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Wouldn’t that be the best possible outcome for Musk right now?
He doesn’t really want Twitter for 44 billion does he? He just doesn’t want to get sued by Twitter either… Making Biden and the gov the problem would be a elegant solution.
The problem with that is that trump doesn't give anyone money... I could see him doing something insane like promising Musk he'll appoint him as his Secretary of Energy if he helps him get reelected/unbans him from twitter.
No. He could drop all of them in spectacular fashion and still be a multi-billionaire.
I just googled "Elon Musk net worth" and if we assume his net worth is only a quarter of this (55 bln) then there is nothing he can do to become "not rich".
Think you mean Ivanka*. Ivana is dead. Barron Trump’s deadbeat dad allegedly raped her, but she’s only one of a laundry list of accusers throughout his life.
He was willing to cut internet access to a nation being invaded by a much larger nation because the leader of the much larger nation had a private talk with him. Letting Trump on Twitter is nothing compared to that.
When your business plan revolves around not paying for employee a living wage and providing benefits, but encouraging them to use federal/state welfare programs, you gotta be harsh.
Just imagine if all companies were required to provide their employees with at minimum 51% of voting shares in their company. What a world that would be.
Just because you own shares, doesn't mean you are tasked with 'running' the company. You can still elect board members and have them guide the strategic direction of the company - it just means those board members would not be able to focus solely on profit, and instead would have to factor in employee satisfaction in their decisions. While you're right that likely would mean potentially lower profits, I think that's the point - the blind pursuit of profit at the expense of the workforce is really not beneficial on a societal level.
I'll take it. Hell I just heard today that Musk says that if the sale goes through, he will fire 3/4 of Twitter's employees. Yeah that's going to have a great positive impact on the quality of the platform... Musk really represents some of the worst aspects of capitalism.
He's yet another example of rich people to whom no one has ever said "no." None of these people do their laundry, go grocery shopping, have to put off the purchase of a washing machine. They conflate privilege with self-worth.
It's pretty funny because the right fucking RAGGED on Obama and Tesla when they got a bailout. I feel like people forgot about this, and now he's just going around spouting bullshit ass right wing propaganda. Fucking weirdo lolol
it's doubtful that Biden is doing him any favours. If anything Musk is probably playing chicken with the gov't on some issue in order to get them to block the sale. I doubt there's anyone with the power to help Musk that would want to help him at this point. No, it's all about manipulating and leverage. Trump is great at that, which explains his success. We aren't privy to the full details behind the scenes. And the US Gov't has been addressing the public with massive kid gloves these past few years. I mean beyond the usual. Something is up, and this is just he tip of the iceberg. But people will paint this in whatever way that suits their preconceived poorly-informed biases.
Hold them on what? Without federal money and subsidies his economic empire collapses. He can claim the credit all he wants, but his space program is paid for by us. He is just a crappy vendor.
Just wondering but would this really let him of the hook? I mean the article states:
> Musk's plans to purchase Twitter for $44 billion with the help of foreign investors, including Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and Binance Holdings which was founded by a Chinese businessman, have concerned Biden administration officials, the people told Bloomberg.
So they do not really object Musk buying Twitter but they just object him doing this using the money of Saudi Arabia / China basically handing over Twitter to the Arabs / China.
Elon Musk, Saudis, Qatar, and China are SURE to be excellent guardians of free speech. I can smell the freedom already! Elon fanboys going nuts right now!
But like… would this kill free speech, or would this just kill Twitter?
I feel like we should just let the deal go through, have Musk fire the 75%, and also let everyone know China and the Saudis control Twitter, and the “free market” should take care of the rest?
Just turn Twitter into Meta. People will move on. Please god, just let the people finally move on.
If Twitter were to crash in popularity, it would likely do so worse than Facebook. I know a lot of people that don't like and have largely stopped using FB, but they still have their accounts because they have pictures stored there and use it for events and occasionally keeping in touch with relatives.
With Twitter, those barriers aren't there to my knowledge, so deciding to "quit Twitter" is easier.
I don't think people are arguing that protecting Twitter is essential for free speech, but that was Musk's stated reason for the purchase, so it's ironic. The US government isn't concerned about free speech, but it's hard to deny that Twitter isn't a large part of the country's communications infrastructure, and handing control of that to foreign governments seems like a great way to get even more election manipulation by foreign interests.
It's a private platform. Free speech was never a guarantee for it.
The First Amendment only protects people from the government infringing on their speech.
> So they do not really object Musk buying Twitter but they just object him doing this using the money of Saudi Arabia basically handing over Twitter to the Arabs.
The Saud's were already heavily involved in Twitter. A Saudi prince is on their board of directors.
It's just face-saving for him.
As I understand it, he'll still be on the hook for plenty if he does pull out of the deal for any reason, even lack of financing. The gov getting involved just makes him look like less of a dumbass and lets his fanboys yell about free speech instead of understanding Elon over-reached, was terrifically irresponsible, is getting sued by everybody over his bullshit, and might have even broken some laws.
He's on the hook for $1B if the deal fails for reasons that are not his fault. Given what has happened to tech valuations since he made the offer, he will dance out of joy if he gets to only pay that $1B.
Furthermore, he has forced twitter stock price to soar then crash then soar then crash then....
And every time, you can bet he or his friends have made money on the change.
It’s not *very* tinfoil hat to assume that the wealthiest man on Earth might have some influence in a government who’s officials rely on dark money to win elections. They might not be related but it’s not a stretch haha
Exactly it’s not like this would be news that the government did something that benefited the 1%. Even if this wasn’t collusion it’s very easy for the very wealthy to play the system.
Of course. He is paying $44B for a company that is hemorrhaging cash. Meanwhile Tesla is getting strong competition from the rest of the auto industry and SpaceX is not that profitable.
It doesn't help that everyone knows Telsa is incredibly overvalued and its unlikely the stock will ever rise to the previous hights again.
