Elon Musk admits he only bought Twitter because he thought he'd be forced to:
Elon Musk gave a rare interview to an actual reporter late on Tuesday, speaking to BBC reporter James Clayton on Twitter Spaces. During the interview, Clayton pressed Musk on whether his purchase of Twitter was, in the end, something he went through with willingly, or whether it was something he did because the active court case at the time in which Twitter was trying to force him to go through with the sale was going badly.
The answer (which we all suspected anyway) was that Musk did indeed only do the deal because he believed legally, he was going to be forced to do so anyway. Here's the relevant transcript from the Twitter Spaces audio:
Clayton: So then you change your mind again, and decided to buy it – did you do that? Did you do that?
Musk: Well, I kind of had to.
Clayton: Right. Did you do that, because you thought that a court would make you do that?
Musk: Yes.
Clayton: Right.
Musk: Yes, that is the reason.
Clayton: So you were still trying to get out of it. And then you just were advised by lawyers, "Look, you're going to buy this?"
Musk: Yes.
In case you don't recall (it was all the way back in September/October last year which is basically an eternity ago in current Twitter time), Twitter took Musk to trial to force him to honor his signed obligation to acquire the company for the agreed-upon price of $44 billion, or $54.20 per share. Musk was contending that his obligation was void because Twitter had, he claimed, inflated its real user numbers and understated the number of bots on the platform.
Musk then notified the SEC that he intended to buy the company after all at the price he originally set with the company, a move most agreed at the time was made because his legal case was weak and the trial was clearly not going his way.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by https on Friday April 14, @05:32PM (8 children)
And we believe Greedy Elmo why?
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14, @05:36PM (4 children)
No you see, he HAD to buy it. And now he bought it, he HAS to use it to make provocative political statements every day.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday April 14, @07:22PM (2 children)
I mean - "You find yourself in possession of a money-losing company you didn't really want".
...
"Can I... fire everyone?"
"You could but they would be very unhappy."
"Let's just start there."
...
"Can I hire people that will, like, make it make money?"
"You could..."
"Let's do that then? Seems like a good move."
(Score: 3, Touché) by driverless on Saturday April 15, @05:35AM (1 child)
A path leads into the forest to the east. In one corner of the house there is a small window which is slightly ajar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, @05:40PM
A giant troll stands before you.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday April 16, @02:55PM
Once he made the offer with a cash value, he was in a really tough spot legally. If for once in his life he had been able to just keep his mouth shut, he wouldn't have had to. But when you're worth as much as he is, you don't get to say you want to buy things like other companies so easily. The comments might well have run afoul of SEC relations of her didn't move forward with the purchase.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Friday April 14, @05:42PM (1 child)
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, @03:46AM
There are lots of billionaires who somehow managed to not get forced into buying Twitter.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday April 14, @08:10PM
Because buying twitter for 44 billion dollars is an incredibly stupid thing that no sensible person would ever have done, leaving very little room besides "I went on a bender and signed a extremely stupid deal to punish a twitter employee i was mad at" for reasons to do it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday April 14, @06:38PM (3 children)
( https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/elon-musk-interview-with-the-bbc-4-11-23-transcript [rev.com] )
If Musk could prove Twitter lied about their figures, he would have sued over breach-of-contract by presenting the evidence in court.
The only reasonable explanation to Musk's actions that can track with the facts is that he was planning to pump the stock by having the board refuse his offer before dumping the stock but was caught by surprise when they signed the paperwork and closed the deal. So, he tried to wiggle out of the deal and delay the transaction while looking for other investors but when he failed he was forced to take a loan and even sell stocks to cover the payments.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday April 14, @11:34PM (2 children)
In truth, he agreed to buy it because he was stoned out of his mind at the time and let his bloated ego and his delicate conservative feelings override his reason. Then he went to court hoping to pull a fast one and be allowed to renege on his deal and found out that probably wasn't going to happen.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday April 15, @02:41AM (1 child)
So what you're saying is that Musk called a meeting with the principle shareholders representatives, made a bid and handed over a 73 pages long merger agreement for them to sign on a drug infused moment's whim? In what Hunter S. Thompson novel do you think Musk (and his Gonzo legal department) been living in where they could orchestrated a silent (and illegal) purchase of around 10% of Twitter's shares before spending months on negotiations and drafting agreements with Musk having access to the board's reports?
He didn't go to court. The Twitter shareholders sued him when he failed to transfer the funds and a few weeks before the trial started he gave up knowing he had no case so he wired the money.
Bloomberg covered most of this a year ago when he was still trying to bail out of the deal. Normally it would be a waste of time looking back on this but seeing just how misinformed people are about the whole affair, I'll leave the link here just in case folks need a refresher: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-08-29/musk-tries-a-new-way-out-of-twitter [bloomberg.com]
compiling...
