/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>50278237
lol when you put it like that, like in pic related, it does seem kinda funny how retarded society is whenever Elon states his intentions.
I don't cheerlead the guy typically, but we might want to examine why it is we always play the contrarian with him.
As for Twitter, I really don't see how they can support the massive fucking cost model they have with advertising revenue. Makes no sense.

>>50278237
He's a master P&D artist. You're mistaking his genius for insanity

>>50278237

elon is gonna win lol.

I still don't know who are the good guys and the bad guys in this Twitter vs Elon shitshow

>>50278339
Elon is the good guy, twitter full commie

>>50278319
this. when the Leftist media turns against him, that means we already won.

>>50278317
But he's still actually producing results thats the fucked up thing. Assuming teslas are completely shit, and the software is useless and all that... he has still used the bubble to push something beneficial to humanity as opposed to the useless shit that ends up fucking us more in the end.
He used the bubble to do something more constructive which might be why capital flocked to him, maybe a kind of upside down capitalism.
Idk man the guy was right to do what he's done, by and large

>>50278339
> twitter
> not being bad guys
come on, even if you dont like musk you have to admit twitter is liquid cancer.

>>50278339
Why assume there's a good guy? It's just a dude not buying a company and then acting weird, it's not a moral struggle.

>>50278317
how do I become a master P&D artist?

>>50278545
Tell anons to buy SIGA

>>50278237

Oh Elon
I think it is helpful to start with the big picture. Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, and, like many other rich people, he has some unusual and expensive hobbies. One of his hobbies is that he sometimes likes to pretend that he will acquire public companies. [1] He seems to find this fun, and why not? When he pretends that he’ll buy a public company, it creates a big drama with him at the center of it. He gets to boss people around, mobilize legions of bankers and lawyers and financing sources and random hangers-on [2] hoping to get the deal done, and then when he gets bored he can tell all those people to go home. “Haha got you,” he can say, and they can all have a good laugh, or he can anyway.

This is an expensive hobby! When Musk pretended in 2018 that he was going to take Tesla Inc. private, he had to pay the US Securities and Exchange Commission a $20 million fine and stop being the chairman of Tesla’s board. You’re not really supposed to go around pretending that you will buy a public company; the SEC sometimes considers that securities fraud. But Musk is very rich and he can easily afford to pay $20 million for his little joke. His appetite for pretending to buy public companies was, apparently, undiminished.

So this April, Musk announced that he wanted to buy Twitter Inc. Why not? Musk seems to get a lot of joy out of using Twitter, and pretending to buy Twitter is a good way to create drama on Twitter. At the time, I assumed that, as with Tesla, he was doing a bit. “Ordinarily,” I wrote, “if a billionaire chief executive officer of a public company offers to buy a company, the odds that he is kidding are quite low. When it’s Elon Musk, the historical odds are, like, 50/50.”

>>50278565
But he surprised me by quickly lining up financing (paying millions of dollars of fees to banks for commitment letters) and signing a merger agreement with Twitter. If he was pretending he was going to buy Twitter, those were pretty elaborate lengths to go to? But he frequently goes to elaborate (and expensive) lengths for a joke — he sold 20,000 branded flamethrowers to make a joke about flamethrowers, and also founded Boring Co. to make a joke (???) about tunnels — so who knows. Would he line up billions of dollars of financing and sign a binding merger agreement with a specific-performance clause and a $1 billion breakup fee as a joke? I mean! Nobody else would! But he might!

In any case, shortly after he signed the deal, the market went down. Twitter’s stock closed at $44.48 on April 12, the day before Musk announced his offer; he agreed to pay $54.20 per share (420 is a weed joke). Since then Twitter has surely lost value: The stock closed at $36.81 on Friday, and other social-media stocks are down significantly since April. (Snap Inc. is down about 57% since April 13; even Meta Platforms Inc. — Facebook — is down more than 20%.) Meanwhile Tesla Inc. stock, the main source of Musk’s wealth, is down almost 27% since he announced his offer for Twitter. Twitter is worth less than Musk agreed to pay for it, and Musk is less rich than he was when he agreed to buy it. These are not valid reasons for Musk to get out of the deal: The legally binding merger agreement that Musk signed with Twitter does not allow him to terminate the deal due to changes in the stock market or his own wealth. But they are reasons that Musk might want to get out of the deal, even if he wasn’t kidding when he first signed it.

>>50278565
Hello Matt, enjoy your time on /biz/

>>50278237
how much of twitter is bots 50 percent?

>>50278572
Still, one should remain open to the possibility that he was kidding when he first signed the deal. “Elon Musk had a well-thought-out business and financial plan for Twitter that worked in the economic conditions of early April 2022, but conditions have changed and the model no longer works” does not strike me as the most plausible description of what is going on here. “Elon Musk whimsically thought it might be fun to own Twitter, so he signed a merger agreement without taking it too seriously and then lost interest a week later” feels more true to the situation. My first reaction to his proposal to buy Twitter, that it was a joke, may have been the correct one. He was just a lot more committed to the bit than I expected.

Anyway:

>Elon Musk said he’s terminating his $44 billion agreement to acquire Twitter Inc. and take it private, triggering a legal fight with the company.

>Twitter has made “misleading representations” over the number of spam bots on the social network, and hasn’t “complied with its contractual obligations” to provide information about how to assess how prevalent the bots are, Musk’s representatives said Friday in a letter to Twitter as part of a regulatory filing.

>Twitter said it will fight back in court.

>>50278586
Here is the letter, signed by Mike Ringler of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, Musk’s lawyer. It … ehhhhhhh. Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Do we have to talk about this? Fine. Ringler offers three pretexts for why Musk should be allowed out of the deal.

The first pretext is: Twitter has been lying about bots. For at least eight years, Twitter has said in its SEC filings that it estimates that fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users are “false or spam accounts,” and in the merger agreement it represents that its SEC filings are accurate. Ringler says that “it appears that Twitter is dramatically understating the proportion of spam and false accounts represented in its mDAU count.” There is not a whisper of evidence for this claim, no hint that there might be evidence, no acknowledgement that a reasonable reader of this letter might want to see evidence. The only basis for the claim is that “preliminary analysis by Mr. Musk’s advisors of the information provided by Twitter to date causes Mr. Musk to strongly believe that the proportion of false and spam accounts included in the reported mDAU count is wildly higher than 5%.” Notice that Ringler does not say that the analysis shows that the bots are “wildly higher than 5%” of mDAUs: That would be a factual claim that, I suspect, Musk’s advisers know is false. They make only the subjective claim that Musk “strongly believes” it. I don’t even believe that he believes it! But that’s harder to disprove.

>>50278595
The bots thing, man, I don’t know. We have talked about this before. Back before the market crashed, back when he was pretending to want to buy Twitter, Musk was pretending that he wanted to buy Twitter in order to clean up the bot problem. Now he is pretending to want to get out of the deal because of the bot problem. It is tiresome to pretend to take this seriously, so let’s not.