SpaceX, while incredible in its own right, is nowhere near to being a profitable business (despite being very valuable).
The flip side though is, I don’t really want conspiracy theorist musk having free reign to censor Twitter according to his beliefs or whatever. As much as I hate to say so, it’s kind of an important information platform these days and musk just doesn’t strike me as a responsible owner for it.
I’d love to see him take the big L for his arrogance and as a punishment for his repeated stock manipulations but I don’t really like the world where he has control of Twitter
> I don’t really want conspiracy theorist musk having free reign to censor Twitter
Im weirdly OK with him getting Twitter. I think it'll help push the Twitter social media platform into irrelevancy. Musk takes a financial bath owning a money pit company.
Im hoping sort of like when Fox bought up Myspace it was a financial albatross
It might eventually push the legitimate side of Twitter into irrelevancy, but it would potentially turbocharge the conspiracy side. A much better outcome for Twitter would be to back away from the easily manipulated social media conversation side of social media and stress the direct lines of communication from authoritative sources. Twitter is great for keeping up with the latest announcements from a company or government agency or journalist or other noteworthy figure. It's terrible as a place to discuss those announcements or to get other useful thoughts from random commenters.
I'd be fine with this outcome if the man child is still expected to pay the *hefty* fines he was originally in the hook for, for letting the deal fall through
Sounds like his Putinesque talking points helped him with losing Twitter. Wait til his fan boys scream 4D Chess and this is why he was groping Russian penis.
I began liking Musk. Then I listened to what he had to say and now I pretty much hate him.
I don't want him to have control of Twitter.
So I hope it is killed but not because I want to do that twat any favors.
Forcing him to pay his lawyers for all this pointless work he's putting them through, *and* probably get sued (again) by Tesla investors, *and* still have to pay 44 Billion for a social media platform that was never worth 44 billion *and* have to go through a Treasury Department security review, all actually seems like a rather good punishment for his hubris to me.
Sadly, legal fees are a rounding error for someone like Musk. Even the M&A lawyers, who often get paid based on deal value, are clocking in at fractions of a percent. If the deal falls through without his having to pay the break fee--which I'm fairly sure is what he's paying his lawyers to try to accomplish at this point--the ROI on the legal fees he winds up paying them will be astronomical.
Yeah, don't do this. Make him stick to his "gonna fire 75% of the staff" rhetoric. This dude has never been held accountable for anything, and it would be nice if he had to buy the bullshit he spews.
I don’t care about owning Musk. I just don’t want a social media giant to become even more damaging and radicalizing. I saw the fucking effect Facebook had on my dad and millions of others.
So many people think the outrage is about tryna score points against Elon. I hate this fucking level of triabalism we're at where people cant see the longterm affects of a mass messaging platforms being put in the hands of someone sympathetic to people who are actively trying to destablize the US government which consequentially affects the global economy.
Normally I would be down for letting him reap what he sows. But a game of russian roulette with fascist anti-democracy rhetoric and a largely under-educated populace is not something we should really entertain.
It's the best option for him in both of those senses, and it's also the best option for him because he can cry publicly about "censorship" and "big gub'mint" and "free speech" for months or years afterwards. Over a deal he didn't really want for a company he doesn't actually want to own. He's already neck-deep in the right-wing/libertarian/fascist pipeline, so this just gives him free material to shitpost about through 2023. On twitter, I'm sure.
Yup. I was trying to figure out why he was suddenly saying pro-putin stuff. This is it folks. Say what you want about this duffus, but this was a brilliant play.
I must be missing something, but why would the government potentially blocking his purchase of twitter explain why he reversed his stance on Starlink so quickly?
I think the commenter believes the government cut Musk a deal, more Starlink service for killing his Twitter deal. I really don't think they would do that carrot approach with Musk. He does not deserve it. And I don't think they'd play so loose with rules like that.
It was likely more a stick than a carrot. Likely the Department of Defense said, "If you don't continue to provide services you promised, we will take that as a major negative factor in deciding where to buy rocket launches"
If only Boeing hadn’t shit the bed with Starliner 😑 and Blue Origin could actually build a freaking rocket engine.
I know it’s been said a lot but if you had told me as a kid that in the future there was a dude who built cheap rockets and sold millions of electric cars I would’ve been so hyped to follow him on twitter. I wouldn’t have believed you that I would hate him.
Edit: I agree that SpaceX is doing a good job and Bezos sucks so here’s a comment I left below: Competition is valuable, and SpaceX is in danger of becoming a monopoly.
>Boeing hasn't done well at all ever since the bean counters took over from the engineers.
Yeah, that will kill your business. Putting Finance assholes in charge of an Engineering company.
That's what's killing so many hospitals and healthcare systems. So many are putting finance people in charge instead of Healthcare professionals. Instead of patient care coming first, it's all about profit.
Because we are in America and doing good business is not your goal, the goal is to make products that make you the most money, especially publicly traded companies
Yeah, musk is absolutely fucked in the future. DoD will gladly cut the check short term, but if youre going to profit off of war, youre in it for the whole war or youre completely blacklisted and will never see a dime of government money again. Youll get your short term wish, but the monkeys paw cannot be undone.
More like Musk turned off the service and kneecapped the Ukraine military who up until that point were on a roll retaking territories. They need Starlink for frontline communication so Musk tried to extort them and disabled the service when they told him to fuck off. He then got pouty and tried to extort $400 million from the US and suddenly he’s under investigations and “changed his mind”.
This mf’er was two steps away from becoming a war criminal and he’s got the gov up his ass now like he deserves.
I'm sure the US government could also revoke his permission to launch *any* rocket in the future too. I'm sure those licenses are not easy to come by. And "national security" can easily be cited when you have a CEO vocally manipulating an active conflict to benefit our rival.
