Timothy L. O’Brien, who has written critically about Trump’s claims to be a multi billionaire, wonders whether Elon Musk is having buyer’s remorse about his offer of $44 billion for Twitter. Musk tweeted on Friday morning that his offer was “temporarily on hold” while there is an investigation of Twitter bots.
O’Brien wrote at Bloomberg News:
Elon Musk took to Twitter early Friday to say that his takeover of the company was “temporarily on holdpending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
Musk might be serious about this. Or he might be joking and just using his vast social media reach to have fun with the investors, Twitter Inc. employees, journalists, free-speech advocates and others who have been watching this garbage fire ignite. (A couple hours later he tweeted he was still committed to the deal.)
I’m in the camp of: “Musk is serious about this but he’s finding the most unserious of reasons to explain why he’s bailing.” As in: “I was thinking about buying that mansion, but the deal is on hold pending details about whether there are termites in some of the planters on the patio. I still have plenty of cash and can get a mortgage from the bank, believe me. It’s not about the money.”
I suspect Musk’s jitters about buying Twitter are all about the money and has nothing to do with how many bots are zooming around the platform. He just doesn’t want to say that. If the richest guy in the world wanted to be more honest about what’s going on, he might have to acknowledge that his primary credit card — his shares in Tesla Inc. — doesn’t have the buying power it once did.
Musk said last month that he wanted to buy Twitter for $43 billion — when he only had about $3 billion in cash on hand. Most of the fortune of the world’s richest man, which added up to some $259 billion at the time, was tied up in his Tesla shares. Since then, Tesla’s shares have lost about 36% of their value, and Musk’s net worth has fallen to about $215 billion.
Frankly, I would be pleased to see this purchase fall through. It’s frightening to think that one person would wield the power to control what has become the nation’s public square.
Musk has said he believes in unlimited free speech, but that too is dangerous in these times of disinformation and pervasive propaganda. In a famous Supreme Court decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that free speech does not give you the right to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater. Holmes was using the reference to justify a decision against a man handing out flyers opposed to recruitment for the military during World War 1. (Schenck vs. United States). That decision was subsequently overturned but the metaphor remains apt.
Musk would not exclude those on Twitter who offer phony cures for COVID or other diseases or those who urge people not to take the vaccines that would protect their lives. He would not exclude those who peddle hatred and bigotry.
This not to say that he does not exclude anyone. A group called “Public Citizen” has complained that it was blocked by Elon Musk. It may be that he blocks groups and individuals who post tweets about the riskinesss of Tesla. Who knows?
The Twitter platform should have standards for screening and deleting tweets that incite violence or circulate medical misinformation. That’s why Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene were banished.
Musk is apparently politically biased. He tweeted not long ago ““I strongly supported Obama for President, but today’s Democratic Party has been hijacked by extremists.” Extremists? Inciting an insurrection on January 6 doesn’t count as extremist? Invading the halls of z Congress and attacking police officers is not extremism? Insisting that the 2020 election was stolen is not extremist? If any party has been hijacked by extremists, it is the Republican Party.
Twitter is too important in our common life to be controlled by one man and his wildly inflated ego. I’m hoping the deal never happens.
Twitter is trash and Musk would be wise not to buy it.
It doesn’t matter who owns it.
Twitter is for twits.
Billionaires are trash, they’re dog water. Elon Musk is a child. He would be wise if he were someone other than Elon Musk.
All billionaires are trash? Does that mean I shouldn’t support Illinois Governor JB Pritzker who is Democratic and Pro-Choice in the upcoming elections? 🤔
Vote for Governor Trash in this case, of course.
“A group called “Public Citizen” has complained that it was blocked by Elon Musk.”
That’s interesting because Musk does not even own Twitter yet, but apparently he is already blocking people.
People should really stop getting their information from Twitter.
I block lots of people and I don’t own Twitter. I don’t like Twits.
So Musk blocked them from posting responses on his Twitter account?
That’s what they are whining about?
Who cares?
Why does it even matter?
That’s just stupid.
If people have nothing better to worry about than who is blocking them on Twitter, I’d have to say that’s just pathetic.
It matters because he has said he loves free speech and would eliminate the standards that Twitter created so as to ban people for threatening violence or posting misinformation about COVID.