Still, as a legal matter — and here I should emphasize that nothing in this column is legal or investing advice; if you are Twitter or Elon Musk you should consult your very expensive lawyers, and if you are reading this column to make bets on Twitter’s stock, cut it out — but as a legal matter: Is this pretext good enough to get him out of the deal? Well, look. If Musk can prove that in fact Twitter has been running a years-long fraud on its shareholders and advertisers — that it has knowingly been massively understating the number of bot accounts in order to trick companies into buying Twitter ads and shareholders into buying Twitter stock — then, sure, maybe that will get him out of the deal. Twitter does represent in the merger agreement that its SEC filings are correct, and the SEC filings do say that Twitter estimates that bots are under 5% of mDAUs, though they caveat that “this estimate is based on an internal review of a sample of accounts and we apply significant judgment in making this determination.” If Twitter were simply lying — if it knew that bots were really 75% of mDAUs — then I suppose the rep would be false. Again there is absolutely no evidence for this, Ringler’s letter makes it fairly clear that Musk is never going to offer evidence for it, Twitter has publicly and persuasively defended its methodology, and third-party analyses that are sympathetic to Musk nonetheless seem to support Twitter’s numbers. But if you just pretend that Musk can somehow prove that Twitter is lying then, sure, fine, the representation would be false.

>>50278604
Even so, though, Musk cannot get out of the deal just because one of Twitter’s representations is false. He still has to close the deal unless the representation is false and it would have a “material adverse effect” on Twitter. This is a famously under-defined term but it generally needs to be a pretty catastrophic effect. If the bots are 6% of mDAUs, whatever. If the bots are 75% of mDAUs and Twitter has been knowingly misleading its advertisers, and Musk can expose that scam and advertisers flee and Twitter faces legal trouble for its fraud, then, sure, material adverse effect. [3] There is no evidence for this at all despite Musk’s months of looking for it. Also it is obviously untrue! Companies advertise on Twitter because it sells products! People use Twitter because other, non-bot people also use Twitter, so it is a useful and enjoyable social network! Elon Musk — who has far more interactions with bots than most Twitter users — is addicted to Twitter because it is full of real people! It’s how he met the mother of some of his children! The pretense that Elon Musk has somehow exposed the secret truth that nobody uses Twitter except himself and some spam bots is just absurd! But we have to keep talking about it! It’s so stupid!

>>50278580
imagine if 50% or more are bots and the last election was also bullshit. just saying. it makes you think.

>>50278614
The second pretext is: Twitter is not giving Musk enough information about the bot problem. This is a better pretext, for technical legal reasons, which we have also discussed previously. In the closing conditions to the merger, representations are qualified by “material adverse effect”; just finding that a representation is false would not give Musk the right to terminate the deal unless it caused an MAE. But covenants are qualified by “all material respects”: In the merger agreement, Twitter promised to do certain things between signing and closing, and it has to do those things, whether or not there would be a material adverse effect from not doing them. So if Musk can prove that Twitter hasn’t complied with its obligations, he can get out of the deal.

>>50278628
The covenant at issue here:

>Upon reasonable notice, the Company [i.e. Twitter] shall (and shall cause each of its Subsidiaries to) afford to the representatives, officers, directors, employees, agents, attorneys, accountants and financial advisors (“Representatives”) of Parent [i.e. Musk] reasonable access (at Parent’s sole cost and expense), in a manner not disruptive in any material respect to the operations of the business of the Company and its Subsidiaries, during normal business hours and upon reasonable written notice throughout the period commencing on the date of this Agreement until the earlier of the Effective Time and the termination of this Agreement pursuant to Article VIII, to the properties, books and records of the Company and its Subsidiaries and, during such period, shall (and shall cause each of its Subsidiaries to) furnish promptly to such Representatives all information concerning the business, properties and personnel of the Company and its Subsidiaries as may reasonably be requested in writing, in each case, for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transactions contemplated by this Agreement; provided, however, that nothing herein shall require the Company or any of its Subsidiaries to disclose any information to Parent or Acquisition Sub if such disclosure would, in the reasonable judgment of the Company, (i) cause significant competitive harm to the Company or its Subsidiaries if the transactions contemplated by this Agreement are not consummated, (ii) violate applicable Law or the provisions of any agreement to which the Company or any of its Subsidiaries is a party, or (iii) jeopardize any attorney-client or other legal privilege. … Prior to any disclosure, the Company and Parent shall enter into a customary confidentiality agreement with respect to any information obtained pursuant to this Section 6.4 (or otherwise pursuant to this Agreement).

>>50278658
Ringler says that Musk has reasonably demanded a bunch of information about bots, and Twitter hasn’t given him enough:

>Mr. Musk and his financial advisors at Morgan Stanley have been requesting critical information from Twitter as far back as May 9, 2022—and repeatedly since then—on the relationship between Twitter’s disclosed mDAU figures and the prevalence of false or spam accounts on the platform. If there were ever any doubt as to the nature of these information requests, the May 25 Letter made clear that Mr. Musk’s goal was to understand how many of Twitter’s claimed mDAUs were, in fact, fake or spam accounts. That letter noted that “Items 1.03 to 1.13 of the diligence request list contain high-priority requests for enterprise data and other information intended to enable Mr. Musk and his advisors to make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform…” The letter then provided Twitter with a detailed list of requests to this effect.

>Since then, Mr. Musk has provided numerous additional follow-up requests, all aimed at filling the gaps in the incomplete information that Twitter provided in response to his broad requests for information relating to Twitter’s reported mDAU counts and reported estimates of false and spam accounts.

>>50278627
>>50278580
I'm not an expert in detecting bots or anything but it is creepy how some libshit twitter guy will post something and there will be 100s of replies that are all basically the same. The same words or combinations of words. But it's tough to distinguish a libtard from a bot online.

>>50278237
Slowdown schizo, his only intentions were to expose how much of Twitter is actually real…pretty genius idea if u ask me. Twitter was claiming only 5% bots, yet the report they gave him shows more than this. He backs out bcuz they’re giving conflicting reports with no absolute truth/transparency. My only gripe abt this, my $25 puts ended Friday out of the money bcuz I knew he wouldn’t follow thru with the sale 19 contracts down the drain.

There's no evidence that there are more bots than twitter's letting on? Really? Spend a day on twitter and I think it's fairly obvious to anyone above room temp IQ. Are we going to pretend that Twitter doesn't have an incentive to downplay bot numbers here? Clearly Elon doesn't seem very concerned about the legal action. Perhaps this is the reason?

>>50278673
When we last discussed this, I wrote:

>Musk can ask Twitter, like, “give me the cell phone numbers of every one of your monetizable daily active users so I can call them and see if they’re bots,” and Twitter will have to decide if that is reasonable, if it violates any laws, etc. If they say no, Musk can disagree, and it might end up in court, with Musk having the ability to walk away if he wins. If they say yes, Musk can just keep asking for more things. “Tell us what all of your users were thinking about last Thursday,” why not.

And in fact Ringler’s letter makes it pretty clear that that’s what Musk was up to: He’d ask for information about bots, and they’d give it to him, and he’d ask for more, and he’d keep trying to get information that he could use to undermine Twitter’s SEC reports. He buried Twitter in an avalanche of demands for data:

>On June 17, 2022 (the “June 17 Letter”) Mr. Musk reiterated his request for “access to the sample set used and calculations performed, as well as any related reports or analysis, to support Twitter’s representation that fewer than 5% of its mDAUs are false or spam account.” To that end, Mr. Musk requested that Twitter provide “daily measures of mDAU for the previous eight quarters, and through the present.” This information is derivative of the information Mr. Musk first sought in Sections 1.01-1.03 of the May 19 diligence request list. Although Twitter has provided certain summary data regarding the mDAU calculations, Twitter has not provided the complete daily measures as requested.