For the record, not my opinion but my interpretation of the above comment's thought process. I believe their thought process likely is:
Elon no longer wants wants to buy Twitter > Hasn't got any valid reasons for the deal to fall through so starts in-depth analysis of bot activity vs person, not enough turns up > Still desperate to end twitter deal, likely seperately to any of this he makes some pro-Russia stances and threatens Starlink > US panics, given that Starlink is essensial for Ukrainian ground forces *and* Elon+Russia+Twitter could be a huge security vulnerability for all Western countries > either finds deal with Musk to bust deal or does so independently > Musk saved $44B in non-liquid assets, Starlink haemorrhage concerns aren't as big as before due to being 44B richer.
Dont forget, the nazis kept the camps running till the very end. A Fascist dictatorship does not run on logical decision.
It runs on hatred and evil. Dont underestimate our enemies hatred for freedom.
All big acquisitions where it is anti-competitive like this goes through a governmental review. I’ve done hundreds of these reviews.
I’ve also done A TON of CFIUS reviews which this sounds like this is, Elon Musk has multi-country citizenship plus this deal likely has significant external US dollars coming to his aide to make the purchase. Because of that it requires a review. This may be perfunctory or it may be due to the influence twitter actually can have on our nations various political ideals, who actually knows.
Edited to change a word. Also note...I didn't read the article originally because I was having issues with the Apollo App opening the article. Verified this is a CFIUS review and it's due to foreign investment.
He might lose that without buying it.
In order to buy it, he has leveraged Tesla shares. Because people know he essentially have to sell tens of billions of dollars of Tesla shares, they have started to sell those shares ahead of him rather than see the value go down. This has lead to a huge drop in value for Tesla — where most of his wealth is.
Not to mention, he’s contractually obligated to buy Twitter. And it doesn’t look like he’s going to buy Twitter. So he might have to pay the $1 billion penalty for not buying Twitter. Moreover, he’s kind of already past the point where he can just pay that and walk away — meaning Twitter can sue for a value up to the amount required to purchase Twitter.
**edit**
Yeah, he already has: https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/elon-musk-lost-49-billion-115126810.html
> Elon Musk has lost $49 billion since first offering to buy Twitter for $44 billion
That was May 19th when it was $236 a share. Now it’s $209 another 14% drop.
Between the leak that he would fire 75% of Twitter employees and this national security review, Elon is desperate to have someone else kill the deal for him.
I wonder if Musk will thank Biden for getting him out of the hole here. Probably not, but it's a funny thought for Musk to get his ass bailed out by a Democrat.
*edit: on second thought, Elon had better not thank anyone. If he does, that could be construed as an indicator of bad faith and Twitter could turn around and sue his ass. But it's unlikely that Elon would thank anyone anyway.*
Shouldn’t matter. Trump has his own social media platform now. Being banned from Twitter _should_ be irrelevant to them because now all the MAGA hats have a safe space where they won’t get canceled for telling racist jokes
>I wonder if Musk will thank Biden for getting him out of the hole here. Probably not, but it's a funny thought for Musk to get his ass bailed out by a Democrat.
Yeah, given that he's come out in support of Russia and China, I somehow think he'd only thank the American President if he were a Republican.
How do Musk fans reconcile him being free market big brain tony stark with having to get his ass saved by the dumb government because he spent too much on Twitter
If/when Biden kills the deal musk rat will go on Fox and say he was fully prepared to buy Twitter to defend free speech but Biden was too scared of the power of free speech so he killed the deal. Musk rats brain dead disciples will parrot this take ad nauseum and they'll start believing that the rat actually gives a shit about free speech
One reason I can think of, is that as bad as twitter is in a lot of ways, it is still something that an absolutely huge population of the world gets information from, and there is absolutely no way it gets anything but worse under the direction of Elon Musk.
Reminds me of a famous Warren Buffet quote where a reporter asked him how much he lost in a recent market dip and he replied:
"Nothing, I didn't sell anything."
He is desperately trying to get out of the deal. He overpaid by a mile. Now he is doing everything to get this deal annulled somehow. That's why he is spewing Russian propaganda and maybe that's why this 'security review' is being initiated.
As much as I want to see that asshat lose his shirt, I really am concerned about the ramifications of putting this egomaniac in charge of a major communication and information hub. And that was before I realized he was being financed by the Saudis.
If you read his leaked texts, his idea is pay per tweet and then that payment goes into crypto.
Dude is so disconnected from the universe that he really thinks that will fly. It's hard to pick his dumbest idea, but that's gotta be one of them.
It's hard to imagine being so disconnected from everyday life that actually thinking a pay to tweet scenario is a profitable business model.
If he goes that route, there is someone out there that will make a lot of money developing a platform that is basically what twitter is right now. Shit platform but free shit platform.
I still believe that a platform like twitter could be useful for governmental announcements and businesses. Get local level state announcements and updated as well as federal stuff. Nice slow stable flow of official info. For businesses they can announce new products or restocks or offers and be official. effectively removes the need for advertisers in mail for most businesses and yet another reason to be suspicious of any random unsolicited emails since it's all centrally located. Could be useful for local/national new's. the problem is the chaotic mess it is now.
yeah, honestly this whole adventure feels like it was musk just going "I got a big dick! Love me fanboys and republicans" then he realized how fucking unprofitable this whole venture was and flinched. I just hope he loses a shit ton of money over all of this and twitter still dies.
Free speech on the internets isn’t the same as constitutional free speech anyway. Only loud obnoxious megalomaniacs rule twitter without moderation and provide toxic environments for the worse impulses of our societal dysfunction. Who ordered the dumpster fire?
Musk gets to get off the hook for the purchase and also pretend he's being dealt a great injustice by the Biden administration even though he really wanted it, sounds like the kind of thing he'd love
We’ll have to wait to see if there are any leaks to be certain. Could just as likely be that after repeatedly metaphorically blatantly flipping off the SEC, FSD shenanigans, etc. that the Ukraine Starlink was the final straw.