(Score: 4, Funny) by sjames on Sunday April 16, @11:27AM
Not a drug infused moment, a chronic state of drug infusion.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Revek on Friday April 14, @07:16PM
You shot yourself in the foot with that bloated offer. They would have sued you for backing out. They would have won.
Now you have a failing nothing burger with a following of degenerates who make a lot of noise but rarely stay loyal for long.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2, Funny) by shrewdsheep on Friday April 14, @08:03PM
n/t
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snospar on Friday April 14, @08:15PM (6 children)
And here's what ChatGPT reckons he could have done with that money:
"To put this into perspective, in 2020, the World Food Programme provided assistance to nearly 97 million people in 88 countries, at a cost of $8.4 billion. This means that the full $9 billion could potentially provide food assistance to more than 112 million people for an entire year."
I like Elon, I like his rockets... but he threw away enough money to help 112 million people because his lawyers said he "had to". Pay other lawyers $1M to stamp on the deal and send the rest to feed the poor.
And more rockets please. Bigger rockets. Bigger bangs.
(Score: 2) by GloomMower on Friday April 14, @08:29PM (1 child)
> I like Elon, I like his rockets... but he threw away enough money to help 112 million people because his lawyers said he "had to". Pay other lawyers $1M to stamp on the deal and send the rest to feed the poor.
Didn't his lawyers said he had to, because he literally was going to have to? If he could have just paid $1M to more lawyers to not "had to" I think that would have been done.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snospar on Friday April 14, @11:22PM
I should have stated a sliding scale, I'm sure there is some point between $1M and $9B where this "problem" goes away. This is rich versus rich, Twitter has no fundamental value, the kind of thing my grandpa would have referred to as "funny money" (and quite rightly).
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14, @11:30PM (2 children)
If you throw $9 billion at the hunger problem, you'll enrich warlords by $6 billion and feed some people temporarily.
If you still insist, maybe the people who got bought out for $44 billion should spend their newfound wealth on the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, @12:29AM
> If you still insist, maybe the people who got bought out for $44 billion should spend their newfound wealth on the problem.
Oooh sounds like taxation. Nope.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, @03:50AM
If you just give them food you are likely to have the same problem but bigger later on.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday April 15, @05:13PM
In case anyone missed the World Food Program incident, here are the basics: https://www.abc10.com/article/news/verify/business-verify/elon-musk-indicated-2021-to-donate-6-billion-to-fighting-solving-world-hunger-if-un-met-conditions/536-cad0e59e-775d-4c3d-a309-b3ef93379a71#:~:text=THE%20ANSWER,plan%20came%20two%20weeks%20later.&text=If%20playback%20doesn't%20begin%20shortly%2C%20try%20restarting%20your%20device. [abc10.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedGreen on Friday April 14, @09:32PM (1 child)
HAHAHAHAHA, christ I am going to bust a gut here. Hell of an expensive way to impress your Nazi buddies. Sorry about his luck for being "forced" to honor a legally signed binding contract. His genius knows no bounds, wait until his other house of cards comes crumbling down. Five price reductions in a year to try and inflate some sales, the bloom is off the car scam rose now too. Fucking corporate welfare bum. Now he tries to get in on the homeless scam subsides in his despised city of San Francisco as well. At least I would think this is why he wants to house some homeless at the headquarters another government tit to suck on he is so good at doing. It is certainly not from the kindness of his heart, which his actions have proved time and again he has no compassion for people or their problems. He goes out of his way to make sure people are having problems in their life because of his actions with that garbage he spreads and supports.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, @12:32AM
Keep watching for more chortles as he drives the value to $0.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Friday April 14, @10:28PM (17 children)
> Clayton pressed Musk on whether ...
Did we watch the same interview? Musk fairly quickly turned the tables on Clayton and he got more and more disturbed by the experience and things went on. The audio quality is quite horrible from time to time. It's almost as if there is a censor there to add static when things get "bad".
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65249139 [bbc.com]
During the first couple of minutes they manage to talk about the labelling on twitter for various media companies on how they are funded, publicly or government congtrolled etc in regards to the BBC and the NPR etc.
At about six minutes it's the talk about why he bought Twitter. (the sound gets really shit about that time).
At about the 15 minute mark it's about freedom of speech on the service, bringing back Trump to the service.
It's nice to hear Musk say that Twitter acts as a megaphone for very small and niche groups.
At 16:50 he sort of flips the interview when he starts to talk about misinformation and hate speech, then around 17:20 he starts to rip into the BBC about the things they publish that have later been shown to be false (ie misinformation).
At 18:40 less hate due to elimination a lot of bots and scam peddlers.
