When your “public square” is a private company, any sulky billionaire can buy it

Re:When your “public square” is a private company, any sulky... by zeroonetwothree on Friday April 15, 2022 @12:18PM (#31041985)

This article is pretty bad, for example:

> We live in a financially unregulated world where Elon Musk can wake up one morning and choose to use $43 billion of his own money to noisily acquire a social media platform.

Musk's actions has to go through the SEC, and in any case it seems his offer will not be accepted. How is this an example of "financially unregulated"?

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Re:When your “public square” is a private company, any sulky... by AnimalMuppet on Friday April 15, 2022 @01:19PM (#31042850)

"Financially unregulated"? Yes, there are not currently regulations prohibiting people from offering to buy stuff. If that's a problem, any solution is likely to be worse.

If Musk already owned, say, Facebook, then the antitrust regulations might kick in. But just offering to buy a company? Yeah, that's unregulated. Free market and all that.

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Re:When your “public square” is a private company, any sulky... by tpmoney on Friday April 15, 2022 @12:25PM (#31042112)

I’m also unclear what regulations they seem to think makes sense. The other way to phrase it is “Elon Musk can wake up one morning and use his personal money to buy a private property that is publicly available for sale.”

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