>>50278685
Musk has also asked for a random assortment of other information from Twitter including, hilariously, its investment bankers’ financial model for their fairness opinion:

>To that end, Mr. Musk requested on June 17 a variety of board materials, including a working, bottoms-up financial model for 2022, a budget for 2022, an updated draft plan or budget, and a working copy of Goldman Sachs’ valuation model underlying its fairness opinion. Twitter has provided only a pdf copy of Goldman Sachs’ final Board presentation.

What a weird ask. It is so in keeping with this deal. Musk, of course, did not do any financial modeling before whimsically offering to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share. But Goldman did some modeling before recommending to Twitter’s board that they accept the offer. [4] So now Musk wants Goldman’s Excel spreadsheets (which Twitter surely doesn’t have), and for some reason thinks that the merger agreement requires Twitter to give them to him.

Will this pretext work? Well, like I said, it’s better than the one about the bots. It still strikes me as pretty implausible. Just from reading Ringler’s own letter you can tell that Twitter has done a lot to give Musk the information he reasonably requires, and that Musk keeps coming up with increasingly baroque requests. It is hard to imagine a judge sympathizing with Musk here.

>>50278705
Also, though, the covenant does not actually say “you have to give Musk any information he asks for.” It says that Twitter has to give Musk information that he needs “for any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transactions contemplated by this Agreement.” Since he has made it clear for months that he wants all of this information to avoid consummating the merger, Twitter has a decent argument that they don’t have to give it to him. Nothing that Musk is doing has any purpose related to the consummation of the merger! It has the opposite purpose! As he keeps saying!

Similarly, Twitter doesn’t have to give Musk any information that would “cause significant competitive harm to the Company or its Subsidiaries if the transactions contemplated by this Agreement are not consummated,” and it seems pretty clear that Musk plans to use any information that he gets from Twitter to undermine its business by saying that it is running a massive fraud on its advertisers, because that is what he is doing already. So Twitter has a pretty reasonable case not to give him any more information.

Still this seems like uncharted territory. I am not aware of any merger agreement that has ever been terminated for a breach of an information covenant. It is generally pretty easy to comply with an information covenant — just give the buyer the information they want! — and buyers don’t generally use it as a way to harass sellers and create an excuse for walking away. But if Musk gets away with it then I guess this will become a more common tactic.

>>50278685
"Nooppo you can't just investigate our claims! You have to take them at face value!"

>>50278711
The third pretext is another covenant. In Section 6.1 of the merger agreement, Twitter promises to “use its commercially reasonable efforts to conduct the business of the Company and its Subsidiaries in the ordinary course of business” between signing and closing. Ringler’s letter argues that Twitter has not been running its business in the ordinary course:

>Twitter’s conduct in firing two key, high-ranking employees, its Revenue Product Lead and the General Manager of Consumer, as well as announcing on July 7 that it was laying off a third of its talent acquisition team, implicates the ordinary course provision. Twitter has also instituted a general hiring freeze which extends even to reconsideration of outstanding job offers. Moreover, three executives have resigned from Twitter since the Merger Agreement was signed: the Head of Data Science, the Vice President of Twitter Service, and a Vice President of Product Management for Health, Conversation, and Growth. The Company has not received Parent’s consent for changes in the conduct of its business, including for the specific changes listed above.

This is tossed in at the end, and I doubt that a court would really let Musk out of the deal because Twitter fired two employees. (It certainly wouldn’t let him out of the deal because other employees quit, which is not something that Twitter can control; also most of them probably quit because of Musk.) Firing employees and reducing hiring are pretty ordinary-course things to do, especially in response to an economic downturn. (Obviously Tesla has instituted a hiring freeze, because Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy.)

>>50278306
shouldn't twitter costs be almost nothing considering they just need to host short texts.

>>50278728
Still it is weird that they didn’t send Musk a little courtesy notification before firing those people? Buyers have gotten out of merger agreements for breaches of the ordinary-course covenant, and it always seems avoidable by just over-communicating. If Twitter’s CEO had shot Musk an email saying “hey I’m gonna fire some guys, you cool with that,” Musk would absolutely have said yes! He wants to fire everyone at Twitter! Why not just run it by him first?

What will happen? Ugh, I don’t know. Twitter “plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” tweeted the chairman of its board, and is “confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.” I don’t really disagree. The pretexts in this letter are pretty laughable, and I doubt a court would side with Musk on any of this. He has been too open about the fact that he’s messing around; it’s impossible to take any of this bot stuff seriously.

>>50278740
But the question really is the remedy. If a court finds for Twitter — that is, if a judge concludes that Musk’s pretexts are not good enough to get him out of the deal — then there are two possible outcomes, and they are very different:

1. Musk might have to pay a $1 billion reverse termination fee for unjustifiably walking away from the deal; or
2. The court might order “specific performance,” meaning that Musk would have to fund his entire $33.5 billion equity commitment and buy Twitter. [5]
Musk’s goal here is presumably to walk away from Twitter and pay only $1 billion in damages. That would make this whole lark of pretending to buy Twitter an expensive joke, but definitely one he can afford. Paying $33.5 billion and having to own and run Twitter would sort of spoil the fun.

(To be clear: Musk’s goal here might actually be to renegotiate the deal at a lower price. I actually kind of think it isn’t, and he really wants out of the deal — because he was kidding in the first place, or has gotten bored by now. But the conventional wisdom is that the goal of Musk’s letter is to get a lower price, and that does make sense and would be more typical. His bargaining leverage for that depends on whether a court would likely order only a $1 billion breakup fee — in which case he has a ton of leverage to get a much lower price — or specific performance — in which case he has very little leverage. When we talk, below, about what a court might do, we are also talking about what Musk’s and Twitter's lawyers will think a court will do, which will inform their negotiating posture.)

>>50278735
they need to pay their $200k++ programmers, who ironically don't believe in capitalism kek

>>50278755
In order for the court to order specific performance, two things have to happen. First, the court has to want to. It is a drastic remedy, forcing a person to spend $33.5 billion to buy a company he doesn’t want, and you could imagine a Delaware chancellor blinking and just making him pay the $1 billion breakup fee. Do you want an aggrieved Musk in charge of Twitter? Twitter is, to some extent, a public utility, “the town square,” as Musk has called it; what if he shuts it down out of spite?

The fact that Musk is working in such bad faith here — that he seems so unconcerned with law and the contract he signed — cuts both ways. On the one hand, it will certainly annoy a Delaware chancellor; Delaware likes to think of itself as a stable place for corporate deals, with predictable law and binding contracts, and Musk’s antics undermine that. On the other hand it might intimidate a Delaware chancellor: What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says no? They’re not gonna put him in Chancery jail. [6] The guy is pretty contemptuous of legal authority; he thinks he is above the law and he might be right. A showdown between Musk and a judge might undermine Delaware corporate law more than letting him weasel out of the deal would.

But the other thing that has to happen, for Twitter to get specific performance, is that “the Debt Financing ... has been funded or will be funded at the Closing.” Musk agreed to buy Twitter with $33.5 billion of his own money and $13 billion of debt financing from his banks, [7] and if the banks don’t put up their $13 billion then he doesn’t have to put up his $33.5 billion: In that case, he can pay the $1 billion to walk away.

>>50278237
nice. he just posted "chuckmate"

fuck twatter.

>>50278755
>>50278764
educational insights into contract law, thanks

>>50278764
Now, the banks have signed commitment letters obligating them to put up the money, and those commitment letters do not give the banks a ton of outs. (The outs are in Exhibit E here.) Still:

- The banks surely want to get out of this deal, because the market for buyout loans has soured since they signed their commitment letters, and they will probably lose a lot of money if they have to fund their commitments. (Also because Musk is their client, and he wants out.)