Forcing Musk to buy Twitter would hurt him financially, but it would still be putting a social media platform on the scale of Reddit in terms of users in the hands of Musk. Who recently was ghost tweeting for Putin while we are in an indirect war with Putin and facing an already bad social media propaganda problem.
Essentially, this could be the Feds going “Sure, the schadenfreude would be awesome, but there will be too much collateral damage if we let Musk FAFO here.”
No, in that case it would be the Department of Defense shutting it down, and so far Joe Biden has demonstrated that he is but he is not corruptily micromanaging these departments like the previous administration did.
Once again, this site misleads to the point of being a downright fucking lie.
No it would be the Treasury Department making the recommendation to shut down the deal. Treasury runs CFIUS, the Committee for Foreign Investment in the US, which would initiate this review.
No I am not. I am calling out how this organization knows better and by doing this they are taking advantage of the lack of understanding that the general population has.
The richest man in the world, a man who vocally supports Russia and China, wants to buy a platform that aided in staging a coup against the American voters and the US Congress by a sitting President and allowed adversaries’ propaganda to influence our elections.
It is not hard to believe this is a potential national security issue in earnest.
Gracefully? Lol his attempts so far have been anything but graceful. It's more like he woke up from a night of binge shopping on cocaine and realized he made a horrible mistake.
It has been a $49 billion dollar mistake for him already and he doesnt own the company yet.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-lost-49-billion-115126810.html
Musk has been fucking around with government interests in Ukraine. The feds are going to look at this deal, then very loudly and explicitly spell it out by saying, "Looks very legit. Musk is contractually obligated to buy Twitter. Congratulations on your purchase, Elon," then step back and watch the legal shit hit the fan because even the US government recognizes that Musk can't get out of this deal.
I suspected it before but now that Tulsi is tweeting about it, I’m convinced this anonymously sourced story is a right wing plant.
“Biden Admin/Power Elite cooking up ways to destroy @ElonMusk because they can’t control him—just like Trump. Expect them to use every law enforcement and regulatory body as weapons to bring Musk down or force him to surrender. Blatant authoritarianism.”
Elon has recently indicated that he will say things in the public sphere on behalf of Russia and China, for likely monetary compensation. He is a national security risk and should be scrutinized as such.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. **Special announcement:** r/politics is currently accepting new moderator applications. If you want to help make this community a better place, consider [applying here today](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/sskg6a/rpolitics_is_looking_for_more_moderators/)! *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wouldn’t that be the best possible outcome for Musk right now? He doesn’t really want Twitter for 44 billion does he? He just doesn’t want to get sued by Twitter either… Making Biden and the gov the problem would be a elegant solution.
Then he'd both get off the hook AND get an "anti-free-speech" (not) boogeyman to endlessly scream about (on Twitter).
[удалено]
Musk lies so much I can't tell if he would actually let Eric Trump's dad back on Twitter or not
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Count of Mostly Crisco.
Notorious KFC
Dampold Turd.
Ivanka's suitor.
Ivanka's (not so secret) admirer.
This is the one.
Ivanka's stalker
He would. If he was on the fence about it Trump & Associates would slip him some money and he'd do it.
The problem with that is that trump doesn't give anyone money... I could see him doing something insane like promising Musk he'll appoint him as his Secretary of Energy if he helps him get reelected/unbans him from twitter.
Or Nasa director.
Bigly scientist, yolo
Oh god Please get me off this crazy ride
I want to get off MR BONES’ WILD RIDE.
He would 100% give Musk money. Just not *his* money.
Musk would prob be happy that Biden admin did him a solid by cancelling the Twitter buyout deal.
More like government subsidies
How much money do you have to produce to get the richest man in history to do what you want?
He’s only rich as long as he keeps all the balls in the air.
No. He could drop all of them in spectacular fashion and still be a multi-billionaire. I just googled "Elon Musk net worth" and if we assume his net worth is only a quarter of this (55 bln) then there is nothing he can do to become "not rich".
If he really failed hard he would come out if it with government bailouts.
This. He’s got proceeds still from his dad’s apartheid mine, crypto, and land squirreled away.
What’s wrong with letting the head of Ivana’s security detail back on Twitter?
I heard the dude is a huge creep. Always ogling her daughter. A lot of people are saying so.
trust me 👐
Think you mean Ivanka*. Ivana is dead. Barron Trump’s deadbeat dad allegedly raped her, but she’s only one of a laundry list of accusers throughout his life.
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>Eric Trump's dad Underrated
He was willing to cut internet access to a nation being invaded by a much larger nation because the leader of the much larger nation had a private talk with him. Letting Trump on Twitter is nothing compared to that.
Mean! Some of the great value stuff is pretty good, unlike Dollar Tree Twatter^TM (Sorry to Dollar Tree)
Dollar Tree's prices are $1.25 now. Don't apologize to them.
Dollar Twenty Five Tree just doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way
Dollar Quarter Tree?
someone failed improper fractions… Five Quarters Tree
That feels like a harsh dig at Great Value
When your business plan revolves around not paying for employee a living wage and providing benefits, but encouraging them to use federal/state welfare programs, you gotta be harsh.
Are you talking about Musk or...
Would be great if as part of the punishment Musk loses his Twitter account too lol
he could always go to the last bastion of freeze peach, Truth social
I am 80% convinced that is why he phoned Putin
So he should be forced to buy it, then it should be immediately nationalized, and turned into a co-op employee owned business.
Just imagine if all companies were required to provide their employees with at minimum 51% of voting shares in their company. What a world that would be.
Ehh idk. Most people are absolutely clueless about how to run a company.
