Twitter Deal Temporarily on Hold

I strongly feel that the spammers thing is smoke and mirrors.<p>The deal at $54.20 was maybe OK for him a month ago (it was great for Twitter because nobody else was interested at that price). Since then, Twitter reported disappointing numbers for the past quarter, and the entire market took a nose dive, with tech hit especially hard.<p>TWTR stock price was in the mid-30s before Musk&#x27;s offer. Without the offer, and with the disappointing numbers, and with the recent market development, one could reasonably assume that the stock would be below 30 today.<p>Musk should just pay the break fee of $1bn, and renegotiate for $42.69 or whatever meme number he fancies. Why pay $42bn total for something when you can get it for $30bn.

&gt;&gt;Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam&#x2F;fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users<p>He is asking for proof that spam and fake accounts are less than 5% of total users. He obviously believes the number is much higher[1]. This does not seem to be a deal killer - he is just calling their bluff[2]. Maybe they are right. Maybe not. We will see. Interesting times!<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1517215066550116354" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1517215066550116354</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;twitter-estimates-spam-fake-accounts-represent-less-than-5-users-filing-2022-05-02&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;twitter-estimates-spam-fa...</a>

There&#x27;s a lot of talk about how Elon is weaseling out of this. That may be true but you should know something about acquisitions. Typically there is a termination or breakup fee that one side has to pay for walking away or if the deal falls through. AT&amp;T paid billions for the failed takeover of T-Mobile [1], for example.<p>The Musk Twitter deal has a $1 billion termination fee [2] on both sides. Now it&#x27;s unclear on what conditions would trigger this exactly. In Twitter&#x27;s case, it at least includes accepting another offer. On Musk&#x27;s end, it includes if financing falls through.<p>So here&#x27;s the $1 billion question: what happens if (as Musk might argue) Twitter made material misrepresentations about their business, specifically to do with how many users they actually have? This might be an out for Musk or it might not.<p>Personally I&#x27;ve long thought there are a huge number of fake Twitter accounts and Twitter is actively disincentivized from ever finding out if that&#x27;s true or not. Put another way: they like their big numbers for active accounts, DAU and MAU.<p>But if Twitter is found to be materially misrepresenting those numbers, they have way more serious problems than if the Musk deal falls through. They&#x27;ve then opened themselves up to litigation by the SEC and investors that they materially misled investors.<p>Things could actually get really ugly for Twitter here regardless of what happens with the Musk deal.<p>If you think about it, this could be a relatively cheap way of mortally wounding Twitter. Make a buyout offer, get access to the books, prove they&#x27;re lying about DAU&#x2F;MAU, walk away with no termination fee paid, watch the executive team get sued into oblivion and the company tanks.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;11&#x2F;24&#x2F;technology&#x2F;att_t-mobile_breakup_fee&#x2F;index.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;money.cnn.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;11&#x2F;24&#x2F;technology&#x2F;att_t-mobile_bre...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;26&#x2F;elon-musks-twitter-deal-includes-a-1-billion-termination-fee-on-both-sides" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;26&#x2F;elon-musks-twitter-deal-in...</a>

Well this certainly makes what Parag did make sense. The market conditions have essentially dictated that Musk is now massively overpaying for twitter, and he&#x27;s doing it from a weak position with the value of Tesla dropping. It would be insane for him to close at this price, and the other people who bought in to finance it will also be very hard to keep on board. So Musk needs to walk away at this price. The question is whether he can either find an out that doesn&#x27;t involve paying the break up fee, or bully Twitter&#x27;s board to accept a lower price. Given how Parag is behaving I think that&#x27;s unlikely.<p>It&#x27;s important to remember though, if Musk walks away and then comes back with another offer it&#x27;s going to be extremely hard to convince of a new deal, since Musk no longer has any credibility.<p>The other thing to consider is that no one else wanted to buy Twitter for $45Bn. But let&#x27;s say Musk walks away and Twitter drops back to where it should be at around $25 per share. Now you could easily see someone coming in and picking it up for $35-40 per share.