- If Musk purports to terminate the merger agreement, that gives the banks an excuse to avoid funding the financing, which at least makes it arguable that the financing is not available, which makes it arguable that Musk should not be ordered to close the deal and should instead pay only $1 billion.
So Ringler’s letter could be part of an effort by Musk to blow up his financing to avoid specific performance.

This is not a perfect out: In theory, Twitter could ask a court to order Musk (to specifically perform his covenant) not to blow up his financing. There is some history of Delaware courts doing that, and of not being fooled by merger buyers who try to blow up their own financing. The banks’ commitment letters do not give them an out for anything that Musk does or doesn’t do; if Twitter cooperates with the financing banks and a court finds that there’s no cause to terminate the merger agreement, then in theory the banks should have to fund, so specific performance should still be available. But it’s messy, and you can sort of see a path to “Musk says the deal is off, so his banks walk away, so his financing isn’t available, so he doesn’t have to close the deal and can get away with just paying $1 billion.”

>>50278784
I like Twitter’s odds — its odds of getting specific performance and making Musk close the deal — in court, but I don’t think anything is a certainty at this point. And obviously Musk will make this fight as unpleasant as possible; already the attorney general of Texas has opened an investigation of Twitter’s bot numbers in order to harass Twitter and capitalize on Musk’s popularity with Republican voters. I have suggested in the past that Twitter’s best weapon in this dispute would be banning Musk from Twitter, because he is such an addict, but in fact he recently stayed off Twitter voluntarily for nine days, which I assume he did just to prove to Twitter the company that he can survive without Twitter the product. It is all going to be pretty awful and stupid.

Is it fun for him? If he manages to walk away having spent only millions in financing fees, millions in legal fees and say $1 billion in termination fees, was it worth it? What did he get out of this? The guy really seems to like being on Twitter, and he did make himself the main character in Twitter's drama for months on end. That’s nice for him I guess. Also he made the lives of Twitter’s executives and employees pretty miserable; as a fellow Twitter addict I can kind of see the appeal of that? I always assume that “everyone who works at Twitter hates the product and its users,” and I suppose this is a case of the richest and weirdest user getting some revenge on the employees. He also gave himself an excuse to sell a bunch of Tesla stock near the highs. He maybe got an edit button too? Maybe that’s worth a billion dollars to him?

I tell you what though. I have learned my lesson. The next time Elon Musk announces that he is going to buy a public company — and he will do it again! — I will know not to believe him. I will definitely know not to write about it.

>>50278792
[1] This is an *unusual* rich-person hobby, but by no means an *unprecedented* one. Famously Donald Trump spent some time in the 1980s pretending he was going to buy public companies. But he did this as a way to make money — by extracting greenmail out of the companies — while Musk seems to do it mostly for fun.

[2] And, let’s face it, writers of financial newsletters.

[3] The letter says: “Twitter’s representation in the Merger Agreement regarding the accuracy of its SEC disclosures relating to false and spam accounts may have also caused, or is reasonably likely to result in, a Company Material Adverse Effect, which may form an additional basis for terminating the Merger Agreement. While Mr. Musk and his advisors continue to investigate the exact nature and extent of this event, Mr. Musk has reason to believe that the true number of false or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform is substantially higher than the amount of less than 5% represented by Twitter in its SEC filings. Twitter’s true mDAU count is a key component of the company’s business, given that approximately 90% of its revenue comes from advertisements. For this reason, to the extent that Twitter has underrepresented the number of false or spam accounts on its platform, that may constitute a Company Material Adverse Effect under Section 7.2(b)(i) of the Merger Agreement. Mr. Musk is also examining the company’s recent financial performance and revised outlook, and is considering whether the company’s declining business prospects and financial outlook constitute a Company Material Adverse Effect giving Mr. Musk a separate and distinct basis for terminating the Merger Agreement.”

>>50278798
[4] One factor here is that Goldman, in doing a fairness opinion, is generally in the position of telling Twitter’s board that the company is worth *less* than $54.20 per share: The fairness opinion says to the board “go ahead and accept this deal, you’re not worth more as a stand-alone company.” So if Musk is trying to find arguments that Twitter is bad, the fairness model might be a decent place to start snooping around.

[5] Some of that equity commitment — about $7 billion — has been syndicated to co-investors, so really we’re talking about $26 billion or so of his own money, though one could imagine the co-investors worming their way out, in which case Musk is on the hook for their money.

[6] I made this joke before, and a reader pointed out that a Delaware chancellor did once order someone arrested, though not over a merger.

[7] Originally some of the $33.5 billion came from margin loans from his banks against his Tesla stock, but those have gone away and been replaced by equity.

End of Newsletter (I'm not Matt btw).

>>50278735
you're forgetting the expensive data costs of holding countless videos and images. it's death by a thousand cuts if your earnings aren't generated from the media directly, the data stream never shrinks and the month upkeep continues to expand

You can read Matt Levine on Newsletterhunt.com for free, he is extraordinarily entertaining on Business, Markets, Crypto, NFTs and a wide range of stuff.
I highly recommend.

Trump was pretty pissed this weekend that his pass to get back on Twitter seems to be bailing on him. No word on when Truth eclipses Twitter tho.

>>50278339
Elon is the narcissist good guy who is exposing the bad guy Twitter in order to saite his own ego

>>50278580
Probably in the 70-80% bots

>>50278873
I don’t think that’ll ever happen. Even tho I don’t believe in republicans/democrats or anyone in office save for a few Gems of congressman/woman, I’d say democrats are getting super aggressive with the bs narratives they’re pushing. Born n raised in America, I believe it’s time for the dollar to collapse, we need the great reset (but not the one they’re pushing of course) and we need to self govern ourselves. This shit is seriously getting out of hand.

>>50278894
Pretty sure he's just being Lulzy. There's precedence for it. He just loves fucking with the SEC and getting attention.

>>50278237
What the fuck is this guy doing?

>>50278906
things could be fixed; it would take hard work, unity (which the elites disrupt intentionally) and worst of all Intelligence. Or everyone can just sit back and pray for it to "all blow up" which it will not. But that seems to be the default course.

>>50278921
Read the long article, it explains it all pretty well, in detail.

>>50278627
The 2016 election was full of bots too

>>50278926
Ya 100% with u on this, I’m not for the one to sit back n watch. When we would visit our cousins in Palestine every summer since I was a kid (pushing 40 now), during the intifada me n my sisters n brother n cousins would be throwing rocks and fighting back for our cousins homeland/property. If shit hits the fan, the difference out here is we have arms and are able to legally arm ourselves to protect what’s rightfully ours.

>>50278962
Breaking shit or waiting for shit to break will actually accomplish nothing; it will just fracture the country into a bunch of Banana Republics run by crooks so hilariously corrupt that they'll make the current losers look like saints.

Many, many countries know that feel.

>>50278926
I wish Americans were better informed on their rights, we have plenty of rights which are being trampled on. I get that Twitter is a private company in regards to who can speak freely and what they allow to be posted, but they should be made to follow strict constitutional rights if they want to participate in being a media based company or medium for “info”.

>>50278996
Twitter is just people hollering stupid shit back and forth at each other. It's like a shared phone line for the attention needy. That's all.

