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Wasn't he tweeting that Twitter was full of bots and he was going to sort out the bot problem, after he had made the offer to buy twitter? Now hes pulling becau

Wasn't he tweeting that Twitter was full of bots and he was going to sort out the bot problem, after he had made the offer to buy twitter? Now hes pulling because of all the supposed bots because twitter didn't 'prove' to him to his satisfaction the bot problem didn't exist, even though in every filing Twitter has stated that it estimates that X% of users are bots. Further didn't he get access to the very same data that Twitter relies on to make these estimates? So all in all he just decided he doesn't want to buy twitter, has messed everyone around and wants to get out of paying the cancellation fee. For such a visionary, he seems that he can't see the reputational damage it does, consistently failing to follow the law or agreements made with people.

dragontamer 4y ago
> For such a visionary, he seems that he can't see the reputational damage it does, consistently failing to follow the law or agreements made with people. He's been doing this since 2014 at the minimum. Buffalo, NY is still waiting for their solar shingle factory with thousands of manufacturing jobs. Elon Musk hasn't changed at all. He's always been like this. The visionary part was him recognizing that most people don't care about silly things like corporate ethics. I guess Elon Musk is richer now, so his moves are necessarily bigger. Instead of lying about a $1 Billion factory, he's lying about a $40 Billion Twitter buyout deal, and that necessarily affects more people. But he hasn't fundamentally changed his approach, and I don't think anyone has really punished him for his large-scale billionaire style trolling. ------ EDIT: I'm kinda hoping that Twitter sues him and forces him to buy at $54.20, just like he wrote in this contract. It seems like Twitter has the legal right to do so, though it may be dragged out in court for a while.
- api 4y ago
  Elon Musk is a bullshitter who also occasionally delivers very impressive things. I'm not aware of many examples of that, and I don't think people quite know how to process it. My approach is to disregard anything he says unless it appears to actually be happening in a verifiable (by third parties) objective way, at which point it hard flips from bullshit into quite possibly revolutionary.
  - rnk 4y ago
    I think that's a great summary of him! He can come across as this amazing bullshitter, but he does succeed with hard work, great fundraising, luck, excellent people.
    - api 4y ago
      I'm on the fence about whether he's intentionally bullshitting or whether he's just off the charts optimistic to the point of being a bit delusional. It seems like when he becomes convinced that something is physically possible he goes "all in" and jumps right to "yeah we can do this now!" I've met a lot of engineers like this. I can occasionally do it at times. I think maybe the difference with him is that he has a ton of capital and a massive reputation from amazing successes like SpaceX VTOL rockets, which makes people take his sometimes unhinged optimism seriously. On a personal character level I hear lots of conflicting stores and don't know the guy, so I remain agnostic. If the bad stuff is true it comes down to that eternal "separating the artist from the art" question. Can you still like a musicians' music if they are an asshole (or worse)? Same question here.
    - la64710 4y ago
      - rnk 4y ago
        What in the world are you talking about?
        la64710 4y ago
        Why what are you surprised about?
        api 4y ago
        That may be the first case I've seen of anti-black snarky racism being thrown at an obviously very white guy. Very interesting trolling specimen there.
- tastyfreeze 4y ago
  With all the countless ways a deal for anything can fall through it is disingenuous to attribute a deal falling through as Musk lying. If anything it shows that Musk announces deals too soon. Does it look bad for Musk to say he is building a factory then not doing it? Hell yeah. Does that mean Musk lied and was never serious about building a factory or buying Twitter? Not at all.
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    Except they're not in the negotiation phase right they're in the deal is already made phase. Musk signed a binding agreement to buy twitter: https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1545152302142689281 https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1545152302142689281
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > With all the countless ways a deal for anything can fall through Except there's a very limited number of ways for the deal to fall through, and the contract is public. https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001418091/e61e4376-e2c5-4d54-8782-d63fc5e096e9.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001418091/e61e437... The question is now if the law applies to Elon Musk or not. I hope it does, because laws only work if they apply to everybody equally. There's no part of the contract that says Elon Musk can leave because he messed up his bot calculations. Maybe Twitter blinks and decides not to fight a billionaire over the issue. But if that happens, then we're in a situation where we tacitly agree that billionaires don't have to follow the law (because they figure they can leave any contract they sign unilaterally)
bumby 4y ago
>Further didn't he get access to the very same data that Twitter relies on to make these estimates? I believe his claim is that they were not willing to give him all the information they use in their bot calculations because some was PII

