But that can’t be it and what really happened, Musk is buying Twitter for us and restoring our Free Speech…right?

Insiders have to have a stock acquisition/disposition window and follow that schedule to only sell during that pre-determined schedule

I don't really understand this theory/criticism, can you elaborate? note, its not about whether he did, its about whether its important since all insiders have windows and schedules they can and can't sell in

in this criticism, did he sell outside of that window? and is that compliant?

if it was within the window, then... who cares?

okay

If you have SEC filings showing these sales were scheduled in advance show please link them.

So proving that they werent is More important than proving that they were

There's no way to simply back out of a very public offer for a major social app without litigation that costs time out of your life (which is in that case more of a painful thing than losing the money). Paying capital gains (after huge deductions of course) might prove to be less by the time it's all done.

And TBH, he has all the reasons to think so. He’s been openly lying about so many aspects of his businesses for a long time, manipulating markets, ignoring all the rules and regulations and only thing it resulted in, was making him wealthiest man in the world.

Expressing character traits and flaws puts a harmful spin on discussions. Think of the situation as if an unknown person did the very same things perhaps?

The actual actions taken and specific words written and recorded are the only things that will be considered most by a court ultimately (if correct process is followed).

And it is not even primary issue with Musk, it is primary issue with general economy/justice syatem that favors lying and bullying, pri ided you have enough money.

$1B is a lot of money…he has obviously determined it’s well worth it to spend a few million in legal fees to try. Even if they settle (which more than >90% of cases do) maybe he cuts that penalty in half…even if he knocks 10% of financially it’s well worth it. Even if he loses and ends up paying his legal fees and their legal fees its clear he has determined it’s well worth it.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001494730/000089924...

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLA/insider-transactions?p=...

Except you can just buy up supporters by gaslighting huge masses of people on Twitter. The house in question.

Its so ridiculous. Musk's popularity is largely *BECAUSE* of his Twitter antics. So this "buyer" is basically someone who has come to house-parties / benefited from the house in question for the last decade.

And the people arguing against the (current owners) of the house are also the party-guests of that very same house.

I don't really buy this. I knew loads of Musk fanboys who were crazy about him before Teslas even become available. The 50+ folks that I'm friends with have mostly never used Twitter or read a Musk tweet, but they think Teslas are cool and are reminded that StarLink brought rural Ontario better internet than our own government tried to do for decades. Obviously Musk is an ass on Twitter (and probably in person), but like a lot of neuroatypicals, their talent seemingly makes up for their abrasiveness.

Musk has pretty much used Twitter has his primary media communication method. Going so far as to say Tesla has no marketing budget because he's such a star on twitter. He has practically zero reach elsewhere. Sure, if he publishes on another platform, people will pay attention, but he doesn't... twitter is pretty much the way he communicates with the world.

If you dont think twitter is the reason you know Musk, then let me ask you this: who was the CEO of Fiskar? They released their EV product shortly before the model S. But you dont know the guys name do you? The product isnt why we know musk.

Well known outside of tech? I don't think so.

Without them, we may not get much press at all from him, he may be a bit of an unknown quantity.

His Social Media / PR is a gigantic part of his value. It distorts reality to a much, much larger audience.

Do you remember 'Maroon 5' the band? They had 'Really Big Hits' back in the day . Banger / Chart toppers. But it wasn't until the lead singer was on 'The Voice' did it make them a 'Household Global Name'. There were a poppy band with a tiny bit of an edge that appealed to a demographic, now, they are like 'Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune' - multigeneratoinal giants.

Musk has fanboys that are Dentists in Malaysia, street kids in Cairo, wannabe ballers in mid level cities in China etc. etc..

Back then I didn't know about how good public transit is better than even the cleanest electric car because I had never experienced good public transit and well I have very limited imagination (I thought the Dropbox was a sucker that I was taking advantage of because I could get extra 50 MB or whatever by just walking up to someone in my dorm and referring them to use Dropbox, even if they had no intention to continue using Dropbox...)

Also: He's a complete hobgoblin of a human being.

Both things can be true.

About 80% of the people that I respect, I have lost respect for because of Twitter.

They just can't help themselves with the populism.

But I think any liberal/left-ish person who grew up with super conservative parents has lived this their entire lives.

That said, Musk is nowhere near as outrageous as those talking heads.

And the band was more popular before The Voice. Levine is more famous since.