>>50278982
No no, I’m saying, since fighting was happening in the manner of war style, we weren’t shut up and we didn’t comply. But since Twitter wants to participate in being a media in this country they should be held to abide by the constitution instead of being biased. Fighting with information is way more based than to go around breaking shit.

>>50278996
Also, you can't make companies "public squares" Constitutionally or otherwise. It's against the Constitution.

>>50279005
Kek big time, I agree twatter sucks major ass.

>>50279007
Even news stations don't have to present balanced viewpoints. The First Amendment has nothing on allowing you free speech in some private area, you can't pray to Satan in church, Walmart can tell you to fuck off if you try to rally on their lot. First Amendment ONLY protects you from censorship by the Government.

>>50279025
Aren’t most news stations opened under “entertainment”?

>>50279033
Doesn't matter. They are owned by Private Companies. They don't have to put up the opposing viewpoint at all. And some never have.
"Fixing" the 1st Amendment to cover this would harm your rights a great deal more than help them.

In fact it would completely destroy the 1st Amendment.

Which is the real agenda of the people at the top who want to "restore Conservatives" to Twitter (setting aside there's a fuck-ton of Conservative wagging goin on on Twitter)
1. Twitter must be "balanced" and regulated
2. Who enforces regulation? Government
3. Government now regulates free speech
4. Win control over Government
5. Now we regulate and control speech
6. Checkmate, Freedom.

>>50279047
It does matter in the aspect of controlling the masses, when u present 1 side biased opinions all day rather than facts, I would say that would undermine what the amendment was aiming for. Look where we are today. The biased “news” shows u what they want u to see and control how they want u to feel. Anyways I won’t argue with anyone online, u have ur views I have mine. I believe if a company which reports news in America, shouldn’t be biased to one or any side.

>>50279077
This is the way it’s going to go, u will eat ze bugs. I would rather die.

>>50279082
Yes, but both sides are pretty capable of getting their message out. Side A has their outlets, Side B has theirs too. Twatter allows a fuck-ton of Far Left and Far Right shit onto Twatter. It DOES have some rules so that it doesn't become "Text /b/".

>>50278237
>Elon just went bananas.
so highlighting 3 key events with a boomer meme to summarize how a certain sector of "big tech" is trying to swindle you = going bananas?

>>50279108
Jesus Christ the amount of stupidity on there tho huh? The swaying of the masses and these ppl don’t see it. I hope to see more ppl wake up before it’s way too late.

>>50279121
As said in the article above, Elon WANTED to buy Twitter to "fix the bot problem". Now he's trying to squeak out of his "deal" because Twitter has "a big bot problem".
Also are you a legit schizo or larping as one with soijacks?
>>50279129
Social Media was a mistake, it has an incredible brain-draining effect on people; see >>50279121
This guy was probably of average IQ as a child, now he's Mr. Soijack.

>>50278339

Elon Musk is Spiderman. Twitter is Dr. Evil. 4chan is Austin Powers. I'm Dr. Seuss. You're Tom Hanks.

Understand?

Now he's probably trying to find the pithiest way to infer that I am a fellow who imagines himself a gurl.
Such is 4Chan.

>>50279165
He literally just jedi mind tricked them into taking him to court to force him to buy it. But there's something called Discovery and they must reveal their bot data if they actually take him to court

>>50279193
They have revealed the bot data and a third party verified their claims were consistent… try reading some time before spewing out of your stinky breath mouth you dunce

>>50279193
The burden is on Elon to prove that the Bots are causing "serious business damage" to Twitter, if you read above. That's the threshold for him escaping that way. Not providing info on every. single. person. who uses Twitter.

Elon didn't do due diligence on this deal before entering into it; absolutely none at all, an he has incredible resources to do so. Because it was all for lulz (again).

>>50279208
The number of people who do this "This is the narrative I want to believe" and then twist all logic, evidence and reality itself to support said narrative; it's amazing.

>>50279165
U got that right, social media was the biggest mistake ever created but these faggots knew what they were doing. They hired young zuck, young dorsey, hell I’m even gunna say it even if ppl think I’m a schizo for saying it I even believe Elon was a plant for these corrupt zios. Almost all of their projects include govt influence and backing. Tesla collects soooo frikkin much info, I wouldn’t put it past them being a govt company. Big tech closed door meetings with the president, pretty obvious these ppl are all planted. I’ll stop here before I get to full retard.

>>50279208
>>50279210
>>50279232
stfu Twitter shills

i didnt not read a single post in this thread. op is a faggot and fuck kikes, niggas, chinks and spics

>>50279232
It’s infuriating… all the information is available but they are too lazy to actually read and instead just parrot shit people made up. It’s an endless sea of them too so correcting the record at this point is not possible… you know even if anything happens in court they will just find some other cope too

>>50279244
Nah, Social Media was almost an accident. At the time corporate didn't even have dreams of a business involving everyone's information and history. It just sorta snowballed, fed by everyone's Narcissism, and then they elected the Narcissist President as the cherry on top.

It's a giant pile of unintended consequences; no one was sufficiently adult or evolved enough to be safe with the technology. Kinda like the Internet itself; it didn't start out as the Pornatorium/Scam-Central. Like Twatter it once held (semi) noble aspirations.

>>50279254
You will never be a pigeon! You will never have feathers! Cope and sneed!

>>50279267
If Kennedy had invented social media instead of funding the Space Program, he could have simply memed that we landed on the moon, gotten over half the country to believe it, and then we would be the first country on the moon (in minecraft?).

>>50278580
Elon "speculated" that it is over 90% bot and Twitter cried that he was violating the NDA they agreed to, which confirmed it.

>>50279258
Kek always gotta be the one guy on the thread. I was enjoying this, now I’m enjoying it even more.

>>50279283
Why would you offer 35 billon for a company that's 90 or even 50% bots?
Elon clearly doesn't really believe this; he showboats on Twitter INCESSANTLY.
As Matt mentioned, he met his WIFE there.

>>50279285
your english is abysmal

>>50279269
No sir, ever read a book by William cooper behold a pale horse? Written in early 90’s mapped out the whole 2000’s era up to where we are now I believe. He was also talking about how they will use facial recognition cameras, handhelds and all that through different methods involving different corporations posing as companies.

>>50279309
Says the person who said, I didn’t read a single thread? Ur outlook on life is what’s holding u down my friend, it’s this type of thinking that has made u into the pussy of today.

>>50279310
People willingly buy the Surveillance State through it being marketed as conveniences.
They WANT their kids tracked on their phone, they want the GPS, most of my neighborhood PAID for Ring Doorbells, you are on camera from one end of the town to another.
People paid good money for this privilege, it's not some dark conspiracy.

>>50278339
Its bad vs bad anon…
You don’t get to be the world’s richest man by being good and you also don’t get to sit on C-suite as a decision maker on a multi billion dollar social media company by being good.
It’s evil vs evil. Most likely a means to distract the goylems.

>>50279343
Um how is that not part of the plan? Bro the actual plot was to be able to track and collect data on everyone, but they couldn’t foot the bill. Instead they make us pay for it. We pay for them track us. It’s not about a conspiracy, it was detailed on how they will achieve certain objectives. Social media was one of them.

>>50279310
Oh and when you want to Opt Out of all this surveillance, it just convinces the neighbors that YOU are the suspicious fellow they keep the Rings up for; you are probably stealing Amazon or something. People have always wanted to be secure.

The day they invent ruthless but fair robot cops; the applause will be deafening. Robot cop dogs too; it will be a huge business. People are tired of the low-pay thugs that incompetenly arrestecute people and kill bystanders in ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS high speed chases.

