BobTheBoozerElon Musk tells advertisers: ‘Go fuck yourself’ - The Verge
Ahh, the negotiator
Does every proper noun require a cinematic treatment?
chemical_cutthroatIt’s the -or at the end. Makes everything sound cool. Almost as cool as the letter X.
adam_yThe sexiest logical operator.
Its definitely—ahem—alternative
TallonMetroidbut muh 20-d chess
What a fucking clown. Shareholders should be holding him personally liable for tanking the company.
BTW, cool user identity!
He bought it so he’s the only shareholder. It’s not publicly traded anymore.
Ah, I thought he only acquired a controlling stake, rather than buying the full company outright.
Why burn 23 billions if you can burn 44?
ZILtoid1991The banks that finaced him are extremely furious though.
They should learn not to give someone free money just because they have money already.
Pretty sure he’s paying a massive amount of interest on those loans, and he would have to liquidate his other assets before he could declare bankruptcy and erase any of the debt.
No that’s not how leveraged buyouts are structured. Musk isn’t on the hook for the loans, Twitter the company is (basically, Twitter took on debt to help buy its former shareholders out).
Precisely, Musk has no personal risk for destroying Twitter. It’s absolutely fucking insane how much free money we give rich people.
Oh, and one of the reasons Twitter will inevitably fail is because of the massive interest payments the company accepted during the purchase.
So what happens then?
Lots of people lose their jobs, something that was once a public service is shut down… and Elon Musk’s reputation takes a minor hit that’s quickly forgotten.
Oh, no. Musk has $20b in Tesla stock guaranteeing the loans. He could lose control of Tesla if X fails.
JaysynIf they aren't, I am.
If you owe the bank $10,000, you’re in trouble. If you owe the bank 10,000,000,000 dollars, the bank is in trouble.
With debt is a bit different, as long as he pays it off I don’t think they care what he does with Twitter.
He’s not the only shareholder though.
First off, they didn’t pay $44bn, that number includes a $13bn loan that Twitter took out to buy itself on behalf of the new owners. Musk paid ~$27 including fees, $20bn of this was Tesla stock (which since shortly after has been underperforming), then $5bn was other investors, including that Saudi Prince.
Musk is the majority owner, owning roughly around 26/31 of the value. However he isn’t the only shareholder.
In any case the leveraged buyout has been structured with the intent of killing the business. There was never any sincere hope of paying off the $13bn debt, and the intent was all but proven when they almost immediately stopped paying rent on their offices. This might not have been the goal along, but since Musk was forced to make the purchase that’s what it turned into.
Ah, I didn’t realise that, thanks for the explanation.
What do you think is the endgame here? Im so lost with regard to this whole storyline
There is no endgame plan. He is a fucking idiot that got rich on accident.
Flying Squidthat got rich on accident
He got super-wealthy accidentally. He got rich because his father is rich.
It’s an interesting question.
Musk was forced to buy Twitter after accidentally promising to do so in legally binding terms. So, to a very great extent, there is no endgame, just the endless flailing of a rich kid who can’t comprehend just how much luck (rather than genius) got him where he is.
But, his supporters are primarily far right authoritarians, and his partners in Twitter include some extremely authoritarian regimes which have an interest in being able to suppress speech (and have had more help to do so with X compared to old Twitter). And his idea of free speech is being able to say whatever he likes without criticism, which means silencing any ideas that could possibly be construed as criticism, whether directed at him or not. The standard far right nonsense. If you point out the existence of racism you’re attacking white people. If you point out the existence of sexism you’re attacking men. If you choose not to advertise on a website promoting far right ideas, you’re attacking him personally.
Is he trying to turn Twitter into a more successful version of Gab or Truth Social, or is that just a by-product of his peculiar psyche? Is it with the intention of influencing elections, or is it just that his particular type of narcissism happens to be very useful to authoritarians? Are the ideas of the far right anything other than extreme narcissism anyway?
He’s not an evil genius but evil clowns can do a lot of damage too.
Endgame now is to kill off Twitter (and grassroots public forums in general) then replace them with right wing alternatives. Musk’s old friend Peter Thiel failed with Parler, with Twitter out the way they have a much stronger chance.
Meanwhile, as Twitter crashes and burns, they can experiment with ludicrous ideas. Most of them will fail, but anything they get away with becomes a template for whatever comes next.
Like I say, that wasn’t the plan all along - most likely he just wanted to manipulate the stock price and make a bit of profit - but that’s what this has turned into.
You think he’s aware of Lemmy? What do you think he thinks about us if so?
No idea really, but I think he generally dismisses the platform as a non-threat. Which is good, I don’t want him anywhere near it.
[excellent]
In any case the leveraged buyout has been structured with the intent of killing the business. There was never any sincere hope of paying off the $13bn debt, and the intent was all but proven when they almost immediately stopped paying rent on their offices.
i don’t know that this is certain. Withholding rent is not an uncommon tactic to force a landlord to renegotiate a lease (in fact, that was the stated reason for withholding rent, for whatever Elon’s statements are worth). Certainly a very dirty one, and one that could blow up in his face if the landlord called his bluff and evicted him (last i heard they were handed an eviction notice in June, but I assume that’s either currently being litigated or already settled). It may have been HIS intent, but that doesn’t mean his shareholders weren’t intent on being repayed.