I think you're both correct. My experience is as you described, but Musk has also developed a following among political conservatives attracted to his abrasive, thumb-nosing antics.

That has nothing to do with Conservatives liking or disliking someone. I guess Conservatives are just better at respecting people they don't agree with on everything.

See how much more popular he is now that he makes 'controversial' statements [1]

It's as PR trick as old as time.

Edit: but yes, technically he has taken a public shift to the 'Current American Right' in the mysterious political situation we are in, that's fair to say. Just wanted to indicate it's a 'new and kind of specific normal'.

[1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=CA&q=%...

However, I don't see many of that old guard speak out against them. It seems with the reducing success projections due to changing demographics, many see winning as more important than values. Or at least that is my only explanation.

Interesting thought. For some analogy, if a bunch of skinheads joined my local baseball team and started playing dirty against the other teams and became the champions, would I care that my team has been hijacked, or would I not care because now my team is winning?

Obviously in the political example, the skinheads talk about "values" and people who want to be deluded just nod and repeat "values!", or they demonize the opponents by saying they'll bring in "dirty migrants", etc...

It’s just not a winning proposition anymore; there’s not much market for “conservative who is reasonable”.

I also disagree with the idea that conservatives are being punished for their opinions. Rather conservatives have been complaining that they are no longer allowed to punish other people for the way those people want to live their lives. A couple of examples:

1. The "Don't say gay" bill in Florida is not about people who were teaching about sex to young kids (there have been no actual accusations of this, only badly worded things that sounded like this). It is entirely about teachers teaching that it is ok that a child in their classroom has two dads or two moms. It is trying to wind back the clock to when those families would have to be kept "in the closet", or face social shunning.

2. In the recent case of the football coach who lost his job for leading prayers on the field after games. That one is again about the majority wanting to be able to use social power to push its religion. Despite what the majority of the Supreme Court said, he absolutely was using his position as a coach to push his religion. There was even testimony from a player who felt pressure to participate in order to get playing time.

Conservative voices are a bit suppressed in some places, like on Campus. Some don't like to accept that, but it's true. But it's a kind of Social Justice institutionalism that would be the issue there.

Otherwise, 'classical conservatives' who voice their opinion against Trump, are also ostracized by that far right gang, which is very true. So that's a different kind of 'fear to speak up'. Liz Cheney is getting punted out of Office for that right now.

But that has always existed - the centre/far elements of 'each side' definitely have wars. You can see it play out at the NYT editorial staff among the Social Justice left (younger) and the Traditional Liberal left (middle aged).

I don't feel that Musk can be reasonably located anywhere in there.

I think it's a bit misleading though. Who would goto college and listen to somebody repeat ad nauseum their parent's conservative talking points they've already heard their entire lifes? Or listen to someone even more radically conservative than their parents?

Also a lot of those "suppressed" people were just openly bigoted and claiming to feel persecuted when they're not allowed to persecute people they don't like.

Your assumption that 'conservative' voices lack in legitimacy and are merely repetitious of their parents views, and worse, that they are trying to 'persecute' people is itself obviously bigoted, and gives us a crystal clear example of the problem.

Even views such as 'people ought to be treated for who they are and not their intersecting identities' is oddly 'conservative' in 2022. Or 'Trans women are different than women' - some argue is a transphobic/conservative position. etc.

Claiming to do this while doing the opposite is a popular "conservative" position in 2022.

I've seen the logic train be that bad. Cancel culture has no end.

Note that as long as Trump had 'populist power' then Fox etc. would kind of following along supporting that. The Romneys, Cheneys, Bushes just didn't have the outlets.

It's changed a bit as Murdoch has dumped Trump, but the current trend is definitely a bit populist as they are backing DeSantis, who is frankly probably more traditionally conservative, but playing the 'Noise Game'. Same thing in Canada with new conservative leadership.

Note, young people are really, really pissed. Housing is completely unnafordable, they are in debt, inflation is taking off, and most of COVID wasn't a huge risk to them for 21 year olds it really was kind of 'a bad flu' it's really 40+ where the risk starts. So they are naturally going to be more emotively pissed off about all of that pain 'they endured' on behalf of others.

In Canada, the likely new Conservative Candidate is taking a 'populist turn' and kind of supporting the 'anti mask wave' (I mean, it's not crazy up here, but still it's a movement) - but shockingly he's more popular among 18-35 year olds than the far left NDP which is traditionally where they are strong. Shockingly, the 'Establishment Liberals' are the #1 party among 45+ all the way past 75.