>>50279368
Isn’t that already here with M.U.L.E.? I believe it’s already a finished project.

>>50279304
He probably guesstimated it at 50, saw the actual numbers, and realized that it is unfixable because using bots to manufacture consent is what Twitter's USP is. Since he's famous as all hell he probably didn't notice beforehand that social media organic engagement is in the toilet, except for tiktok, which has crushed everything in its path.

>>50279341
your interpretation of english is deplorable

Guy with a chipped phone stealing a chipped car after robbing a store he's been filmed in;
Hey let's chase him like Starsky and Hutch at 120mph through busy public areas, that sounds like a brilliantly thought through plan!

>>50279384
Like Levine wrote; he made an offer with no research, the Twitter guys hired bank to measure THEIR worth, the banks said "fuck yeah take this crazy deal". Now Tech shares are down the shitter; Twitter is worth less, Tesla is worth less, Elon is less rich.
But unfortunately for him none of these things are a way to get out of contract to buy.

>>50278683
Just because rightoid insects are so dumb they might as well not be human doesn’t mean they are bots though

>>50279390
You are a boring person. At least be a funny entertaining monkey-troll and post some stupid memes.

>>50279390
Sorry grammar nazi, maybe ur just a lonely kid or maybe ur just a meth head with a touch screen. Either way, our conversation is done. U provide no real info, nor do I find u amusing. I’d like to wish u well, but part of me wants to see u get hurt…anyways, I’ll leave u with this my retarded friend, ur mother should’ve either aborted u swallowed u or took anal that night u were conceived. Ur wasting valuable earthly space.

>>50278735
You massively underestimate the costs of hosting a petabyte of low latency globally available and permanently durable data which serves tens of thousands of requests per second. And on top of that, Twitter hosts political user content, so they need to pay tens or hundreds of full time moderators, programmers and sysadmins to keep bad actors at bay. It's a total money pit. And the fucked thing is, humanity would be better off without it. Why do we toss massive resources at shit which hurts us? Such a confusion species, humans.

A good analogy is: you agree to buy my car for 25k, and sign a binding contract to do so. You never look at mileage but say shit like "I bet it has quite a lot of mileage".
Then your boss cuts your salary, and you look at odometer and are "fuck that's a lot of mileage". Now you're feeling the car isn't worth 25k, and you are less wealthy, but I give zero fucks. And if you go to lawyer over mileage, he will remind you the time you posted about "I bet it has a lot of miles on it."
Basically you are a dumb-fuck for not looking at the odometer before signing. Thus is Elon.

>>50278628
I would guess that what is actually happening is twitter not disclosing special deals they have with intelligence services and orgs like ADL to overlook certain bot activities.

>>50279481
No, it's totally this: >>50279471

>>50279471
And on top of it all; Musk is intimately familiar with Twitter and how it works; it would be like he's driven the fucking car for a couple years and STILL didn't bother to examine the engine or odometer before signing.

>>50279499
Or ridden in it; whatever.
Matt Levine is probably right; he went through all this shit to get an edit button, attention and some lulz, and to stress out the owners of Twitter who he hates.
Now he is on the hook for at LEAST a billion, maybe 35 billions. The scamp.

>>50279423
>>50279424
cognitive dissonance must be directly linked to being european

>>50279524

>>50278755
Why do you feel the need to repost a kike coulumn in full?

>>50279552
Because it's informative? It forments an actual discussion instead of doom-posting, shit-posting and memery? He presents a pretty insightful look into the "world of kikery", you are on /biz/ apparently that's of intense interest to you?
Why wouldn't I?

>>50278339
Babylon wages war on Babylon, Babylon vanquish Babylon, Babylon rebuild Babylon.

>>50278921
having a laugh

>>50279574
Elon thought he was getting a 30% discount on Twitter (if he was serious at all), and now he's maybe on the hook to buy a company that's maybe worth half what he's paying for it.
You'd think he'd be more familiar with retardedly overpriced tech companies, being that he owns one. Someone should meme him into buying 4Chan next.

>>50278565
>>50278572
Love this jew. Simple as

If Elon ends up bag-holding Twitter for far more than that shitshow is worth, I pray he comes here to post a Pink Soijack in person, it would be /biz/'s greatest moment.

>>50279616
that would be epic!

>>50279802
I hope he's obligated to buy it; it drops another 25%, and confidence shakes and Tesla also drops to some reasonable figure.
These meme companies being more valuable than every aircraft and car manufacturer ADDED TOGETHER was always bullshit and I am ready for the collapse of it.

>>50279471
Yeah but the odometer has a lot more mileage than you were told and you also find out it's been heavily tampered with, so it's easy to get out of the contract.

>>50279415
Rent free

>>50278339
Both are giant faggots

>>50279210
Elon isn’t sueing Twitter, Twitter is suing Elon. Now Twitter will have to prove they didn’t violate agreement or any shit to force him to buy or pay the walkaway fee.

>>50278339
>good guys and bad guys
jesus christ summerfags OUT

>>50279817
Thanks for sharing the article Anon, I think you’ve got the right idea about how this is playing out.
Elon doesn’t really want to be in charge of Twitter, the left would just tank and replace their favorite mouthpiece anyway.

this is live on youtube right now on the official tesla account
>Elon Musk : Why $40K Bitcoin Next Week?! BITCOIN Urgent News! BTC/ETH Price Prediction
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdUZUD9UgvE

>>50278959
it's quite amazing trump won in spite of it, when you think about it

>>50278807
>>End of Newsletter (I'm not Matt btw).
Nice try Matt

KILL YOURSELF

>>50281186
>scammers use 40k as incredible out-of-reach price targets now
It's over, isn't it? We're not going back.

>>50278339
>elon uses a fake twitter deal to cash out tesla stock at its peak
>pays a relatively minimal fee compared to how bad the stock would have crashed if he didnt do the deal
>forced the most deranged and degenerate twitter employees to quit just by attempting to buy twitter

based ngl

>>50278317
He's also a master ligma artist

He signed the contract

>>50281186
holy shit i thought that was actually a bog for a second there

>>50278565
>>50278572
>>50278586
>>50278595
>>50278604
>>50278614
>>50278628
>>50278658
>>50278673
>>50278675
>>50278685
>>50278705
>>50278711
>>50278728
>>50278740
>>50278755
>>50278764
>>50278784
>>50278792
>>50278798
>>50278807
Imagine caring enough about things that have nothing to do with you so much that you post all this, it's so cringey everyone is laughing at you. Elon is based by taking on twitter and fucking with them, and he has more money than you and your friends and family (if you have any) will ever have even if you worked for a billion years, cope and seethe

>>50281332
>if you worked for a billion years,
Jokes on you pal, I make 30,000 a year so I would only need to work for 6.6 million years to equal musk.

>>50278237
By the time he leaves court, his anus will be the same diameter as a soda can.

>>50281332
>if you worked for a billion years
>worked
congrats for revealing yourself to be a poorfag
nobody in my family works

>>50279413
Twitter misrepresented their bot numbers. It all comes back to that. There is no set amount of DD someone needs to do and it doesn't erase the fact that Twitter is 95 percent bots and says it's 5 percent bots. Elon is getting off with a wrist slap.

What even sub 3 digit iqs should take away from this fiasco for Elon is that it proves just being rich doesn’t mean you are smart. It’s clear he just tripped into this with no real plan and now is just making shit up as he goes in a desperate attempt to get out of the deal.