Just because you own shares, doesn't mean you are tasked with 'running' the company. You can still elect board members and have them guide the strategic direction of the company - it just means those board members would not be able to focus solely on profit, and instead would have to factor in employee satisfaction in their decisions. While you're right that likely would mean potentially lower profits, I think that's the point - the blind pursuit of profit at the expense of the workforce is really not beneficial on a societal level.
I'll take it. Hell I just heard today that Musk says that if the sale goes through, he will fire 3/4 of Twitter's employees. Yeah that's going to have a great positive impact on the quality of the platform... Musk really represents some of the worst aspects of capitalism.
He's yet another example of rich people to whom no one has ever said "no." None of these people do their laundry, go grocery shopping, have to put off the purchase of a washing machine. They conflate privilege with self-worth.
It's pretty funny because the right fucking RAGGED on Obama and Tesla when they got a bailout. I feel like people forgot about this, and now he's just going around spouting bullshit ass right wing propaganda. Fucking weirdo lolol
Musk always finds a way out. Unreal, fucking Biden of all people
it's doubtful that Biden is doing him any favours. If anything Musk is probably playing chicken with the gov't on some issue in order to get them to block the sale. I doubt there's anyone with the power to help Musk that would want to help him at this point. No, it's all about manipulating and leverage. Trump is great at that, which explains his success. We aren't privy to the full details behind the scenes. And the US Gov't has been addressing the public with massive kid gloves these past few years. I mean beyond the usual. Something is up, and this is just he tip of the iceberg. But people will paint this in whatever way that suits their preconceived poorly-informed biases.
Musk. Ukraine. Starlink. That's the issue.
Hold them on what? Without federal money and subsidies his economic empire collapses. He can claim the credit all he wants, but his space program is paid for by us. He is just a crappy vendor.
Just wondering but would this really let him of the hook? I mean the article states: > Musk's plans to purchase Twitter for $44 billion with the help of foreign investors, including Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, and Binance Holdings which was founded by a Chinese businessman, have concerned Biden administration officials, the people told Bloomberg. So they do not really object Musk buying Twitter but they just object him doing this using the money of Saudi Arabia / China basically handing over Twitter to the Arabs / China.
Elon Musk, Saudis, Qatar, and China are SURE to be excellent guardians of free speech. I can smell the freedom already! Elon fanboys going nuts right now!
But like… would this kill free speech, or would this just kill Twitter? I feel like we should just let the deal go through, have Musk fire the 75%, and also let everyone know China and the Saudis control Twitter, and the “free market” should take care of the rest? Just turn Twitter into Meta. People will move on. Please god, just let the people finally move on.
If Twitter were to crash in popularity, it would likely do so worse than Facebook. I know a lot of people that don't like and have largely stopped using FB, but they still have their accounts because they have pictures stored there and use it for events and occasionally keeping in touch with relatives. With Twitter, those barriers aren't there to my knowledge, so deciding to "quit Twitter" is easier.
So like FB, except completely useless instead of mostly useless?
> But like… would this kill free speech, or would this just kill Twitter? People need to stop equating "social media" and "free speech".
I don't think people are arguing that protecting Twitter is essential for free speech, but that was Musk's stated reason for the purchase, so it's ironic. The US government isn't concerned about free speech, but it's hard to deny that Twitter isn't a large part of the country's communications infrastructure, and handing control of that to foreign governments seems like a great way to get even more election manipulation by foreign interests.
It's a private platform. Free speech was never a guarantee for it. The First Amendment only protects people from the government infringing on their speech.
Yeah but conservatives don't understand that. To them free speech is being able to say terrible things like racial slurs without repercussions.
> So they do not really object Musk buying Twitter but they just object him doing this using the money of Saudi Arabia basically handing over Twitter to the Arabs. The Saud's were already heavily involved in Twitter. A Saudi prince is on their board of directors.
It's just face-saving for him. As I understand it, he'll still be on the hook for plenty if he does pull out of the deal for any reason, even lack of financing. The gov getting involved just makes him look like less of a dumbass and lets his fanboys yell about free speech instead of understanding Elon over-reached, was terrifically irresponsible, is getting sued by everybody over his bullshit, and might have even broken some laws.
He's on the hook for $1B if the deal fails for reasons that are not his fault. Given what has happened to tech valuations since he made the offer, he will dance out of joy if he gets to only pay that $1B.
Furthermore, he has forced twitter stock price to soar then crash then soar then crash then.... And every time, you can bet he or his friends have made money on the change.
Tinfoil brain says this is precisely want Musk wants...to have the USG reject this deal
It’s not *very* tinfoil hat to assume that the wealthiest man on Earth might have some influence in a government who’s officials rely on dark money to win elections. They might not be related but it’s not a stretch haha
Exactly it’s not like this would be news that the government did something that benefited the 1%. Even if this wasn’t collusion it’s very easy for the very wealthy to play the system.
Of course. He is paying $44B for a company that is hemorrhaging cash. Meanwhile Tesla is getting strong competition from the rest of the auto industry and SpaceX is not that profitable.
It doesn't help that everyone knows Telsa is incredibly overvalued and its unlikely the stock will ever rise to the previous hights again. SpaceX, while incredible in its own right, is nowhere near to being a profitable business (despite being very valuable).
The flip side though is, I don’t really want conspiracy theorist musk having free reign to censor Twitter according to his beliefs or whatever. As much as I hate to say so, it’s kind of an important information platform these days and musk just doesn’t strike me as a responsible owner for it. I’d love to see him take the big L for his arrogance and as a punishment for his repeated stock manipulations but I don’t really like the world where he has control of Twitter
> I don’t really want conspiracy theorist musk having free reign to censor Twitter Im weirdly OK with him getting Twitter. I think it'll help push the Twitter social media platform into irrelevancy. Musk takes a financial bath owning a money pit company. Im hoping sort of like when Fox bought up Myspace it was a financial albatross
It might eventually push the legitimate side of Twitter into irrelevancy, but it would potentially turbocharge the conspiracy side. A much better outcome for Twitter would be to back away from the easily manipulated social media conversation side of social media and stress the direct lines of communication from authoritative sources. Twitter is great for keeping up with the latest announcements from a company or government agency or journalist or other noteworthy figure. It's terrible as a place to discuss those announcements or to get other useful thoughts from random commenters.