I doubt the Twitter acquisition by Musk will go through, regardless of stated reasons.<p>China is the second biggest market after the US for Tesla sales—meaning CCP wields the power to decimate Musk’s wealth, which Tesla stock is the main source of. Musk knows Tesla’s position in China is fragile (like that of any Western company), and the Chinese government knows he knows that; it seems unlikely they will pass on newly found leverage when it comes to influencing discourse on Western social media.<p>By owning Twitter, Musk risks having to choose between his image as free speech maximalist and a large part of Tesla’s sales. From the outside, he doesn’t strike me as someone willing to sacrifice either. (He could implement some mechanism that gives CCP direct or indirect influence over Twitter without the public finding out, but that seems a bit far-fetched.)<p>So far there seems to be no mainstream Western social platform that stands to lose anything by ignoring CCP’s censors. We don’t see YouTube videos, Facebook posts or tweets taken down due to requests from Chinese government. Revenue from China is not a factor for any of their mother companies. I think that’s a good status quo to maintain.

I can&#x27;t imagine any state, where this &quot;deal&quot; was anything other than a &quot;I&#x27;m a bigger man than you&quot; kind of thing. Probably fueled by some mind altering substances. All fine and dandy as long as its like a billionaire throwing a $100 bill at a bum, but when it turns out that it could sink his ship, or at least put him in serious financial trouble and threaten things he actually cares about, then he needs to find a way to get out of it.<p>I&#x27;ve been sorta a musk fan because he was willing to risk everything to pull off things that no one else was willing to take a risk on. OTOH, its patently obvious that he isn&#x27;t some kind of genius, more like a gambler who managed a winning streak and somehow thinks its because they have a lucky charm. Maybe his biggest strength is that he is such a fine bullshitter he can detect it in others a mile away.

It&#x27;s interesting that people are using this moment to fault Elon, when it&#x27;s one of his finest moments. Making an &#x27;offer&#x27; on what you believe to be good faith. Hidden in your pocket, you know the other party is acting in bad faith. (Twitter says 5% of the DAU is bots) Elon calls them out on that ridiculously low number, says the deal is on hold until this fraud is verified.<p>Obviously the bots on twitter account for more than 5%, and will be at the detriment of the biggest KPI that twitter touts. He&#x27;s given them a taste of what will happen if they walk away from the deal by &#x27;putting it on hold&#x27; and watching the stock lose 10% in precisely the same day as a general market recovery.<p>He now has the ability to renegotiate below his &#x27;best and final offer&#x27;.

Tweet from 3 days ago by Hindenburg Research:<p>&gt; NEW FROM US: We Are Short Twitter<p>&gt; Musk Holds All The Cards. We See a Significant Risk That The Twitter Deal Gets Repriced Lower<p>Space Karen&#x27;s reply:<p>&gt; Interesting. Don’t forget to look on the bright side of life sometimes!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;HindenburgRes&#x2F;status&#x2F;1523677782211186690" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;HindenburgRes&#x2F;status&#x2F;1523677782211186690</a>

After the market crash a day ago, there was a joke on Twitter about Musk cancelling the offer, burning a billion and buying Twitter later at a half price.<p>Conspiracies and jokes aside, how one determines(at contractually acceptable certainty) what accounts are absolutely fake or bot account? It&#x27;s not like they ticked the checkbox saying &quot;I am a fake account&quot;.<p>If the sellers and buyers are not on the same page here, wouldn&#x27;t that drag in court for years maybe?<p>After all, maybe Musk will actually burn a billion only to buy Twitter later at a half price or less and save $20B+. Twitter might end to be much more cheaper after a stock crash due to the bearish markets and that fake users scandal(?) that Musk exposed(?).