>>50278306
>I don't cheerlead the guy typically
doubt.jpg

>>50278306
>>50278353
>>50278432
>>50278513
>>50278565
>>50278572
>>50278586
>>50278595
>>50278604
>>50278614
>>50278628
>>50278658
>>50278673
>>50278685
>>50278705
>>50278711
>>50278728
>>50278740
>>50278755
>>50278764
>>50278784
>>50278792
>>50278798
>>50278807
>>50278826
>>50278906
>>50278926
>>50278934
>>50278962
>>50278996
>>50279005
>>50279007
>>50279011
hi Rebbit!

>>50281301
What's ligma?

>>50281186
>official tesla account
no it's not

>>50282462
if he doesn't get out of the deal he has to pay 1 bil
to prepare for the twitter buy he sold about 10 bil of tesla stocks at a good exit point
if he didn't have to excuse of the twitter deal people would be up in arms for him selling, now he gets away with it
and it remains to be seen if he cant get out of the deal, lying pretty badly about their bots is good enough grounds to sue and these types of cases can take years, there is a fair chance elon can keep twitter in court long enough for twitter to go bankrupt
just imagine all the dirty dealing that will pop up in discovery and tank the stock price + invite a tidal wave of lawsuits from stock holders
yeah id say twitter is fucked either way

>>50278237
Elon is loser beta.

>>50278345
>Good guy
>Constantly administrring massive scams

If it goes to court they'll probably settle for Elon purchasing for a lower price than initial offer

>>50278353
You are drooling retarded.
Oil is cleaner than anything Elon is doing blatantly.

>>50278711
>Since he has made it clear for months that he wants all of this information to avoid consummating the merger, Twitter has a decent argument that they don’t have to give it to him.
Wong

>>50282974
Hate the game not the player, same shit as when people complain about China doing whatever when they were imposed a playing field and a game created by the US

>>50278565
>Elon Musk is the richest person in the world

stopped reading

>>50278545
1. get rich and famous
2. buy something
3. tell everyone else to buy it
4. sell something
w'allah you have now performed the basic pump and dump

>>50283039
Good guys don't that though.
Your example of how elon is like the chinks basically proves my point.

>>50282974
He's not scamming me though. Also Tesla is making cars and SpaceX has reusable rockets.

>>50278237
You're retarded

This man is a GENIUS

He forced them to do what he wants in the end

ABSOLUTE CHAD

DOMINANT

FIVEHEAD

>>50283222
And there is a Tesla in space.
Funny they send ACTUAL redditors to shill here.
Not sending their best.

>>50278237
Because Elon is a piece of shit scam-artist.

>>50283177
There is no good that can emerge from a corrupt system, Elongation is surfing and you're nobody

>>50278237
He's laughing in the meme but irl he's pissed because he's realizing twitter is going to spend fuck you amounts of money to drag him through the court system for YEARS just for revenge; much in the same way he would if the tables were reversed.

>>50283281
Are the reddit shills in your room right now?

>>50283348
Sorry I'm good and have 110 acres I'm returning to nature and have stoppes the gmo planting on it.
I have a large business and my wife is a highly respected regional neurologist that teaches the keto diet for epilepsy instead of meds.

FUCKING COPE
I'm on vacation at a beach now.

>>50278237
You fucking retards don't get it at all do you?

>See opportunity to make twitter a default public square and make money while doing it
>Critical piece of information missing re bots
>If bots are low, can buy twitter and profit immediately
>If bots are high, every outcome is a win
>Offer to buy twitter, "find out" bots are high and negotiate a firesale deal so twitter can prevent public disclosure of problem
>If twitter sues, spend maybe 30mm starting out a trial that requires discovery
>Board will absolutely not allow it
>Negotiate even better firesale price behind the scenes
>Board members and investors then have Csuite liable to them for losses

In the big leagues "getting in there and mixing it up" is how the big money is made
Watch and learn idiots

>>50283373
Only redditors think spacex videos are real, but no. They are in their own rooms on their own computers.

>>50283360
Why doesn't everyone back off?
The CEO could hold a press conference and say they're a strong independent company who doesn't need nobody and it will moon from here

>>50283411
>>>/x/
This board is for business and finance sir, not psychotic delusions.

>>50283417
Because they arent retard, they only have a shot of solvency by selling bot impressions to stupid lefty coroprations
Their actual human impression rate (excluding phone farms in Bangladesh) is likely under 50%
They're now liable for that delta to every corp theyve sold ads to

>>50283385
If you have a large business then you're also objectively evil, same as Elon, and making self help YouTube videos about keto doesn't make you a neurologist

>>50283417
>Why doesn't everyone back off?
Because people like me are egging them on to not do so for teh lulz. Elon has been blatantly pumping and dumping stocks for years its at the point where he's asking to be trolled so why not oblige him?

>>50283476
>muh bots
You dickriders really still think Elon put up billions to purchase without doing ANY RESEARCH?

>>50283436
If Elon is so good, and wants to save the planet, where is he saving it from pesticide and gmo as I am?

Why is EVERYTHING he does self serving?

>>50283477
The seething when confronted with people actually improving the world.

It's large by regular person standards.
Not globocorp destroy the planet large.

>>50283515
I don't care about him saving or not saving the planet. The point is Tesla is making actual cars and SpaceX rockets are real therefore those ventures were not scams.

Elon Musk got away with falsely calling a guy a pedo just because he made the random claim on Twitter and didn't refer to him directly by name. I'm sure his lawyers know all the loopholes required.

>>50283549
He gets your tax money to do it and would be out of business otherwise.

Suck harder.
Meanwhile I'm going to acquire another 40 acres soon and plant enough pines to shield off the walmart DC center from town.

>>50283598
Im sure they do too but that doesnt mean it wont be a pain in the ass to have that concluded in court.

>>50279424
>ur
>ur
>u
>u
>u
>u
>u
>ur
>u
>u
>u
>ur

>>50283643
I'm not American so he's not getting my tax money. Also lots of businesses get subsidies like oil and green energy companies that never turn a profit. Meanwhile TSLA is turning a profit and SpaceX is making better shit than NASA.

>Meanwhile I'm going to acquire another 40 acres soon
Good for you bud. Not sure what that has to do with anything though

>>50283705
You have to be drowning in cum at this point.

>>50283705
It's what actual good people do.
Stop shilling elon and his blatant scams.
Most average people do more good than him with a millionth of the resources.

>>50283773
>>50283808
I don't see any counterarguments.

>>50283507
He did
The only group that can give the hard data that you need to see who is karen in minnesota and who is ranjeesh's 44th phone in jaipur is twitter

Smart people don't think research - >decision
They think
Action -> all possible actions and counteractions
Summed across the frequency of their probabilities x the ev of each

>>50283823
He's mad and FEELIGNS ARE ARGUMENTS RACIST

>>50278339
There aren't good guys

>>50278306
twitter is propped up by US gov

>>50283879
>The only group that can give the hard data that you need to see who is karen in minnesota and who is ranjeesh's 44th phone in jaipur is twitter
Why? They have some super secret database that has no links what so ever to other databases or any other data repository? Please.

>Smart people don't think research - >decision
They think
Action -> all possible actions and counteractions

Which requires research...

>>50283823
To what?
He administers scams using tax dollars.
FACT.

>>50284042
>To what?
You being unable to read is not my problem.