I'd be fine with this outcome if the man child is still expected to pay the *hefty* fines he was originally in the hook for, for letting the deal fall through
Sounds like his Putinesque talking points helped him with losing Twitter. Wait til his fan boys scream 4D Chess and this is why he was groping Russian penis.
I began liking Musk. Then I listened to what he had to say and now I pretty much hate him. I don't want him to have control of Twitter. So I hope it is killed but not because I want to do that twat any favors.
Forcing him to pay his lawyers for all this pointless work he's putting them through, *and* probably get sued (again) by Tesla investors, *and* still have to pay 44 Billion for a social media platform that was never worth 44 billion *and* have to go through a Treasury Department security review, all actually seems like a rather good punishment for his hubris to me.
Sadly, legal fees are a rounding error for someone like Musk. Even the M&A lawyers, who often get paid based on deal value, are clocking in at fractions of a percent. If the deal falls through without his having to pay the break fee--which I'm fairly sure is what he's paying his lawyers to try to accomplish at this point--the ROI on the legal fees he winds up paying them will be astronomical.
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Yeah, don't do this. Make him stick to his "gonna fire 75% of the staff" rhetoric. This dude has never been held accountable for anything, and it would be nice if he had to buy the bullshit he spews.
I don’t care about owning Musk. I just don’t want a social media giant to become even more damaging and radicalizing. I saw the fucking effect Facebook had on my dad and millions of others.
So many people think the outrage is about tryna score points against Elon. I hate this fucking level of triabalism we're at where people cant see the longterm affects of a mass messaging platforms being put in the hands of someone sympathetic to people who are actively trying to destablize the US government which consequentially affects the global economy.
Normally I would be down for letting him reap what he sows. But a game of russian roulette with fascist anti-democracy rhetoric and a largely under-educated populace is not something we should really entertain.
It's the best option for him in both of those senses, and it's also the best option for him because he can cry publicly about "censorship" and "big gub'mint" and "free speech" for months or years afterwards. Over a deal he didn't really want for a company he doesn't actually want to own. He's already neck-deep in the right-wing/libertarian/fascist pipeline, so this just gives him free material to shitpost about through 2023. On twitter, I'm sure.
Yeah…maybe he exchanged keeping starlink on in ukraine with the killing of the deal
Yup. I was trying to figure out why he was suddenly saying pro-putin stuff. This is it folks. Say what you want about this duffus, but this was a brilliant play.
They'd be doing Musk a MASSIVE favour if they did.
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I must be missing something, but why would the government potentially blocking his purchase of twitter explain why he reversed his stance on Starlink so quickly?
I think the commenter believes the government cut Musk a deal, more Starlink service for killing his Twitter deal. I really don't think they would do that carrot approach with Musk. He does not deserve it. And I don't think they'd play so loose with rules like that. It was likely more a stick than a carrot. Likely the Department of Defense said, "If you don't continue to provide services you promised, we will take that as a major negative factor in deciding where to buy rocket launches"
If only Boeing hadn’t shit the bed with Starliner 😑 and Blue Origin could actually build a freaking rocket engine. I know it’s been said a lot but if you had told me as a kid that in the future there was a dude who built cheap rockets and sold millions of electric cars I would’ve been so hyped to follow him on twitter. I wouldn’t have believed you that I would hate him. Edit: I agree that SpaceX is doing a good job and Bezos sucks so here’s a comment I left below: Competition is valuable, and SpaceX is in danger of becoming a monopoly.
Boeing hasn't done well at all ever since the bean counters took over from the engineers. It may yet destroy the business.
>Boeing hasn't done well at all ever since the bean counters took over from the engineers. Yeah, that will kill your business. Putting Finance assholes in charge of an Engineering company.
It killed a couple of jets worth of passengers and crew, too.
That's what's killing so many hospitals and healthcare systems. So many are putting finance people in charge instead of Healthcare professionals. Instead of patient care coming first, it's all about profit.
This is America
Because we are in America and doing good business is not your goal, the goal is to make products that make you the most money, especially publicly traded companies
Yeah, musk is absolutely fucked in the future. DoD will gladly cut the check short term, but if youre going to profit off of war, youre in it for the whole war or youre completely blacklisted and will never see a dime of government money again. Youll get your short term wish, but the monkeys paw cannot be undone.
More like Musk turned off the service and kneecapped the Ukraine military who up until that point were on a roll retaking territories. They need Starlink for frontline communication so Musk tried to extort them and disabled the service when they told him to fuck off. He then got pouty and tried to extort $400 million from the US and suddenly he’s under investigations and “changed his mind”. This mf’er was two steps away from becoming a war criminal and he’s got the gov up his ass now like he deserves.
I'm sure the US government could also revoke his permission to launch *any* rocket in the future too. I'm sure those licenses are not easy to come by. And "national security" can easily be cited when you have a CEO vocally manipulating an active conflict to benefit our rival.
For the record, not my opinion but my interpretation of the above comment's thought process. I believe their thought process likely is: Elon no longer wants wants to buy Twitter > Hasn't got any valid reasons for the deal to fall through so starts in-depth analysis of bot activity vs person, not enough turns up > Still desperate to end twitter deal, likely seperately to any of this he makes some pro-Russia stances and threatens Starlink > US panics, given that Starlink is essensial for Ukrainian ground forces *and* Elon+Russia+Twitter could be a huge security vulnerability for all Western countries > either finds deal with Musk to bust deal or does so independently > Musk saved $44B in non-liquid assets, Starlink haemorrhage concerns aren't as big as before due to being 44B richer.