This is an artifact that more clearly highlights what is going on everywhere, it's just not as clear.

The 'geriotoocracy' in the West is a bit left on social issues, and pro 'big business' on others. The 'establishment' policies are hugely favouring stock owners, real estate owners, retirees, pensions etc. etc..

Paradoxically literally just today I'm reading 'Russian Telegram' and they are complaining about the opposite: Putin and a massive class of Neo-Soviet jerkoffs stealing decades of hope from young Russians.

Young people have more opportunities than ever before, and have had a cushy upbringing for sure - that said - their challenges are very real and they have a right to be angry

I see very desperate kinds of comments on Reddit these days, sad people who feel completely voiceless.

In that context, a bit of populism is understandable. Musk is playing into that. Trump a little bit. WallStreetBets etc..

For some reason, it's not 'Bernie' this time around, it's a bit more 'Musky'.

So I think that is a big part of the appeal, and specifically with Musk it's probably not fairly traditional values.

Musk is also becoming a serious magnate, I mean, he was literally the richest guy in the world, and so the reality of people wanting to have 'higher taxes on the rich' surely grates on him, how long can he truly, culturally identify with the 'rebellious youth changing the world?'. He now has to 'get the goddam factories moving, this COVID stuff is overplayed!' and 'these greedy politicians want all my damn money, can't they see I'm changing the world?'. It's a bit of 'There Will Be Blood' going on. And he's pumping it all up on Twitter.

I think we don't need to worry about Musk though, he just has a bit of an opinion, a bit of a big mouth, oh well.

Twitter is very popular with a few niche groups: Journalists and people in tech for example. The former is influenced by Elon's antics on Twitter and end up writing news stories or making documentaries [1] about him. People learn about Musk through these respectable publications. The latter group spreads the gospel of Elon's TED talks and press conferences to their friends and family. Being subject matter experts, they're more likely to be believed.

Previously the coverage was mostly positive, but Musk's antics on Twitter have caused both the former and some of the latter to turn slightly negative from what I can tell. For example, it's now a common joke that Elon's wealth is partially due to being born wealthy. His family owned emerald mines. I didn't notice that in the popular consciousness until very recently. Phoney Starks is also making it's way into popular usage.

1 - https://www.nytimes.com/video/NYT-Presents/100000008464087/t...

If owning some natural resource like a mine or two was all it took to become a trailblazing entrepreneur who played a key role in Paypal/Tesla/SpaceX then Musk wouldn't be as popular as he is with many because there would be so many more like him around.

Musk is clearly an extraordinary individual even if he sometimes acts like a dickhead and had a small boost from owning emerald mines. But like I mentioned above if owning a profitable mine of some type was all it took to be an entrepreneur at Musk's level we would be drowning in them and he wouldn't be such a big deal in the first place.

But in the case of Twitter, Musk clearly seems to be in the wrong here legally.

I don't have an opinion on how big being born wealthy plays in his success. Just curious though -- how many profitable mines do you think are in operation and how many people do you think own them as a percentage of total global population?

You can own a gold mine in the California mountains and come out of it with nothing but debt. It would sound like you're rich in the newspaper stories, though.

Who has time for ascertaining the facts when there are politically derived narratives to promote.

Think farms, family businesses, real estate empires, even just well known doctors or other professionals.

Elon Musks family were comfortably upper middle class but really nothing special in terms of wealth. There would be hundreds of thousands of American families as rich alone.

So you have a small sample size - extremely wealthy people. Then you cut that down massively again - those people who also want to run businesses. Then a bunch of other things to narrow the pool lol. But then, finally, you cut it down to "and then the ones who succeed".

I don't think, at that point, the numbers are going to be behind you.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1211054942192119808?s=21...

That meant he had a readily available set of investors, advisors, and partners. That ranged from Greg Kouri, pivotal in forming Zip2 and X.com, to Roelof Botha. Roelof is the grandson of Pik Botha, the last apartheid South African foreign minister who had built up extensive connections amongst the US elite.

Success is so much easier when you go to knock on doors and find them already opened for you.

Interestingly though, it was Elon who said his family owned an emerald mine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes...

That was a Forbes interview in 2014.

The relevant section:

> JC: How do you handle fear?

> EM: Company death – not succeeding with the company – causes me a lot more stress than physical danger. But I’ve been in physical danger before. The funny thing is I’ve not actually been that nervous. In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”

Who knows what happened between when he was 15 and 17 to his family wealth that made him essentially penniless in a foreign country.

