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Yeah, no. Musk bought Twitter because he HAD to. He very publicly made comments about buying Twitter at absolute meme-stock prices, but didn't disclose that he already owned a LOT of Twitter stock. So, when his comments predictably increased the price of Twitter stock, he had two choices: Either it was just talk, and he was BLATANTLY guilty of stock manipulation and the Feds put a target on his back, or he acts like he totally meant it.
So he went with option two, acted like he was serious and wanted to buy twitter. Then he tried everything he could think of to kill the deal, accusing Twitter of all sorts of wrongdoing and lies, but Twitter was more careful than that. They got their shit right, and Musk couldn't back out. So he bought Twitter, rather than go to prison.
The fact that he could also kill the tracking twitter account was completely incidental. Musk is an idiot, but even he isn't that stupid. Musk initially offered $5,000 to the account holder to stop, and then balked at the return offer for $50,000. Now, I may not be a billionaire tech-bro, but I'm pretty sure that spending $50,000 to achieve a goal is preferable to spending $44,000,000,000. He's dumb, but he's not that dumb.
This
Elon is first and foremost a con man.
He gives them the old razzle dazzle, and even tech investors get so impressed with his confidence and his technobabble and his statements like “This is ready to ship today” that they’ve just lined up to give him money.
I think what’s happening now is that the blush is coming off the rose. Elon first got his money because he was involved as a founder in a company that he was fired from because of incompetence, but kept a large enough founder equity stake that he cashed out a billionaire. Then, because money was cheap and because you hit a tipping point where it’s easier to make money than lose money, he failed upwards.
Now reality is starting to catch up with him, and he’s in a panic. He’s psyched himself out enough that he’s turned pure Trump, doubling down and becoming more outrageous instead of taking his responsibility to his companies into account.
The only thing of his that is ever ready to ship today is his ~~crowdfunding~~ pre-orders and investment opportunities.
The rest of it is just bullshit, smoke and mirrors, inevitable delays, and gaslighting his cult into thinking he never previously promised something "ready within 3 years" would be completed last year.
I truly hope we eventually pass the tipping point where it becomes more widespread knowledge that he's an incompetent "idea guy" instead of a visionary inventor.
THE DOT COM OF CON MANS!
Just fucking stop.
Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter after doing several incredibly stupid things publicly.
Quit assisting this fascist dumbass in his attempt at laundering his reputation.
I don't see how claiming he bought Twitter to try and shut up a teenager does anyting to help his reputation.
It re-enforces the idea that he is a "genius" who is playing "4D Chess" and that he "has a plan" and not that he's a fucking drug addled freak who is making decisions based on his emotional state at the time.
There was no plan, there's never a plan. Rich people just play this game where, because they have enough money to insulate themselves from their bad decisions, they pretend that "this was always their plan."
Pretty much Musk:
So, lawsuit against Bloomberg incoming?
So Taylor Swift is going to buy it next?
Or really, he wanted to talk shit and pump and dump, and he got caught by some savvy lawyers at twitter.
Then he tried to turn it into a political tool sprinkled with his narcissism, hoping foreign governments would pay him to manipulate narratives. But now nobody gives a shit, he has lawsuits left and right and is likely going to go broke, and he's scared away all the advertisers who were his life blood.
He tried to pull a trump but nobody actually backed him up, and they're likely going to let him fall.
it had to be politically motivated. even elon must be smart enough to know that kicking the kid off twitter wouldn't stop the tracking of his plane.. which is still readily available via multiple sources. he could have been dumb enough to spend $billions just to steal the @x handle though.
If that's true, Saudi Arabia probably wouldn't have given him $22B of their dollars with no expectation of a Return on Investment. They have no horse in the "does Elon look foolish?" race.
Twitter is really big in SA so their king wanting extra controll of it makes sense.
Butchering a reporter in Istanbul worked for them but the backlash was likely a bit of an embarrassment to these monsters.
Kashodi was murdered over countering SA bots. Easier to have a controlling interest in the platform than to fight dissidents with dirty assassin tricks. Allah forbid granting some freedom to the press.
Saudis? No interest in control over what was THE app to get world updates and news?
Its possible for them to have different interests. Its also possible for this to be the nucleation point that got things rolling without it really being the full cause.
this is so astoundingly petty, it might just be true.
although i doubt that's the only reason he bought it, i wouldn't be surprised if it's a major factor that got him serious about buying it.
Incidentally... https://mastodon.social/@elonjet is still going strong.
Does that also get posted to Threads or now Bluesky?
The profile is "elonjet . net" (without the space) on bluesky.
If Musk saw this carbon would literally be shooting out of his ears like an old bugs bunny cartoon
Holy shit this dude fucking lives on his plane. Like I feel guilty about the 2-3x per year I fly to see family but this fucker has flown that far already in the past week. Why? Does he not know how to do a video call?
Ugh, I feel the same. I know the top 1% of the world or whatever emits tons and tons more CO2 per year than the other 99%, but I didn't know it was this bad. That plane is flying multiple times per day. Sure Musk is probably not in it all the time, but that doesn't matter.
Private jets should be banned all together, let's see how quickly they suddenly find out the internet exists.
And if only manufactures would make use of hydrogen turbojets.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A particular beef involving a college student tracking his private jet was the catalyst for the billionaire purchasing shares of Twitter, commencing his takeover of the social media platform, according to a new book about the ordeal.
“Musk had also unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal [CEO of Twitter at the time] to remove a Twitter account that was tracking his private plane,” says an excerpt from Battle for the Bird, a new book on Musk’s takeover, published by Bloomberg on Thursday.
The book seems to confirm that Musk’s personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
Musk touts “free speech” as the main reason he bought Twitter, but the billionaire was actively trying to silence a college student he had a feud with before he was CEO.
The person behind the account, Jack Sweeney, is a college student who’s now famous for tracking the private jets of Musk and Taylor Swift.
Musk was heavily focused on promoting right-wing speech when he bought Twitter, which was lacking under Jack Dorsey’s management, but also on settling his internet beef.
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