Regardless, I think ‘shareholder’ is a bit misleading (even if completely accurate and justified), because people (possibly the original commenter) think of CEO’s having fiduciary obligation to shareholders for publicly traded companies, and that’s not the case here.
There are other contractual obligations he would have to his co-investors and lenders (more serious ones I think) if he’s found guilty of intentionally tanking the company. I think that’s probably why he’s being so vocal here about it being the fault of the advertisers; if he tanks the company, whether he’s held to those contracts or if he’s allowed to declare bankruptcy depends on whether the plaintiff’s can prove he tanked it intentionally. If he did (as I think is pretty clear to most people at this point) and he’s found guilty of that, he’d be held liable for the total repayment of those loans plus whatever damages determined.
While he himself didn’t pay $44b for twitter, he could end up personally paying that much if all of the above comes to fruition, and that’s worst-case for him. Considering his net worth is mostly tied up in his other companies, he could stand to loose most of his net worth. If he gets tied up in a fraud trial, chances are high that his other companies’ stock values would plunge, too (TSLA has a beta value of 2.3, which means it’s more than twice as volatile as the rest of the market).
TLDR: Elon has every reason to be completely loosing his shit
TLDR: Elon has every reason to be completely loosing his shit
I’m just picturing Elon slinging shit like arrows from a bow. LOOSE!
I’m leaving it, is a much better description of his current mental state.
The whole conversation sounds like he is pissed and already accepted that this was a waste of money.
I’m wondering if someone else is also unofficially paying?
otterWise notion. I’ve always understood that only new money is loud. Old money is silent.
Little Trans Punk“it could kill my company”
That’s the point
Best case scenario
Short C 📉
elbucho“X” isn’t publicly traded. When he bought it, he took it private, so you can’t short it. The ticker symbol X is for the United States Steel Corporation. You could definitely short that, though; it’s entirely possible that it’ll tank just the same because people confuse it with Xitter. Like when that Chinese company that had the ticker symbol ZOOM shot to the moon at the start of the pandemic because people thought it was the video conferencing app (whose symbol was ZM).
It’s… Not public…
“I fucking hate you and wish you’d get hit by a bus”
Five minutes later: “Please don’t leave babe… I love you…”
Dude is not well.
Yeah I just watched the clip and he seems legitimately unhinged. “Earth will judge them.”
I mean what the heck, honestly.
Billionaires are money addicts
True but normally they at least rationally act to pursue their goals.
cedarmesaGreedheads never act rationally in the throes of their money addiction. Case in point; Burning down the biosphere to gain a little more money when they already have more than they can mainline in 100 lifetimes
Their goal of getting more money might be rational, I just meant they act with a kind of logic that’s in accordance with that goal. Burning down the planet is the perfect example, they don’t care if it doesn’t impact them, but they can earn more money and have that as a side effect.
Musk is saying shit like “the Earth will judge them” when someone asks him how he’s going to make sure his business earns money. This is another level of deranged and disconnected from reality in my view at least.
Agreed. We’re in agreement. Your first paragraph is basically describing the addiction model. I think we’d be well served to replace the word “billionaire” with “money addict”. If you replace money with literally any other object, cats, newspapers, canned food, youd say these folks had a hoarding disorder. Hoarding money like this is a massive red flag for deep mental illness. Add in these behaviors and what you have are deeply mentally disturbed humans with comorbid addiction problems.
I think your analogy is missing how much power money buys. Musk is hoarding power, the money is the easiest was to get power especially if you’re born rich.
[citation needed]
Fair enough, maybe they are all just crazy after all
So you don’t actually have a source. Where did you get your idea from?
A source for billionaires pursuing their goals rationally? I don’t think there’s been a study on that but I’m sure it’d be an interesting one. My point is mainly that Elon seems comparatively unhinged, I’m not trying to establish any kind of objective truth or anything.
True but normally they at least rationally act to pursue their goals.
I’m asking about this thought you had in particular. Where did it come from?
What is he on these days? There’s innuendo about ketamine, alcohol, Ambien, etc? He’s gotta be on Adderall…
“Tell that to earth!” Spæce Kæren
I’ve been saying this for a while now. If he were an average person, a loved one or friend would have probably tried to get him help, if not voluntarily, then as an intervention. He’s a billionaire, and has clearly been unwell for a while, but the world just keeps egging him on to do more crazy shit.
It reminds me a little of the South Park pop star thing, where the world needs a “sacrifice” in terms of fame. We’ve now moved past pop, and now we’re letting influencers (which, let’s be frank, that’s basically Musk’s contribution to any of his businesses) dance for our enjoyment.
In theory, I think bad people deserve pity more than anything else, because something made them that way, and we don’t get to choose our formative experiences. We are fundamentally still just animals responding to our environment.
But in practice, I have a finite amount of empathy, so I’ll save it for people who aren’t actively making the world a worse place.
BigVaultNo real loss if it does die.
Why the fuck would advertisers want to pay to have their products advertised and inevitably associated with the shit on there?