Edit:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1375212880790913025

This is where Elon says he arrived in Canada with only ~2500 CAD.

He went to Canada and could rely on his family network.

His estrangement from his father.

Today, you just buy a bunch of likes / retweets to perform the same astroturfing on a larger scale. Bonus points if you "meme" it and "go viral". You want all those people out there to be spreading your message at no cost to you.

A little bit of astroturfing goes a long way. People want to feel as part of a community. So a bit of fake-generated content and fake-interest helps at seeding the crowd and popularity.

---------

Stage magicians still do this today for entertainment purposes, rather than illegitimately hawking fake snake oil. Its a very good bit of entertainment. It does take some practice but once you get the technique, its quite repeatable.

Turns out that human psychology / group dynamics are in fact, predictable and consistent.

Whether or not this makes most of us deranged morons or not is in the eye of the beholder.

They like the 'vibe' and that's that.

They may not specifically clue into the mapping of 'vaccine hesitation / conspiracy' to 'health outcomes', they might just view it as 'opinion' - which it is of course, but most responsible people understand the 'dots have to be connected'.

I think it's a bit part of the reason why a place like HN won't grasp populism: we are almost by definition 'anti populist' by our very outlook.

Even smart young people are usually busy with school, partying, social things, they don't all have time to parse all of the shifting nonsense, and those that do are more often than not trapped down rabbit holes, I think searching for 'an identity' more than they realize it.

This is populism. We (the crowd) make decisions on rough statements, headlines, a few words here and there, prejudices, assumptions etc.. Some of use a bit smarter than others, almost none of us see our blindspots.

What's the path from the masses on twitter and courts which will hear the case? Public opinion doesn't matter here. The case over the contract doesn't even have a jury if I understand correctly.

Public opinion doesn't matter with regards to winners/losers of the case. But public opinion matters from the perspective of Elon Musk continuing to build his brand and grow his fanbase.

Even if Elon Musk loses the court case, he still want to turn this whole charade into a positive for himself. IE: Fail upwards, etc. etc.

He believed he had "bought the dip" in stocks. He had bought 3bn worth, announced that he had bought some stock and made 1bn in a day on it - worlds smartest man everyone.

I know, if I buy 44bn worth then at this rate I will make many many billions ...

Once he realised he wasnt buying the dip but was actually holding the bag, deal cancelled. Best guess is he is down 10bn on where he bid so his loss-porn on this one is pretty sexy.

My personal theory, which more or less matches Matt Levine's theory from his Bloomberg opinion column...

Musk wanted special features on his Twitter account. He made a stink on Twitter about it, hoping to get more features as one of its most popular users. When that wasn't working, he tried to join the Board of Directors to lean heavily onto the CEO to grant special features on his Twitter account.

Upon realizing that the board position doesn't come with those kinds of benefits, Musk quit the board, bought 9% of Twitter, and tried to push these "special features on my account" proposal that way. Board still didn't budge.

Elon Musk, realizing he has to buy the company to actually get what he wants, starts to buy the company. Then the stock price collapses and its turning out to be a horrible loss. So Musk then starts to throw another tantrum to get out of this one.

------------

The benefits of this theory, is that this "story" proposed by Matt Levine makes every single decision of Elon Musk reasonable (albeit sociopathic, but reasonable and self-serving). From his tantrum in early March 2022 on Twitter, to his 9% buyout, to his flirting as a board member (and then quitting), to the eventual buyout.

It also doesn't require "4d chess thinking genius". Each decision, while reasonable, isn't really that advanced or difficult to follow individually.

Elon Musk just want special treatment on Twitter. I don't know what that "special treatment" is (maybe a bigger, bluer checkmark. Maybe guarantees on the global Twitter Timeline. Etc. etc. Something along those lines...), but special nonetheless.

And as a billionaire, Musk has a number of strategies at his disposal that you or I wouldn't have. Musk is willing to pursue those strategies because he's so rich, and its really not a big deal to his finances.

--------

It just fits so neatly to what has happened, that its the most reasonable proposal of his behavior for the past 6 months so far.

> He believed he had "bought the dip" in stocks. He had bought 3bn worth, announced that he had bought some stock and made 1bn in a day on it - worlds smartest man everyone.

> Once he realised he wasnt buying the dip but was actually holding the bag, deal cancelled.