Having crowed about his commitment to a marketplace of ideas without constraints, it’s funny that he shuts down people who annoy him.
It’s possible that Elon Musk is blocking crazed fans, stalkers and other crazed fans sometimes? 🤔
It’s possible, Eddie, but inconsistent with his claimed intent to remove all ways to block or censor anyone on Twitter, no matter how malicious. I think his measure is to block anyone who offends him personally.
cx: and other crazed fans should be and other weirdos.
Diane, then Elon practices do as I say, not as I do. 😁
Exactly right.
Musk might block stalkers, although I’m not sure how someone could hide in the bushes on Twitter. Musk might block people who criticize his practice of fraud to manipulate the stock market. He might block people who rescued youngsters from a cave and were called pedo for not letting Musk play with his silly little submarine that would have failed. He might block activists trying to overcome sexual harassment. He might block protesters of racism. He could block people who have a problem with his ridiculous life on Mars fantasies or brain implant fantasies, protesters of safety violations, environmental violations, health violations, exploding cars, cars that auto-drive into tractor-trailers… That guy once wanted to tunnel under my apartment. If I were a twit-ter, Elon Musk would definitely block me.
You can block whoever you want, especially those that promote the killing of babies, those that want to suppress first amendment rights and those against clean energy.
I would 😏
But Elon wouldn’t ban them from the site in hopes that there is still a sane majority that would verbally attack such anti American sentiment!
By all means, let’s have a tax structure that enables a few oligarchs to amass fortunes large enough to buy and control our media. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense in a democracy.
Twitter is NOT “our media”.
People who believe it is are just fooling themselves.
This is perhaps the biggest problem of all.
People assume that Twitter is somehow beholden to the public . It ain’t, not least of all because Twitter has global reach, so it’s not even clear what “the public” means.
The central problem is not Twitter and Facebook per se but that so many people get their “facts” from these media and believe what they read without question.
The internet was advertised as the democratization of information, but it did the opposite. It put all the control over information in the hands of the tech moguls. After all, who makes the bots Musk complains about and yet uses to profit? Elon knows who.
Elon has many children. The last one has a name that something like R2D2.
SomeDAM Poet
“The central problem is not Twitter and Facebook per se but that so many people get their “facts” from these media and believe what they read without question.”
Is that something new.
“The reader will understand that I despise these “yellows”; they are utterly without honor, they are vulgar and cruel; and yet, in spite of all their vices, I count them less dangerous to society than the so-called “respectable” papers, which pretend to all the virtues, and set the smug and pious tone for good society — papers like the “New York Tribune” and the “Boston Evening Transcript” and the “Baltimore Sun,” which are read by rich old gentlemen and maiden aunts, and can hardly ever be forced to admit to their columns any new or vital event or opinion. These are “kept” papers, in the strictest sense of the term, and do not have to hustle on the street for money. They serve the pocketbooks of the whole propertied class — which is the meaning of the term “respectability” in the bourgeois world. On the other hand the “yellow” journals, serving their own pocketbooks exclusively, will often print attacks on vested wealth, provided the attacks are startling and sensational, and provided the vested wealth in question is not a heavy advertiser.“
That’s the crux, Bob.
I was offline tonight watching a wonderful new production of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” filmed before a live audience at the Barbican Theatre in London. I highly recommend it. I felt like I was watching a great Broadway show with orchestra seats. It was on Great Performances on PBS.
Yeah, we think of things like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok as public fora (or forums, if you prefer), but they are privately owned and controlled. Many years ago, I remember running across a tiny column-filler piece–a few lines–in a newspaper that mentioned that the FBI Director was going out to spend a week with Mark Zuckerberg. Hmmmm, I wondered.
I love that you watched “Anything Goes” instead of spending the night on “social” media. Last night, I had a conversation about baseball while we watched a baseball game. It was a face to face conversation with a real person, in person. No algorithms.
Try to find “Anything Goes” on PBS. It’s delightful. It feels like watching a real live performance because there is a live audience (at the Barbican in London).
Certainly. I’ll search it up on my cable box when I get home in a little while.
They already did and they are the ones saying Elon shouldn’t!