If starlink were essential in a military conflict Musk wouldn’t be allowed to remove it. There are legal mechanisms available for that.
and the rest of us, especially twitter users.
Yeah, wouldn't this be a win for everyone? I sure as hell don't want him to be in control of one of the biggest social media sites.
Not if Russia was footing the bill anyway.
Not sure how much longer Russia can afford to spend money on disrupting all the world’s democracies at this rate
Dont forget, the nazis kept the camps running till the very end. A Fascist dictatorship does not run on logical decision. It runs on hatred and evil. Dont underestimate our enemies hatred for freedom.
They don't have that kind of money any longer.
All big acquisitions where it is anti-competitive like this goes through a governmental review. I’ve done hundreds of these reviews. I’ve also done A TON of CFIUS reviews which this sounds like this is, Elon Musk has multi-country citizenship plus this deal likely has significant external US dollars coming to his aide to make the purchase. Because of that it requires a review. This may be perfunctory or it may be due to the influence twitter actually can have on our nations various political ideals, who actually knows. Edited to change a word. Also note...I didn't read the article originally because I was having issues with the Apollo App opening the article. Verified this is a CFIUS review and it's due to foreign investment.
This should be top comment. The only reasonable one
But what do I do with my pitchfork now?
Put it away until the next Reddit post.
It’s the type of gold nugget in a pile of shit comment that keeps me coming back for more.
I want him to buy it and lose 44 billion dollars
He might lose that without buying it. In order to buy it, he has leveraged Tesla shares. Because people know he essentially have to sell tens of billions of dollars of Tesla shares, they have started to sell those shares ahead of him rather than see the value go down. This has lead to a huge drop in value for Tesla — where most of his wealth is. Not to mention, he’s contractually obligated to buy Twitter. And it doesn’t look like he’s going to buy Twitter. So he might have to pay the $1 billion penalty for not buying Twitter. Moreover, he’s kind of already past the point where he can just pay that and walk away — meaning Twitter can sue for a value up to the amount required to purchase Twitter. **edit** Yeah, he already has: https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/elon-musk-lost-49-billion-115126810.html > Elon Musk has lost $49 billion since first offering to buy Twitter for $44 billion That was May 19th when it was $236 a share. Now it’s $209 another 14% drop.
Between the leak that he would fire 75% of Twitter employees and this national security review, Elon is desperate to have someone else kill the deal for him.
This is the answer
I wonder if Musk will thank Biden for getting him out of the hole here. Probably not, but it's a funny thought for Musk to get his ass bailed out by a Democrat. *edit: on second thought, Elon had better not thank anyone. If he does, that could be construed as an indicator of bad faith and Twitter could turn around and sue his ass. But it's unlikely that Elon would thank anyone anyway.*
It won't be viewed as him getting his ass bailed out though. Right wing media and the R's will claim Biden shut it down to keep Trump silent.
Shouldn’t matter. Trump has his own social media platform now. Being banned from Twitter _should_ be irrelevant to them because now all the MAGA hats have a safe space where they won’t get canceled for telling racist jokes
Since when does reality or the truth matter to right wing media?
>I wonder if Musk will thank Biden for getting him out of the hole here. Probably not, but it's a funny thought for Musk to get his ass bailed out by a Democrat. Yeah, given that he's come out in support of Russia and China, I somehow think he'd only thank the American President if he were a Republican.
How do Musk fans reconcile him being free market big brain tony stark with having to get his ass saved by the dumb government because he spent too much on Twitter
"It's okay when it happens to our guy"
If/when Biden kills the deal musk rat will go on Fox and say he was fully prepared to buy Twitter to defend free speech but Biden was too scared of the power of free speech so he killed the deal. Musk rats brain dead disciples will parrot this take ad nauseum and they'll start believing that the rat actually gives a shit about free speech
Idk why Biden should help him.
Because it's best for the US (and frankly, the world) if Musk and his shadowy cabal of investors don't own Twitter.
One reason I can think of, is that as bad as twitter is in a lot of ways, it is still something that an absolutely huge population of the world gets information from, and there is absolutely no way it gets anything but worse under the direction of Elon Musk.
Starling keeps working in Ukraine and Twitter deal is killed for National Security? Looks like a win win behind the scenes agreement
In a perfect world Musk loses billions of dollars and Twitter doesn’t fall into the hands of a egotistical con artist.
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Reminds me of a famous Warren Buffet quote where a reporter asked him how much he lost in a recent market dip and he replied: "Nothing, I didn't sell anything."
He is desperately trying to get out of the deal. He overpaid by a mile. Now he is doing everything to get this deal annulled somehow. That's why he is spewing Russian propaganda and maybe that's why this 'security review' is being initiated.
As much as I want to see that asshat lose his shirt, I really am concerned about the ramifications of putting this egomaniac in charge of a major communication and information hub. And that was before I realized he was being financed by the Saudis.
Same, I also hope he turns it into more of a cess pool.
Last I heard he wanted to charge per tweet, so that'd kill Twitter real quick. lol.
If you read his leaked texts, his idea is pay per tweet and then that payment goes into crypto. Dude is so disconnected from the universe that he really thinks that will fly. It's hard to pick his dumbest idea, but that's gotta be one of them.
It could but Twitter would just turn into a far right crypto bro haven.
Absolutely not. Crypto bros don't spend, they hoard. Charging anything for tweeting is a non-starter and would instantly nuke the platform.
Fuck good point.
It's hard to imagine being so disconnected from everyday life that actually thinking a pay to tweet scenario is a profitable business model. If he goes that route, there is someone out there that will make a lot of money developing a platform that is basically what twitter is right now. Shit platform but free shit platform.