At 19:30 the rise in hate speech on twitter. "slighlty sexists, racist ..." the interviewer starts to ramble on a bit here. At this point I'm starting to wonder who is interviewing whom. I think Musk flipped the interview here and Clayton comes off a bit desperate to fling things at him. Have seen more, can't recall a single item. It becomes quite amusing actually. The backpeddling is real.
At 22:30 have the BBC changed its covid misinformation. I don't think Clayton was ready for the Elon Musk Experience. This was solid gold.
At 24:50 Elons dog is now the CEO
At 30:50 mistakes were made in the purchase of twitter.
At 45:20 apparently a lot of the problems with Twitter was that things was hardcoded to various service centers. So shutting one down broke things. Ooops!
At 48:50 Elon checks his twitter feed for comments from the audience. Manic laughing. Do you like the BBC ... Clayton not amused.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday April 15, @03:34AM
Thanks, I ended up listening the entire thing because of your post. Quite entertaining! Interesting how different people come away with different impressions - I do wonder how much of the commentary is deliberate propaganda and how much is differing preconceptions.
(Score: 2) by helel on Saturday April 15, @08:31AM (15 children)
Having now listened to the whole interview I'm mostly just reminded of the quote "Elon Musk is a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy."
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday April 15, @09:53AM (14 children)
Really? That's not the impression I got at all. Can you give an example from the interview that demonstrates this, or if it is just the interview as a whole are you able to go into some more detail about why you thought this? To be honest I'm not even sure what a "dumb guy's idea of a smart guy" even means...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by helel on Saturday April 15, @10:25AM (13 children)
I mean it's really just the whole thing but take for example the bit about COVID misinformation. His response to the "Why did you change the policy to no longer flag COVID misinformation?" is to ask back "What's the BBC doing about COVID misinformation" and "The BBC made COVID editorial decisions based on government pressure." It's the kind of turnabout that someone might think is a cleaver comeback but it just falls flat if you think about it for half a second.
It's like he's trying to pull an appeal to hypocrisy [wikipedia.org] except that the person he's trying to pull it on isn't in his position and and so cannot make policy decisions for the BBC but, if we accept the reporter as just a representative of every decision the BBC makes, it still fails because the thing he's accusing the BBC of isn't the thing he's being asked about.
So it's a response that kind of sounds cleaver, if fallacious, if you don't follow the details but if you're paying attention it's not actually cleaver at all. Hence a dumb guy would think Musk sounds smart while someone more intelligent would not.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Saturday April 15, @10:30AM (3 children)
I know people who hate him feel better by thinking he's dumb, but the fact is dumb people don't wind up as billionaires.
(Score: 2) by helel on Saturday April 15, @10:39AM (2 children)
I think you might have replied to the wrong comment? I'm not suggesting that he's stupid.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Sunday April 16, @08:32PM (1 child)
You did say that anybody that thinks Elon Musk is smart, is stupid. Now you're implying that you don't think he's stupid, which by your measure means you too think he is smart, and therefore are yourself stupid (?).
Personally, I think Elon Musk is smart because he has founded and simultaneously runs several multi-billion dollar companies, which each seem to be successfully disrupting several rich, powerful, and deeply entrenched industries. It indicates that he is a strategic thinker and pretty darn good tactician, too (even if he occasionally makes mistakes). Doing any one of those things would make him smart in anybody's book, but doing them all at the same time makes him damn smart.
Am I stupid for that assessment?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Tuesday April 18, @04:30AM
It is possible for someone to be neither smart nor stupid...but yes I think the op was being a little disingenuous...
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday April 15, @02:50PM (1 child)
Yes and No. Just like Clayton isn't responsible for all things BBC (or probably any, he might be somewhat responsible for the content of the shows he create or interview he does) Musk isn't exactly responsible for everything that goes and gets posted to Twitter either. So Clayton accuses Musk and Twitter for all the shit that is on the service and all the things done or not done. It's in particularly about the part where he goes on about all the sexism and racist content he gets in his feed, Musk ask for ONE actual example and then it turns out that Clayton claims to have not used the service for a very long time, so he doesn't actually know how the service is after Musk to charge. So he it basically a twat or lying. He gets exposed in some regard for the bad research he has done. So in some regard it's justified in some part for Musk to flip it on the BBC and their representative Clayton and accuse them for all the things that are wrong with the BBC. Neither is correct or good, but they are in some regard equally responsible or not at all.
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday April 16, @05:42PM
Clayton didn't ask Elon about why misinformation is on twitter, he asked him about his change of policy regarding the labeling of misinformation. That policy is 100% the responsibility of Musk. He's the CEO and sets those policies.
