Elon tweets that the deal of him buying Twitter is "on hold", then says he's still committed

[thewayne]

He claims he's concerned about 5% of the accounts being spam bots, meanwhile it's estimated that of the 53 million followers that musk has, that approximately 53% of those are fake.

Two hours later he tweeted that he's still committed. Part of that was someone probably reminding him that he's on the hook for $1 billion if he terminates the takeover.

Among his claims of what he's going to do with Twitter is to get rid of all bots, which is a pretty big boast as it's something that Twitter has tried to do for ages now. It's a continuing game of whack-a-mole: as soon as you figure out how to close one hole, the bot programmers have three new holes opened. Much like trying to stop spam bots. Very strong incentives for the bad guys to win, i.e., MONEY. Just a couple of days ago Elon announced that he would restore Donald Trump's account, even though Trump himself has said he wouldn't go back on to Twitter and that he'd stay on Truth Social, even though he's made very few posts on it. And of course Trump never goes back on his word, so who knows that he would do. Musk says that Twitter is a town square. No it isn't, it's more like a parlor where people may come and go, but the owner is allowed to kick people out. And if a purple baboon runs in and starts jumping up and down shouting "SNARF! SNARF! SNARF! SNARF!" and annoying people, the owner has the right to kick out the baboon and lock the door on it. Private ownership means private rules.

Meanwhile, both Twitter and Tesla have lost an awful lot of stock valuation in the past few weeks and a lot of people are wondering if Elon has the bucks to seal the deal on Twitter, even after he sold off so much Tesla stock. If either Twitter or Musk cancel the sale, it's $1 billion to the other party, pretty solid incentive to get the deal done. But with this reduced valuation, is there room to renegotiate the price, or is price stuck at the price as negotiated in the deal?

And at Twitter, there's already been a general exodus of tech talent, perhaps a sense of betrayal at the possibility of sale and/or maybe working under Musk? Hard to say. And the CEO has eliminated some executives. Musk himself says he'd fire over 1,000 people in his first year in order to hire 2,000 in the next year. Excellent way to have 50-100% additionally leave based on trashing the corporate culture.

What a mess.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/05/musk-says-twitter-deal-on-hold-over-concern-about-number-of-spam-accounts/

Comments

[warriorsavant]

Money is not just an incentive for the bad guys, but also for the good guys to find "loop holes." That phrase is in quote marks, b/c when I do it, it's finding creative ways around unreasonable obstructions; when you do it, it's underhandedly undermining reasonable safeguards and fair regulations. (Rather like the difference between a legitimate tax deduction/exemption/credit and a loop hole.) I suppose for that matter, sometimes who is the good guy and who is the bad guy also depends on what side of the table you're sitting on. My personal example is when RAMQ (Quebec Medicare) stopped paying for any number of things. For the first year, my income dropped; after that, I compensated. The people putting in the measures think they're smarter than everyone else. They may be, but there are more of "everyone else," and they're more motivated, b/c it's their tuchas's on the table.

[thewayne]

Yeah, a lot depends on which side of the table you're on.  When it comes to computer hacking, white/black/gray hats there's no difference in technique, big differences in what you do with the information and in what you do inside networks that you penetrate.

[elf]

"Get rid of all the bots" would also seem to get rid of any number of useful bots that aren't trying to scam anyone - automatic status updates, calendar reminders, publishing announcements, and stuff like that.

...I suspect Musk has never actually been to a town square event. Because he seems to think they don't kick people out for bad behavior. (And that's aside from, "so... are you going to let the government run it?" Town squares are not privately owned.)

Aside from his shenanigans, there's the new TX law that forbids blocking or banning on large social media sites based on opinions, which was just upheld by the 5th circuit. So that will be, ah, interesting.

(If it's allowed to stand for any amount of time: There will be a resurgence and increase of Nazi content on Twitter. However: I think the Nazis have forgotten that the reason they were able to get a foothold in public places instead of 4chan, is that moderators got rid of the people who argued with them. "No moderation at all" will not be the "free speech haven" the nazis want.)

[mtbc]

I can't imagine that the TX law will stand unstayed for long, expensive lawyers will again point out how unconstitutional it is.

[elf]

I don't think it matters how many very good, very expensive lawyers point out how unconstitutional it is (nor how enforcing parts of it run directly against other laws). What matters is whether the courts related to enforcing it are packed with judges who don't understand the internet and just want Trump's Twitter account reinstated.

[dewline]

The wrong judge(s) could sink so much at this point...

[thewayne]

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this to inevitably rise to the SCOTUS and see what kind of ruling this generates.

[thewayne]

Elon likes shooting off the cuff for the attention, which strikes me as really insecure.  And not very deep.

[disneydream06]

PLEASE let the deal fall apart. :o
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

There's a certain amount of "Why, yes, I would love to watch both Elon Musk and Twitter fall apart and crumble into dust as they squabble over each other" about this, but I expect that Elon will be able to say "It's my party, so I get to set the rules" and we will all have to make decisions about whether we actually want to play by Elon's rules.

[thewayne]

Amusingly, he's likely to get another FTC investigation over these comments!  Basically he's demonstrating that he did not do any Due Diligence work before striking the deal and signing the purchase agreement, and now his statements are affecting the financials of the deal.  You're not supposed to talk like that after the deal is signed.  But like Trump, he can't keep his big fat mouth shut.  He could learn a lot from Mark Cuban about being a class act.

[silveradept]

So many of those people with large sums of money tend to believe that laws and rules are for people who are not them, and so they seem very surprised when those laws and rules actually get enforced against them.