As people who occasionally read my comments know, I would use Twitter, but they would have to increase the maximum length of a Tweet to a gazillion words.
BTW, Tweetledumb, aka Orange Marmalade Man, says that even if the ban were lifted, he would stick to “truthing” on his own PravdaSocial, with its user base of 12 people. LOL.
When Twitter was fairly new, my principal put me in charge of a small class of World History made up primarily of kids the regular teacher did not want. Trying anything with this disparate group of characters, we would occasionally write tweets about historical happenings.
After kids got more interested in expressing themselves with gems like #Napoleon, I decided to go another route. Perhaps Musk will do the same.
LOL. Even then, thinking like a great teacher, Roy!
I listened to some expert tonight that said that Musk does not have the option to back out of the deal. He has a contractual agreement to purchase Twitter. It is a done deal, so to speak. It will be interesting to see what happens. Does no one realize that reading the “news” on Twitter and Facebook can be compared to reading the supermarket tabloids in the day?
The article I cited came from Bloomberg News from a reputable writer.
No criticism of you was intended. I was expressing my general frustration with people relying on social media as a reputable news source. That is certainly NOT something you can be accused of.
In other news, an unnamed Russian oligarch, in a phone call, said that Putin has some sort of blood cancer and remarked that “one crazy man can turn the world upside down.”
Ofc, Putin IS a cancer.
If he has blood cancer, surgery won’t help.
In a perfect world, Musk would complete the purchase and then shut Twitter down.
I’m much more cynical. Musk is attempting to manipulate the stock market to either make his takeover more affordable or to get out with a profit. Remember that when he acquired his Twitter stake in January, he did not file the required notices with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the legal time.
Modus operandi.
Historically, the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune were owned by rich people, such as Marshall Field, Robert McCormick and Rupert Murdoch. People bought those papers with “no” complaints. 🤔🙂
Those newspapers, along with the Chicago Crusader, Chicago Reader and Wednesday Journal allow very few letters to the editor and no comments. If others and I wish to comment on their articles, we are directed to their censored Facebook and Twitter accounts. All of these newspapers are Democratic, Left too. 🤔☹️
I never heard anyone call The Chicago Tribune leftist although in today’s climate… In today’s climate they are slowly being gutted by hedge fund sharks who really don’t seem to care much about news in any form.
The Chicago Trib is corporate centrist.
The current Chicago Tribune is Democratic and Left. 😁
Historically, it was Republican and Right. 😁
Corporate centrist is more accurate although given that they are now owned by a hedge fund that has no interest in news that description doesn’t quite capture them either. I suppose you could call them leftist if you/one are/is MAGA minded.
I have no affliations with MAGA. I have no interest in Trump. 😁
I should have just gone with the “one is” and left out the “you are.” I was trying to indicate that I wasn’t referring to you and instead implied that I wondered if you were. I can’t remember who taught me to use “one” rather than “you” in writing to indicate that the writer was not referring to any particular individual, but it always has sounded a bit artificial to me. Bob could probably help me out here.
It’s almost always better — more effective — to use “one” instead of “you” or “I”. In a comment on another post about the inequality of school choice today, someone wrote an entire paragraph in which every sentence began with “I”, contained “my”, or ended with “me”. It came off sounding self centered and therefore narrow minded. That’s not to say it’s never appropriate to use personal anecdotes, but as a general rule, discussing ideas in the third person instead of the first or second person is better. More effective.
It is certainly appropriate when writing a paper or an opinion for widespread public distribution. The lines sometimes are blurred when the discussion is occurring on a personal blog where personal opinions are expressed. That is where I sometimes struggle. I worried that I might be offending someone when that was not my intention and tried to backtrack a bit, rather unsuccessfully. In this case, “I” think “I” have decided that using “one” in a potentially volatile situation is wise. 🙂
You’re ri– one is right. Hee hee. English is a complicated mess of a language.
You leave out too much stuff. Elon is a good guy, not some extremist (duh). The Twitter deal was all about shaking the anti American apples out of the tree to benefit YOUR free speech rights. And EVERY Democrat seems to regurgitate the same ole “Elon is a bad guy bullshit”!
Remember, buddy, nothing is more important than fundamental rights and clean energy!