itsoktocry 4y ago

>He bought something that was damaged and its value went off a cliff. He waived due diligence now is complaining about something that should have been obvious in advance, and in fact was one of the things he said was an issue with the platform that he'd fix. >What kind of person would pay full freight for Twitter as the tech valuations plummet The kind of person that signs a deal. Were he and his team not smart enough to offer fair value for the company? What kind of person absolves a billionaire from rules we all have to follow?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> What kind of person absolves a billionaire from rules we all have to follow? Twitter have two options if Elon refuses to close. They can sue him. Or they can settle. The former will be a multi-year boondoggle for everyone involved. Nobody wants that. But neither does either side want to settle for less than they can get. Both are thus positioning to make it seem like they'll make the boondoggle the boondoggliest if they're forced to face it. Twitter isn't great at theatrics. Elon is. Thus, he's taking the lead. That said, it remains in both parties' rational interests to appear willing to pursue their aims to an irrational extent in the courts, so the other side settles for less than that. Keep that in mind over the coming weeks. Point is, yes, when you're a billionaire, signing a contract means something different from you or myself because the cost of enforcing a $44bn deal is minuscule compared to the cost of the deal. (And in this, he's far from unique.)
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >Keep that in mind over the coming weeks. Sure, I agree. But the OP's interpretation of events is dead-wrong. This isn't the media picking on poor Elon. The guy dove head-first into something without thinking through consequences, now he and his supporters are claiming to be some kind of victims in this. Twitter did nothing wrong here.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Twitter did nothing wrong here I have nothing but respect for Elon's work at Tesla and SpaceX. But Elon Musk is a known quantity in terms of counterparty behavior. Nobody should be surprised this is happening, least of all Twitter's Board.

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago

> unrelenting media coverage of every single thing he does? Oh stop it! I lived in Los Angeles, that place is too big and populated by too many sharks. You only become famous if you really, really want to and deploy resources in a way that is optimized to reach that goal. Musk wanted to be famous ever since the Paypal days. There's a reason why you don't hear media obsessively reporting on 3 time Oscar winners Daniel Day Lewis and Jack Nicholson anymore. They have concluded their respective press tours (Lewis at least temporarily and Nicholson for a good 10 years, ever since he made "The Departed") You need to seek press to get press, you don't stumble into it.

boringg 4y ago
Agree with you. It's a 100% part of his strategy to get earned media and now maybe he's addicted to it. I would wager that the risk to his earned media strategy is he is going a bit off the rails in the last 6 months and staff might not be as interested working for him in the future. I don't think it has scared off investors yet as it appears he has the midas touch in the business world.

jklein11 4y ago

The terms of the deal waived any kind of due diligence or fluctuation in market price. The price reflected those terms. Musk recognized that there is a price that Twitter has to pay to enforce this contract. He is hoping that between the costs of enforcing the contract and the risk that the contract is enforceable, twitter walks away from the whole thing. Short term this seems like a pretty rational thing to do. In the future, if I were looking to do a deal with Musk, I wouldn't give much of a discount for waving due diligence, and make sure that I am protected from him pulling this kind of stunt.

sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago

> He bought something that was damaged and its value went off a cliff. Disingenuous. He knew about the bots. Everyone knows about the bots.

daenz 4y ago
There's "knowing that there are bots" and then there's "knowing that a significant amount of engagement is bots." I think most people hear Twitter's "less than 5%" and think bullshit.
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
  > There's "knowing that there are bots" and then there's "knowing that a significant amount of engagement is bots." I think most people hear Twitter's "less than 5%" and think bullshit. Disingenuous again. Most people knows a significant amount of engagement is bots, as you yourself agreed.
  - daenz 4y ago
    Not sure where the "again" is coming from. I'm not the same person. >Most people knows a significant amount of engagement is bots No, I don't think most people know that. They know there are bots, and they suspect there's a lot. That's why I said there's a difference between the two.

juve1996 4y ago

I'm not blaming the media for him. There are plenty of billionaires out there not in the daily news. He brought this on himself.