Hindenburg Research (which is notorious for unmasking frauds, stock promoters and market manipulators) called it on May 9th:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;HindenburgRes&#x2F;status&#x2F;1523677782211186690" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;HindenburgRes&#x2F;status&#x2F;1523677782211186690</a><p>Musk tried to use all his 90M followers weight and his snark belitteling them into closing the short :<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1523693971842957312" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1523693971842957312</a><p>Good on them for not listening to the noise and making bank.<p>In many years of watching sports, politics, business, culture I have seldom seen a more distasteful character than mr. Musk.<p>Back in my ignorant days I couldn&#x27;t stand shortsellers, I considered them to be haters.<p>Oh so little did I know. They are the custodian of market sanity and also the saviors of the American consumer, they keep in check these megalomaniacal cult figures such as Musk, Holmes, Bernie Madoff, Adam Neumann who enrich themselves by inflating financial bubbles of epic proportions while providing little to no quality of life to the consumer

I&#x27;m having trouble understanding his reasoning.<p>Musk refers to an article which claims that false or spam accounts represent fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter.<p>In his Tweet, he suddenly wants to know whether spam&#x2F;fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.<p>Aren&#x27;t these concepts (percentage of users and percentage of monetizable daily active users) something totally different?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;twitter-estimates-spam-fake-accounts-represent-less-than-5-users-filing-2022-05-02&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;twitter-estimates-spam-fa...</a><p><pre><code> &gt;Twitter Inc(TWTR.N)estimated in a filing on Monday that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter. &gt;The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter. read more</code></pre>

Don&#x27;t care about the reasons, but finally one of these platforms are getting called on their BS.<p>MAU has a large impact on valuation, all of these platforms are filled with spam bots, and they are allowed to flourish because it pumps up those numbers. The platforms content suffers (Instagram comments anyone?), but they reach higher valuations because of these nonsense MAU numbers. They are all guilty of fraud. It&#x27;s well within their ability to combat bots, but they have zero motivation to do so.<p>Eager to see what comes out of this.

Elon backing out because he realized he will lose a lot of money on this because his TSLA shares are also plunging as a _direct_ result of his actions.

Pure speculation: Musk still wants Twitter and doesn&#x27;t care about the money that lawsuits or a breakup might cost. What he cares about is <i>looking foolish</i> for buying Twitter at a premium to it&#x27;s stock price right before tech stock prices tumble even further.<p>In short, it&#x27;s not about money, not about new information (% spam accounts), not about cold feet, it&#x27;s about what he thinks would be seen as an embarrassingly bad business decision.

Here&#x27;s what prompted this. Yesterday Elon saw a bunch of obvious bots[1] and asked &quot;If Twitter can tell the difference between real and fake users, why does it allow these in our comments?&quot;<p>That&#x27;s a good question. Anyone have a good answer?<p>1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1524909413462573058" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1524909413462573058</a>

Taking an absolutely wild guess here, but the reasoning sounds like a Due Diligence finding by one of the financing partners to me. E.g. one of the banks that would loan some of the money hired a commercial DD team. The 5% fake accounts was a red flag raised by them and the bank is making their financing subject to an explanation on the 5% fake account topic. Maybe the bank is also only pushing this „finding“, since they want weasel out of the deal, but can only due this for legitimate DD findings. The business plan probably has 5% fake accounts as an assumption in it and if this is 15% the economics would change. &#x2F;End of wild guess

Looks like a repeat of the &quot;Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.&quot;

The inimitable Matt Levine in his Bloomberg <i>Money Stuff</i> column, two days ago:<p>&gt; As I have said before:<p>&quot;Uniquely among public-company CEOs, Elon Musk has in the past pretended he was going to take a public company private with pretend financing! I am not saying that he’s joking now; I am just saying he’s the only person who has ever made this particular joke in the past.&quot;<p>&gt; Perhaps he has decided that the joke would be even funnier if he signed a merger agreement, lined up billions of dollars of financing from banks and equity partners, committed to a $1 billion breakup fee and a specific-performance right in the merger agreement, got through antitrust review and a shareholder vote, showed up at the closing and said “nope, just kidding!” I mean, that would be very funny.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2022-05-11&#x2F;terra-flops" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2022-05-11&#x2F;terra-...</a>

Which direction of this is meant to be the “better”?<p>Is it too high and it’s not worth what they say?<p>Or is it too low and there’s not much room for improvement through better tools to remove them?

Hypothesis: The deal will go through once his stock price goes back up - if this were to occur it would be strong circumstantial evidence to suspect he is timing the market.

Many people predicted a couple of weeks ago he would wiggle out...