>>50278353
Elon is emulating the way our whole civilization works now which is to look good in the present while kicking the big can down the road rather than actually solving shit which sometimes involve looking less good in the present.

>just 5% are bots goy

>>50278237
the destruction of twatters market cap is the actual win
(((they))) are furious

>>50279462
Based ayy.

>>50278565
>richest person
what the media would say. The actual richest people are members of the families who run things

>>50284038
Show me where verifiable demographic data on twitter users is available outside of twitter you fucking retard

>>50278353
>beneficial to humanity
wut? lmfao

>>50284733
T-the Illuminati!!!??

>>50278237
>be Elon
>buy Twitter stonk (he already said this)
>says he wants to buy entire company
>stock pumps
>he dumps on you
>doesn't want to buy Twitter anymore
People are so fucking naive

>>50278237
How long till they ban him?

>>50278237
typical case of buyer's remorse. he did it for the meme and attention but deep down didnt really want all the hassle of owning it

>>50287560
>Gee, I wonder why there's no Laws against this
>quite a LOT of fucking Laws against this..

>>50278237
had a buddy that worked as an engineer in R&D for tesla, told me most of these tweets happen during meetings. recently was asked in the meeting to verbally acknowledge that his tweets were a liability and elon just got up and announce he had to take a shit and they all watched their phones as he shitposted from the bathroom

>>50287760
Yoooooooo

>>50287730
Elon waggles his nose at corporate laws, they fine him and then he tries to blackball the lawyers who went after him from getting jobs in the private sector (this actually happened once).
He laughs at laws and their modest penalties.

>>50278237
This will end with Musk in prison.

>>50288521
Pish! The penalties for these sorts of shenanigans are just fines. Not even exciting fines (for Elon). He played this game already with his own Company.

>>50278339
I doubt Elon's some kind of hero, but watching Twitter getting fucked with is pretty satisfying.

Seeing how much Elon triggers you NOC faggots, I love him now. He’s based

>>50288737
Twitter was already totally fucked.
If anything he breathed life into it.

>>50288754
Everyone, this is exactly how the female mind works. Take note.
This man HAS actually become a woman, and you can too!!

>>50288703
The law is the law.

>>50288824
Rent free

Go retweet someone NPC zoomer mutt
Your life is about following the latest trending topic and pretending it affects you directly. Just like a typical NPC tranny on Twitter. That’s your life and you can’t escape it.

>>50288888
I'm sorry, I don't converse with irrational women on social media, even with such impressive digits.

Retard agreed to SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE to pay $44 billion. A specific performance means you are forced to perform the specific thing that you said you were going to do in the contract.
Means Twitter can force him to pay $44 billion for a company with a market cap of $28 billion.
Maybe they negotiate a higher termination fee closer to market damages, which right now is like $16 billion

Either Twitter is doing something potentially illegal with their bots or its a far greater percentage than they've disclosed.

>>50287730
>make 3 billion
>get fined 1 billion
gee

>>50289506
Yes, and it was on Musk to look into that BEFORE locking himself into a contract. He himself questioned the % of bots on Twitter long before he tried to buy it, he can't wiggle out of a contract "because bots".
If you sign up to buy a house, you are obligated to see if the basement leaks FIRST, you cannot wiggle out because you signed a contract to buy it and what's this leak now?

>>50289609
Are you privy to the contract as you seem to know what it said...?

>>50289689
It's public, part of the article I posted quotes it.
This sort of thing is pretty boiler-plate in the corporate world now, it's the same high-dollar bank lawyers cut and pasting the same shit.

>>50278306
The ennemies of my ennemies are my friends. Elon didn't do any harm to me, even if he makes stupid scam like the Boring Company or Neuralink, and he makes the people I hate seethe. He makes funny tweets exposing (((people))), impregnates as many women as possible and even stated that he wouldn't take the vaxx. I see nothing wrong with all that. I'd rather let him become the richest man on earth rather than Gates or some other Jew.

Twitter is Chaotic Evil. Elon is either Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral.

>>50289506
Twitter only had to provide an ESTIMATE on the number of bots. Estimates can be wrong and it's not a breach of contract.

>>50290393
And in any case, as was explained in the Levine article, Elon has to legally prove that a larger number of bots than widely known does Damage to Twitter's business.

>>50278614
>Even so, though, Musk cannot get out of the deal just because one of Twitter’s representations is false. He still has to close the deal unless the representation is false and it would have a “material adverse effect” on Twitter. This is a famously under-defined term but it generally needs to be a pretty catastrophic effect. If the bots are 6% of mDAUs, whatever. If the bots are 75% of mDAUs and Twitter has been knowingly misleading its advertisers, and Musk can expose that scam and advertisers flee and Twitter faces legal trouble for its fraud, then, sure, material adverse effect. [3] There is no evidence for this at all despite Musk’s months of looking for it
This is the key part. Twitter's bots could be whatever %.

>>50290160

the actual supernova of kvetching and oy vey that simple tweet caused was glorious.

Someone here said it's like a detective at a murder scene saying "'whoever did this was a depraved lunatic" and then one guy in the crowd starts screaming that the detective clearly hates him personally for absolutely no reason

>>50278339

>>50291506
>Someone here said it's like a detective at a murder scene saying "'whoever did this was a depraved lunatic" and then one guy in the crowd starts screaming that the detective clearly hates him personally for absolutely no reason
Hehe yeah, very funny how asking a simple question has become borderline hate speech. Reminds me of the QUI? based general. I hope he didn't get sacked.

>>50278513
He stands for freedom.

>>50278339
>I still don't know who are the good guys and the bad guys in this Twitter vs Elon shitshow

>>50289901
And you've thoroughly read it?

>>50278237
People wrongly assume that Musk is a genius inventor and visionary, he isn't, he is a genius but his genius is in his business savvy. He's turned a bunch of otherwise mediocre businesses into world leaders and that's because he's just shit hot at playing the game.

He's to business what Steve Jobs was to marketing.

>>50291668
gOD HE WAS SO READY TO RAGe cum AT THE MENTION OF THE JS

>>50282565
>elon musk is reddit
quite the opposite actually

>>50278339
how exactly would twitter be 'good' in any scenario?

>>50278339
>twitter
>the good guys
loling my ass off

>>50278339
Elon is the lesser of two evils.
>>50279359
>he actually believes Elon Musk is the worlds richest man.

>>50290160
Agreed I have no real opinion on Musk, he has good qualities and bad ones (like when he harassed that dude trying to save the kids in that underwater cave) but overall I enjoy his presence because he makes so many people seethe for little to no reason. It’s fucking hilarious watching npcs start foaming at the mouth when he’s brought up, and then you ask why they hate him and they can’t really even give you any reasons besides obvious mainstream media indoctrination.

I love this elaborate scheme to expose twitter. All I can say is thank god Twitter is all bots because if those were real people the world needs to be vaporized

>>50278763
Lmao I never thought of that but very good point anon. Very ironic indeed

>>50279462
Extremely based take. Best case scenario for this is it somehow coming out Musk is right, Twitter goes to 0 and dies. I would be overjoyed

>>50281186
I almost felt for it month ago.
Thanksfully, /biz/raelite call me a pajet, I double checked, feel dumb and saved a ton of money by not falling for this scam.

>>50293291
Musk is a great visionary salesman, which is what tech startups NEED as much as programmers and analysts. He's the public meme-face that grants his company unlimited enthusiasm and meme-stock pricing.
Other than that, he seems more lulzy than smart, but people love Lulzy a lot more than Smarts.