dragontamer 4y ago

> For such a visionary, he seems that he can't see the reputational damage it does, consistently failing to follow the law or agreements made with people. He's been doing this since 2014 at the minimum. Buffalo, NY is still waiting for their solar shingle factory with thousands of manufacturing jobs. Elon Musk hasn't changed at all. He's always been like this. The visionary part was him recognizing that most people don't care about silly things like corporate ethics. I guess Elon Musk is richer now, so his moves are necessarily bigger. Instead of lying about a $1 Billion factory, he's lying about a $40 Billion Twitter buyout deal, and that necessarily affects more people. But he hasn't fundamentally changed his approach, and I don't think anyone has really punished him for his large-scale billionaire style trolling. ------ EDIT: I'm kinda hoping that Twitter sues him and forces him to buy at $54.20, just like he wrote in this contract. It seems like Twitter has the legal right to do so, though it may be dragged out in court for a while.

api 4y ago
Elon Musk is a bullshitter who also occasionally delivers very impressive things. I'm not aware of many examples of that, and I don't think people quite know how to process it. My approach is to disregard anything he says unless it appears to actually be happening in a verifiable (by third parties) objective way, at which point it hard flips from bullshit into quite possibly revolutionary.
- rnk 4y ago
  I think that's a great summary of him! He can come across as this amazing bullshitter, but he does succeed with hard work, great fundraising, luck, excellent people.
  - api 4y ago
    I'm on the fence about whether he's intentionally bullshitting or whether he's just off the charts optimistic to the point of being a bit delusional. It seems like when he becomes convinced that something is physically possible he goes "all in" and jumps right to "yeah we can do this now!" I've met a lot of engineers like this. I can occasionally do it at times. I think maybe the difference with him is that he has a ton of capital and a massive reputation from amazing successes like SpaceX VTOL rockets, which makes people take his sometimes unhinged optimism seriously. On a personal character level I hear lots of conflicting stores and don't know the guy, so I remain agnostic. If the bad stuff is true it comes down to that eternal "separating the artist from the art" question. Can you still like a musicians' music if they are an asshole (or worse)? Same question here.
  - la64710 4y ago
    - rnk 4y ago
      What in the world are you talking about?
      - la64710 4y ago
        Why what are you surprised about?
      - api 4y ago
        That may be the first case I've seen of anti-black snarky racism being thrown at an obviously very white guy. Very interesting trolling specimen there.
tastyfreeze 4y ago
With all the countless ways a deal for anything can fall through it is disingenuous to attribute a deal falling through as Musk lying. If anything it shows that Musk announces deals too soon. Does it look bad for Musk to say he is building a factory then not doing it? Hell yeah. Does that mean Musk lied and was never serious about building a factory or buying Twitter? Not at all.
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Except they're not in the negotiation phase right they're in the deal is already made phase. Musk signed a binding agreement to buy twitter: https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1545152302142689281 https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1545152302142689281
- dragontamer 4y ago
  > With all the countless ways a deal for anything can fall through Except there's a very limited number of ways for the deal to fall through, and the contract is public. https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001418091/e61e4376-e2c5-4d54-8782-d63fc5e096e9.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001418091/e61e437... The question is now if the law applies to Elon Musk or not. I hope it does, because laws only work if they apply to everybody equally. There's no part of the contract that says Elon Musk can leave because he messed up his bot calculations. Maybe Twitter blinks and decides not to fight a billionaire over the issue. But if that happens, then we're in a situation where we tacitly agree that billionaires don't have to follow the law (because they figure they can leave any contract they sign unilaterally)

bumby 4y ago

>Further didn't he get access to the very same data that Twitter relies on to make these estimates? I believe his claim is that they were not willing to give him all the information they use in their bot calculations because some was PII