I&#x27;d like Bezos to buy it and then stay out of it (editorially) like he did WashPo

Can some explain what the spam&#x2F;fake accounts are? In my little corner of 4 or 5 accounts with 2500 followers total, and a dozen or so hashtags I check frequently, I really rarely see spam or bot accounts ... I mean they pop up but its not a major aspect of twitter for me in my daily experience. And I use twitter a LOT.<p>Are they counting my +1 accounts as fake? they&#x27;re not, they each represent a different side of myself that&#x27;s real, even if they don&#x27;t bear my name. one for a site I created, one for a particular community I participate in, etc...

most of the sane one&#x27;s here called his including me.<p>Tis is a way for Elon to back out by saving face since he did not notify Twitter upon the 9% threshold which would oopne himself to lawsuits from investors.

Elon&#x27;s comment is just as likely to have been made in jest as serious, which is not a take I&#x27;ve seen in these comments. If you follow his Twitter account then it seems in line with his sense of humor.<p>A lot of people get pretty riled up over his tweets it seems. If it brings you joy then follow it. If it messes with your mind, then maybe just unfollow it. He&#x27;s rich, mercurial, sarcastic, and a lot of other things, but ultimately you can just disconnect from it and go about your life.

The odds have always been good for the &#x27;Musk talks big, doesn&#x27;t follow through&#x27; outcome.

I hate to point to my old posts and say I told you so but ... actually now that I am doing it, I am not hating it that much. Anyways, Elon did not have the money to buy Twitter, he had to sell a bunch of Tesla stock to do so, he tried to sell some stock and then the price of Tesla stock collapsed and there you have it. Just as I said.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31109355#31111059" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=31109355#31111059</a>

<i>&gt; Twitter Incestimated [...]</i><p>That&#x27;s an unfortunate bot error from Reuters. For a moment I thought I was mistaken about what &quot;Inc.&quot; should expand to.

If twitter could detect what accounts were spam&#x2F;fake accounts.. wouldn&#x27;t they just.. ban them?<p>The number of spam&#x2F;fake accounts depends highly on the accuracy of your classifier. Twitter&#x27;s classifier could just be: &quot;This account is not fake&quot; and there&#x27;s nothing Elon could say. He can&#x27;t even sue because for all intents and purposes Twitter is not lying, the classifier is just wrong.

Anyone else laughing maniacally? I am. This is so great. Tesla is tanking. Twitter is, too (and so is the market in general but if the Twitter deal were a sure thing it’d be trading at near 54.20 but it’s not…). I think the market is finally figuring out that Musk is a smart guy with no filter and says anything he wants to because he was given a platform because Tesla’s stock has 10x’d.

It was as if millions of twitter trolls with a distorted idea of free speech suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

This could be why senior execs were let go yesterday. Heavily inflated numbers putting the deal at risk of a significantly lower price.

The two twitter exec firings yesterday must be related to this. Musk must have asked for proof which the product team could not produce.

&gt; <i>Uniquely among public-company CEOs, Elon Musk has in the past pretended he was going to take a public company private with pretend financing! I am not saying that he’s joking now; I am just saying he’s the only person who has ever made this particular joke in the past.</i><p>&gt; <i>Perhaps he has decided that the joke would be even funnier if he signed a merger agreement, lined up billions of dollars of financing from banks and equity partners, committed to a $1 billion breakup fee and a specific-performance right in the merger agreement, got through antitrust review and a shareholder vote, showed up at the closing and said “nope, just kidding!” I mean, that would be very funny.</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2022-05-11&#x2F;terra-flops" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2022-05-11&#x2F;terra-...</a>

“Puer aeternus is Latin for ‘eternal boy’, used in mythology to designate a child-god who is forever young”

Score another one for Hindenburg, who predicted something like this (and bet on it) less than a week before it happened: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hindenburgresearch.com&#x2F;twitter&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hindenburgresearch.com&#x2F;twitter&#x2F;</a>

The guy has mastered the art of stock price manipulation

Don&#x27;t believe it. Twitter made this filing May 2, and it took Musk 11 days to respond?