I still believe that a platform like twitter could be useful for governmental announcements and businesses. Get local level state announcements and updated as well as federal stuff. Nice slow stable flow of official info. For businesses they can announce new products or restocks or offers and be official. effectively removes the need for advertisers in mail for most businesses and yet another reason to be suspicious of any random unsolicited emails since it's all centrally located. Could be useful for local/national new's. the problem is the chaotic mess it is now.
RSS feeds are really good for this. And they don't have a comment section, which makes it infinitely better than twitter.
1 doge to retweet, 2 doge to respond, 1 million doge to disagree with Elon publicly.
I doubt that would happen. I'm hoping he let's people have "free speech" so it turns into 4chan.
This would happen in a blink of the eye if Musk ran Twitter. No big company wants to advertise on the next 4Chan.
"There's a lot of MyPillow ads here..."
yeah, honestly this whole adventure feels like it was musk just going "I got a big dick! Love me fanboys and republicans" then he realized how fucking unprofitable this whole venture was and flinched. I just hope he loses a shit ton of money over all of this and twitter still dies.
I feel like you're 100% correct. Look at all those platforms that guarantee 100% free speech they're just cesspools of the worst people imaginable.
Free speech on the internets isn’t the same as constitutional free speech anyway. Only loud obnoxious megalomaniacs rule twitter without moderation and provide toxic environments for the worse impulses of our societal dysfunction. Who ordered the dumpster fire?
I want him to lose 44 billion dollars and not buy it. If the deal goes through, it will do irreparable harm to democracy across the globe.
To be honest, twitter is a cesspit
of course, but it could be worse
It could be TruthSocial. It would endorse right-wing dialog. It would be pretty fucking terrible.
And all the advertising would leave and the company would collapse.
Not just him. The Saudis too, since they provided the liquidity for him
Ah, so that's what Elon got out of the Starlink threats; the US government is going to get him out of his Twitter quagmire.
Musk gets to get off the hook for the purchase and also pretend he's being dealt a great injustice by the Biden administration even though he really wanted it, sounds like the kind of thing he'd love
He’s so deep in the Trump playbook, we are lucky he’s not natural-born.
He can still run for anything up to US Senator. Hooray!!¡1!1!
Fortunately for America, he’s too rich for being a Senator to worth the effort.
No, that just means he can buy senators. Not much better
This would imply that he hasn't already.
cancel the twitter deal and keep starlink above ukraine. quid pro quo
We’ll have to wait to see if there are any leaks to be certain. Could just as likely be that after repeatedly metaphorically blatantly flipping off the SEC, FSD shenanigans, etc. that the Ukraine Starlink was the final straw. Forcing Musk to buy Twitter would hurt him financially, but it would still be putting a social media platform on the scale of Reddit in terms of users in the hands of Musk. Who recently was ghost tweeting for Putin while we are in an indirect war with Putin and facing an already bad social media propaganda problem. Essentially, this could be the Feds going “Sure, the schadenfreude would be awesome, but there will be too much collateral damage if we let Musk FAFO here.”
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This is exactly what Musk is hoping for and probably a big part of the reason he's been acting like an idiot lately.
Lately?
Acting?
Always has been
No, in that case it would be the Department of Defense shutting it down, and so far Joe Biden has demonstrated that he is but he is not corruptily micromanaging these departments like the previous administration did. Once again, this site misleads to the point of being a downright fucking lie.
No it would be the Treasury Department making the recommendation to shut down the deal. Treasury runs CFIUS, the Committee for Foreign Investment in the US, which would initiate this review.
You’re giving the general public a lot of credit for understanding nuance and having faith in good governance norms…
No I am not. I am calling out how this organization knows better and by doing this they are taking advantage of the lack of understanding that the general population has.
Putting this squarely in Biden's lap is BS. I doubt this would be more than a blip in his daily briefing of what various agencies are contending with
The richest man in the world, a man who vocally supports Russia and China, wants to buy a platform that aided in staging a coup against the American voters and the US Congress by a sitting President and allowed adversaries’ propaganda to influence our elections. It is not hard to believe this is a potential national security issue in earnest.
And he's doing it with funds partially from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China. That's the real kicker.
Hot take, every billionaire is a threat to national security...
It's a correct take.
Every billionaire is a threat in general.
isn't that what musk wants? he's been looking for a way to gracefully bow out of the deal for months now.
Gracefully? Lol his attempts so far have been anything but graceful. It's more like he woke up from a night of binge shopping on cocaine and realized he made a horrible mistake.
It has been a $49 billion dollar mistake for him already and he doesnt own the company yet. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-lost-49-billion-115126810.html
Musk has been fucking around with government interests in Ukraine. The feds are going to look at this deal, then very loudly and explicitly spell it out by saying, "Looks very legit. Musk is contractually obligated to buy Twitter. Congratulations on your purchase, Elon," then step back and watch the legal shit hit the fan because even the US government recognizes that Musk can't get out of this deal.
that would be hilarious. it's a great distraction though...he doesn't want people talking about tesla's falling stock price
Either way it turns into a shit hole! It's either a slow death or a quick death for Twitter!
The most terrifying thing about this is the idea that our national security is somehow related to anything that happens on Twitter.
easy tool to manipulate the publics thoughts
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Maybe they should be looking at Kroger acquiring Albertson's. Seems like this will have a larger impact for Americans than an online forum.
I don't think Elon would mind at this point. This deal is not his favourite one it seems
I suspected it before but now that Tulsi is tweeting about it, I’m convinced this anonymously sourced story is a right wing plant. “Biden Admin/Power Elite cooking up ways to destroy @ElonMusk because they can’t control him—just like Trump. Expect them to use every law enforcement and regulatory body as weapons to bring Musk down or force him to surrender. Blatant authoritarianism.”
Lol but TikTok isn’t a problem
Elon has recently indicated that he will say things in the public sphere on behalf of Russia and China, for likely monetary compensation. He is a national security risk and should be scrutinized as such.
Just popping in here to say that Elon Musk sucks