As for the hateful content, see my other comment to The Vocal Minority.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday April 15, @04:27PM (4 children)
Thank you for the well considered reply, that is a fair interpretation given the way you have framed that section of the interview. As I said I see it quite differently from you, I think Musk was quite clearly playing with this reporter and, frankly, made him look like a fool - not least in the section where the reporter couldn't come up with an example of "hate speech" on twitter after claiming he has seen examples of it since Musk took over the platform. Being interviewed can be challenging at the best of times and I can imagine that an adversarial interview with a professional journalist would be very difficult indeed. I don't think it would be "dumb" to see some intelligence in someone doing well in this sort of situation.
I must admit that the part you quoted is not Musk's finest moment during the interview, but I saw it more as a rhetorical strategy to put the reporter on the back foot, so to speak. That was quite smart, in a instrumental kind of way, although it does not speak so highly of Musk's character, as these sorts of techniques tend to indicate a poor orientation towards truth.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by helel on Sunday April 16, @05:37PM (3 children)
See, the whole hateful content thing is another perfect example. The whole "studies have shown there's a statistically significant rise in hate speech on your platform" vs "but can you personally quote a specific example? You can't, then it must be false" is the same situation where on a casual soundbite level it seems like a cleaver comeback but falls apart on closer inspection.
The reason given that the reporter cannot name "a single tweet" is because he stoped using the for you page a month ago because of the rise in hateful content, a fact that is far far more telling than the discussion of any single tweet could ever be. People are creatures of habit. Clayton didn't use the for you page for years and then drop it for no reason. He cut it out because it was filled with hateful content for six months after Musk took over and he finally got sick enough of it to change his habits.
And all of that is entirely sidestepping the fact that this isn't one guy saying "I think there's more hateful content," it's academic research that surveys enough of twitter to draw significant conclusions about the nature of content there. This is no different than a reporter asking a tobacco executive "Researchers say your products cause cancer. Would you care to comment?" and the executive responding "Did you see anyone with cancer from cigarets today? No? Must not be true then."
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday April 16, @08:38PM (1 child)
Oh, balderdash. You're saying he is excused from doing his research because his delicate sensibilities were offended? He wants to do an adversarial interview of Elon about said content, without having hard evidence to back up his assertions? We should all laugh that guy out of the room.
Honestly, if that's the standard that some are holding journalists to these days then the entire legacy media deserves to die, and let real journalists like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald (they're both left-wing guys, BTW, but actually do their homework) rule.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by helel on Monday April 17, @03:44PM
I think we'll have to disagree about which is the more pertinent evidence: Peer reviewed research of millions of tweets or A single tweet plucked from the for you feed. It would fit with the premise though if people who think Musk is smart value the later over the former...
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Tuesday April 18, @05:05AM
Where Clayton got caught out there was that he claimed to have seen "hateful" content but then backtracked and said he didn't use whatever it was that he was supposed to have seen such content on (I sure as hell don't use twitter so god knows what that was about). I mean anyone can make a mistake, and this is all largely a spectacle anyway, but I did think that was pretty funny. I have been wondering if Musk did something like I once saw Sienfield do, offer a inexperienced reporter the opportunity to interview a very famous person, knowing that because of their inexperience they would be easy to mess with.
I think the whole concept of "hate speech" is pretty bogus myself, it seems to be largely a wedge used to restrict the communication of ideas you do not like, and as Musk himself alludes to in the interview, whoever gets to define what "hate speech" is the has the ability to control the discourse. Even if there is a study or studies, as claimed, that find "hate speech" has been on the rise on twitter since the Musk takeover, if it is a bullshit concept to begin with the these mean nothing (GIGO). Not to mention that "study finds" does not equal truth, particularly in the social sciences - this stuff isn't physics. I suspect you have a different view (although it's curious that you contribute to such a staunch(ish) free speech platform as SN if you do), and this is possibly one of the underlying reasons we see the Musk interview very differently.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 15, @05:46PM (1 child)
Defn. "dumb guy's idea of a smart guy" (n): one who talks a lot and always manages to wheedle out of actually doing anything.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday April 16, @08:45PM
By what measure has Elon done nothing? He has single-handedly disrupted the global auto industry. They're all chasing him into the realm of EVs, something which some of them still laugh at. And along with the auto industry, he has aimed the biggest possible dagger at the heart of the oil industry that powers those old ICEs. He has single-handedly done more to combat climate change than any other human ever has.
Oh, that's not enough for you? SpaceX is driving hard toward re-usable rockets and taking humanity to the stars, for real. NASA and the usual suspects were certainly not getting us there.
Still not enough? Starlink is rapidly setting up global internet access and the possibility that that cellphone in your pocket can also be a satphone.
Those are just some of the biggies. Each of those has knock-on benefits, like dramatically advancing battery technology and manufacturing processes.
What have you done, Mr. AC, that reduces all that Elon has done to "nothing" by comparison?
Washington DC delenda est.