The whole world knows that there is more spam than 5% (depending on how you measure it).<p>This is just a way of getting out of the deal and&#x2F;or negotiating a better price; in particular now that general market valuations have changed.

Musk is already locked into the deal. If it is possible for him to back out he will have at least one billion dollars in breakup fees. [1]<p>This could be a setup to give him an reason to cause a breakup of the deal (he can&#x27;t just walk away!) but there are real money consequences.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2022-05-02&#x2F;twitter-s-board-gave-up" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2022-05-02&#x2F;twitte...</a>

What&#x27;s &quot;funny&quot; (sad&#x2F;tragic not haha) is that his cult will have bought into this on the &#x27;anything he touches turns to gold&#x27; tip.

Shorting Twitter, out of the public eye, on the other hand, is perfectly Musk-like approach (see previous Tesla stock manipulation). Simple and efficient

I don’t understand how an acquisition offer that takes months to finalize doesn’t account for changes in the stock price. Is that standard practice?

The craziest thing in this world is that there are more conspiracy theories about Bill Gates being a super villain than Elon Musk.<p>Talk about the opposite sketches!

Has anyone here done this calculation before?<p>How hard is it to reliably spot fake accounts across millions of users for SEC-level reporting fidelity?

is this what legally valid, openly public, stock manipulation looks like?

I guess Twitter can ban Musk now for not going through with the deal. If that happens, where will he get all the attention?

Twitter Inc estimated.<p>Oh the difference a missing space makes.

There&#x27;s no one in finance on HN and it shows. Elon can pay the $1Bn breakup fee and renegotiate the deal at a lower price, given the current market conditions. This is completely reasonable and rational, and Hindenburg called it days ago; but the top comment right now is arguing that Elon is &quot;unhinged&quot;.

Just an excuse. Either he actually has changed his mind, or other people, possibly government, made him change his mind. I can definitely believe that the U.S. government does not want to allow just anyone to wield something like Twitter to their liking.

Could it have to do with the recent stock&#x2F;crypto slump? Perhaps he doesn’t have the cash any more because his assets have rapidly diminished in value since he begun the take over.<p>It’s not clear to me why the calculation over bots and spam would threaten the deal.

How is this not hypocrisy? Isn&#x27;t all social networking spam? Elon would do well to embrace the strengths of the medium rather than run away from it. I expected his amazebrains to understand this but maybe he is getting too old for modern tech.

Are there plausible links between this announcement and the recent Twitter firings?

Is there a reason that when you are not logged in, the comments below a tweet are sorted by time rather than upvotes?<p>This makes it pretty hard (in case of a popular tweet like this one impossible) to find the more important replies.

I don&#x27;t get all the hate here.<p>If Twitter lied about spambot counts that violates the deal.

Are there numbers&#x2F;estimates for % of bots in other social media sites?

Toxic hubris. The man is high on his own supply and he&#x27;s acting like a spoiled child. I have no respect for this kind of stuff from a mature, capable person. Its trolling and it&#x27;s destructive.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1525049369552048129" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;elonmusk&#x2F;status&#x2F;1525049369552048129</a>

As Matt Levine points out in today&#x27;s Money Stuff: no, it&#x27;s not. There&#x27;s no such thing as &quot;temporarily on hold&quot;. Musk is <i>obligated</i> to buy Twitter. He can&#x27;t just pay a break-up fee; Twitter can compel him to complete the deal. Musk&#x27;s only &quot;out&quot; is that a Delaware court finds a &quot;Material Adverse Effect&quot; occurrence. They (1) never do, (2) there&#x27;s a rule of thumb for the magnitude of an effect to qualify as &quot;Material&quot; (something like 40% off revenue), and (3) the bot-user thing he&#x27;s talking about was specifically disclaimed by Twitter in their filings, and likely <i>can&#x27;t</i> be the basis of an MAE claim.<p>None of this is to say the deal will go through; Musk can just ignore the law, as is his wont.

