SwiftOnSecurityAm I the only person who remembers the villains
Fahri Reza 🍉@SwiftOnSecurity legend says they are still sweating to this day.
V@SwiftOnSecurity ah, but the shareholder lawsuits, imagine the pain that would have been!
Half Cocked Law@SwiftOnSecurity the Twitter board thought the Elon button must have been broken because they kept hitting it and nothing happened.
tentacular@SwiftOnSecurity It's villains all the way down
MegaZone@SwiftOnSecurity Meh, they had a chance to cash out at a 4x valuation, so it is no surprise. I'm not sure I would've done anything different given that exit option. People I don't know might vaguely hate me, but I wouldn't be tied to a foundering company with no clear path forward.
egyp7@megazone @SwiftOnSecurity Right. The incentives of capitalism are broken.
Bartleby's Corpse@megazone @SwiftOnSecurity
Option 1: Sell Twitter for multiple times what it is worth to the Big Chungus man-baby hopped up on amphetamines, then hop out in your golden parachute to Cocaine Island (or wherever these lizard people retire to)
Vs
Option 2: Watch as your valuation plummets to a fraction of its current state before the Big Chungus Man-Baby hopped up on amphetamines eventually buys you out for 10% of his original offer
Decisions...🤔
Nick 'The Viking'They were following orders to make highest profit for shareholders. They were not beholden to make a sensible decision. Unfortunately that's how it was structured so yeah not optimum for non-shareholders, sorry bout that collateral damage mate.
This is equivalent to private ownership as a profit making concern, of a major highway system or other infrastructure.
This should not be a privately held entity.
Falcon Darkstar@SwiftOnSecurity it's no great mystery. They had almost completely failed to build their ads business, and regulation was a very high risk even then. Musk's offer was like when someone deliberately exercises an out of the money stock option.
DJGummikuh@SwiftOnSecurity personally, I don't blame the Twitter Board. Musk stated his intend to buy Twitter, destabilizing its share value in the process and probably helped some short sellers with that. Them selling out in this situation not only secured their personal wealth but also served as a statement that you can't just manipulate stock markets without having to buy in eventually. If Musk got away with it he would have presumably expanded on that "business strategy" from then on.
@SwiftOnSecurity I believe the real issue this whole thing shines a bright light on is that there are individuals that can destabilize a company's financial situation simply by talking bullshit on a social media platform. And this has actually nothing to do in particular with twitter, musk or the former twitter board
Ceremus 
@DJGummikuh Anyone still could, though? The only reason Twitter was able to keep Musk from backing out of the proposal was he was dumb enough to put the offer in writing. Trying to fight a suit of contract breach would have cost him more than buying for the original agreement, it's the only reason he didn't renege.
@ceremus Yes, that just adds to my point that this should not be possible. We as a people must learn to prevent single persons to amass so much power.
George Lund@SwiftOnSecurity nope, they had a duty to shareholders. The real baddies here are, I'd argue, the people that funded Elon's acquisition, cos for all his wealth he only did it with their help. Those organisations are going to feel some financial pain but will the decision makers be accountable? Ha.
sigi714@SwiftOnSecurity They never said "value to our company" or "to our employees", though.
Jake Miller@SwiftOnSecurity @sigi714 In fairness, this was their attempt to manage him without it going bad. And then Elon wanted to act like he bought the company (with ideas as good as we have seen) and hated that Parag didn’t treat him like the boss and so he hate-overpaid for it.
Michal Bryxí 🌱@SwiftOnSecurity Why would the board sweat while doing that though? 🙃
Marcos Alano 
@SwiftOnSecurity They sell than they get a lot of money. How beautiful is capitalism (but it's not)
Travis Newton 👨💻@SwiftOnSecurity The board got an unrealistically overvalued offer. Of course they were cashing out. When your house is for sale for $250,000 but someone comes in with their realtor and says they’ll buy it for $1.5 million, you sell.
Scot Close@SwiftOnSecurity It's hard to say no when a billionaire is throwing money at you and your shareholders.
jdtechie@SwiftOnSecurity I know people are dismissing their fiduciary duty but it's real - Musk was offering 2.5x the value of the stock and had they turned it down due to basically vibes they'd have been sued by the shareholders (a decent chunk of which was Musk anyway). The villains here are the people who ponied up money to help that illiquid cretin make the purchase. Those banks and rich tech bros didn't owe Musk anything but actively wanted the ride.
Robert Thau@SwiftOnSecurity The Twitter board's primary legal obligation was, sadly, to the shareholders -- and Musk offered $tens of billions more than the company was worth. If the board *hadn't* sold under those circumstances, they'd have faced *personal* liability in lawsuits from institutional shareholders, who cared far more about the payoff than Twitter's future after that.
The most they could do was insist on unreasonable terms, and hope Musk backed off. They did. He didn't.
Rob Huebner@SwiftOnSecurity but but they had a fiduciary duty to make the most immoral decision possible
menotti@SwiftOnSecurity even though the offer was ridiculously outsized, the Twitter board could have negotiated better protections for employees. But that wasn't important to them.
Chaoddity@SwiftOnSecurity Thank you. Those scumbags fucked everyone over for cash.
Anand R@SwiftOnSecurity I especially remember Matt Levine writing about the Delaware judge's potential thought process and wondering if she would indeed force the acquisition on Musk given how badly it would turn out for the company and its users. And yet, the board wouldn't reach the same conclusion?
North Easton 
@SwiftOnSecurity I mean, they walked away with forty four billion dollars.
RADSr@SwiftOnSecurity Sorry, new(ish) follower, but is this parody? The board did its job of maximizing shareholder value, no?
Druce@SwiftOnSecurity It’s easy to sit here on Mastodon and poke fun of Twitter. Not saying we shouldn’t. I’m just acknowledging how easy it is. It’s really really easy, these things just write themselves. :-)