Curious why this is immediately about Elon and his psyche? Is it not possible that Twitter may have&#x2F;be wildly understated&#x2F;ing how many fake accounts are present on its platform in an effort to stay above water and such information is coming to light during diligence? Wouldn&#x27;t that type of discovery put any “normal” deal on hold? It’s usually not great as a buyer when you discover the item you just bought or are looking to buy isn’t actually worth what you perceived or were lead to believe it is which is why these deals involve diligence in the first place.

LOL... I called this on here a while back while all the Elon worshipers told me how Elon was a great man that would fix Twitter and bring about world peace.

Only one top level comment visible on the first page ...

It is possible, that Musk didn&#x27;t expect the twitter deal to become as politicised, as it did. Maybe he just got afraid of getting into the center of politics in the US. For example the state is a major customer, and they could just stop buying launch services from SpaceX for example, as the president might not agree with the politics of Mr Musk.<p>I mean look at Bezos, he got into a fight with Trump, and the pentagon preferred Azure to AWS, all of a sudden. Yeah, and a year later that deal got cancelled too, by the next administration [1]. I mean Musk has a lot of business with Uncle Sam, he really can&#x27;t play his own game, in terms of politics.<p>I mean, i mean, they really have a lot of &#x27;leverage&#x27; with Musk, to begin with. I would guess that Musk would be looking for a way out of the twitter deal, in order to protect his business. Also the economy is going into a recession, therefore his deals with the various governments are going to be much more important. Look, there is even talk of Musk building an e-tank with a German firm, Rheinmetall [2]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zdnet.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;pentagon-terminates-controversial-10-billion-jedi-cloud-contract-with-microsoft&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.zdnet.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;pentagon-terminates-controvers...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LDe7OGpPodM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=LDe7OGpPodM</a>

Did Twitter stock price just drop 20%?

Alwaleed bin Talal and the folks from Qatar are gonna be upset

Twitter is about to become a marketing platform.

The guy is a clown. Don’t trust what he says.

I bet twitter stock price is gonna take a dive!

Pretty sure the SEC is going to love this one.

ITT: conspiracy theories and personal insults

Elon Musk is the Donald Trump of market manipulators. Is there a formal term for this type of leadership that both exhibit? Rapid ready-fire-aim comments and actions? Constantly keeping everyone involved laser focused on what could be coming next, scared to death.<p>Is this what the future of executive and political leadership looks like? The bull in the china shop?<p>Both personalities will be graduate level studies of sociology and phycology for years to come. And the crazy thing is that this stuff resonates so well with so many people (read: the cult of Trump and Elon)

He can back out let the market slaughter twitter and buy it for a massive discount right down the road.

Elon Musk overpaid for Twitter, he knows it and it looks like he&#x27;s trying to knock the price down or exit the deal entirely

The wording of the contract had lots of text describing the various ways in which either party could become liable for backing out of the deal.<p>If I was to ever make a deal involving Elon Musk the first thing I’d make sure is to have paragraphs making it clear that Elon doesn’t open his mouth about it until the deal is either completed or cancelled.

I used to like Elon circa 2018 up until he started acting up (pedo guy, et al), but the main thing that soured my opinion of him lies in being -- don&#x27;t know if this is the right word -- unhinged.<p>I just can never trust anything he says because he has a significant history of being indecisive and disorderly. This deal is a perfect demonstration of how I feel. What I can&#x27;t really tell is if he was always like that or grew into it at one point.<p>Also, the guy is always going to extreme lengths to seek attention, just like one certain US politician...Something turns me off from these types of people.

with the market taking a nose dive, elon musk probably doesn&#x27;t have the money he thought he had.

Elon found his out then when he realised this deal was insane.

Looks like someone got in over his head and is looking for an excuse to back out of the deal.

Who deserves this much attention? Elon or the countless people with mental illnesses living on the street?

This is more sane than if it went through. If he really wants a microblog he can build it for $1b or buy substack.<p>I guess we&#x27;ll find out more at 6&#x2F;9

Elon is a smart guy and while this may seem knee jerkish to some and attributable to mental characteristics by others I’m pretty certain it will work out for him. Why? Look at his past accomplishments. This guy is a visionary and isn’t afraid to take risks to get’r done. Disclaimer: Not even close to smart enough to judge this guy.

Surprised that people know so much about Musk and claim they don’t like him. I can see nerding out on your hero or whatever, but to be motivated to research his personal upbringing out of disdain for the man strikes me as a bit unhinged. As someone who is 60&#x2F;40 pro musk it’s bizarre the emotions he triggers in certain types of people. If we could somehow harness that energy…

Hackernews is the best. Hates crypto check. Hates Elon check. Hates longevity check.

Its never to late for due diligence<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerweekly.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;252512620&#x2F;British-court-rules-in-HPs-favour-in-Mike-Lynch-fraud-case" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.computerweekly.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;252512620&#x2F;British-court-...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cio.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;304397&#x2F;the-hp-autonomy-lawsuit-timeline-of-an-ma-disaster.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cio.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;304397&#x2F;the-hp-autonomy-lawsuit-t...</a><p>In best case scenario might end up like this with Twitter CEO (which one) facing securities fraud charges.

&quot;Spam&#x2F;fake accounts do represent less than 5% of users&quot; This claim raises lots of open questions. If they are able to determine the fake users, why they did not just delete these users? Don&#x27;t they have such an spam detection and prevention process?<p>Also I think it is a lot more than %5. Also, again, I think it is still OK only if the half percent of the users represent the real (not-spam) users. The spam users are increasing and becoming much harder to determine when the user base grows. Even if you&#x27;re running a simple blog and you notice lots of spams in your comments when you get some traffic. %5 is just not a realistic value.<p>Also lets not forget about &quot;the paid&quot; users. There is such a thing behind the scenes and they are not spam&#x2F;fake.

If Twitter is true to their word that bots are less than 5% of the user base, then they should not have a problem providing evidence for that. It&#x27;s an entirely valid question not just in Musk&#x27;s interest, it&#x27;s in the interest of every shareholder.<p>The only questionable thing here is that Musk either does not grasp (or care) how influential his tweets are. He&#x27;s tweeting as if he&#x27;s just a random person with an opinion, but in reality his tweets tank stocks, pump (or dump) crypto, and activates a lot of harassment towards anybody he criticizes. With this in mind, the question about bots should have been asked behind closed doors.<p>Usually, I don&#x27;t at all have the impression that there&#x27;s some evil master plan behind it, they are spontaneous clumsy tweets based on whatever is bothering him.<p>Which in this case are bots that make Twitter unusable for him, or anybody else with a large following. Twitter very much deserves scrutiny and heavy criticism as it comes to bots. Look at Musk&#x27;s tweets, within seconds there&#x27;s hundreds of bots replying all with the same avatar and a slight misspelling of a user they&#x27;re trying to mimic.<p>It&#x27;s a stunningly primitive pattern, and yet still Twitter is entirely incompetent or lax to address it. For years. These bot replies come in from their API and work based on accounts or simple keywords.<p>Don&#x27;t try this on somebody else&#x27;s tweet, but you can test this yourself. Type &quot;I need help with my metamask password&quot;. The moment you hit send, the notifications come rolling in.<p>Setting aside Musk&#x27;s intentions with Twitter, I am fully in favor of the wake-up call. The bot problem. A mysterious verification protocol. Weird boosts and declines in followers. Unclear censorship and shadow banning protocols. Twitter has some explaining to do.

This takeover attempt carries a similar world historical significance to the Girardian interpretation of the Crucifixion.<p>Jesus exposed the underlying collective violence, the scapegoat mechanism, that holds society together. Exposing the hidden mechanism weakens it, its psychological efficacy. And so of course the powers that be reacted, trying to silence Jesus and suppress his movement. But in doing so they only proved Jesus’s point, turning him into the ultimate example of the scapegoat and ensuring his message would echo through the ages.<p>In the Information age, Musk is exposing the informational violence, censorship and propaganda, that power relies upon. And so of course the powers that be conspire to thwart his takeover attempt of the world’s most important social network, pulling the levers of law and regulation and politics to stop this simple business transaction, while running defamatory stories about him in the press. But in doing so they only reveal the true extent of their lies and deceit, ensuring Musk’s message reverberates through the public consciousness. The moment of revelation is inescapable.