But these concepts don't even apply to taking a company private. Once you do that, there is no stock price. You can't meaningfully claim that your stock is up or down. And what the stock does between when you agree to buy it and when you take possession isn't relevant to... anything.

You sign a contract saying "I promise to pay $20,000 for this car and I'll be back in 30 days".

---------

What happens if, within those 30 days, the car market collapses and the cars are now worth $15,000 ? Well, if you were an honest man, you'd still carry through with your $20,000 promised payment. If you were a dishonest man, you'd try to find a way around it.

Same thing here. Twitter's stock price has no relevance after Elon Musk buys it. But we all know that the 60% drop in Tech prices means that Twitter is *probably* down 60%+ like all other tech stocks.

Once you agree to buy the company, a drop in the stock price doesn't make you any worse off. Your circumstances are exactly the same. You are worse off relative to a counterfactual scenario in which you agreed to buy the company after the stock drop instead of before. But you are no worse off after the stock drops than you were before it dropped.

And this fact is not at all compatible with shapefrog's argument. Elon Musk didn't experience a loss. There is no bag for him to hold. He will experience a loss if he cancels the deal, but that's an unrelated scenario.

In your scenario, the car buyer can immediately benefit from canceling the contract by buying a car (from some other vendor) and pocketing the $5,000 difference. No such option is available in the case of Twitter.

I honestly don’t care, I’m not on either side. But this was not a house sale, and Musk wasn’t a crazy dude approaching a home owner. He had a lot of support from shareholders since day 1.

There are some exit clauses (like Musk not getting financing from his banks) but they don't apply here. Specifically, there's no exit clause for the bot percentage.

> If it was a promise it could be written on a hallmark card.

Are you just trying to change the meaning of the word promise? Most people would agree that if you break a promise you pay a price - it might be a social one in case of a promise between friends. Or it might be a financial price in case of a written & signed promise, a.k.a a contract.

Musk is actually obligated to buy the company at this point. It is unlikely the courts will fully attempt to force such a large purchase. But the penalty decided could be much higher than $1B.

The house was appraised and you signed a contract to buy it as-is. Then you take a hammer to every window and pipe then try to use that to negotiate a lower price.

Sorry, that is not how it works. It's clear that this is a continuation of Musk's feud with Twitter's management. His goal from the onset was to damage Twitter.

Is this true? My understanding is that the "crash" is inline with other tech companies losing value in the same period. IIRC (and I might not!), it only looks like Musk caused the crash if show only the Twitter price. Once you overlay it with some other stocks, it looks pretty normal.

It spiked because of his antics and then crashed because of his antics.

Twitter stock today ($42.52) is basically where it was at the beginning of the year ($42.66 on Jan 3), on April 1 ($39.31, right before it was disclosed that Musk was the single largest shareholder), and where it was on May 16 ($37.39, after most of the fallout of him pulling out).

Please let me know if another tech stock's price has jumps that are aligned with those events.

I'm having trouble finding a shareable link but it's clear he had an effect on the price when he made the offer and when he pulled out but, to me, TWTR appears to have gained in value compared to AMZN, GOOG and AAPL YTD.

The buyer is rich and if I side with the buyer maybe one day I'll be rich too!

There are authentic accounts on Twitter, but it is nowhere near as vibrant as it once was, there is far too much run by scripting on the site and not enough support and fair human moderation. Elon as well likely realized the market crash, and how much it would take to bring Twitter back to prominence (which is a risk either way) and then decided to back out. Even with major functional changes there is still a wild risk that Twitter can be too "burnt out" to bring a user base back in.

Just my opinion, but I think everyone is waiting for something totally new to replace Twitter, and it would cost a lot less than the Twitter acquisition fee to build a new app from scratch. (And no, "something new" does not mean TikTok or even Truth Social). :{

Other than that, I find twitter works as it always has, and I’m continually finding interesting new people to follow. If anything, I think twitter is the best it’s ever been at least for my hobbies (maker/hacker/diy type stuff).

I think it may involve what field you work in for perception of the matter, but a lot of others complain about botting in Crypto (etc) and a few other industries... I think on the inverse, there are still a lot of community issues that have affected everyone on the platform...

Has your account grown in followers over time? Do you interact well with other users on you account?

Many people have complained that organic growth/discovery has stalled and that interaction is low across the site for ages now to drive ad sales.

The clearest sign that something is suspect is constantly trending celebrity names when they have no new/real news involved.

The other indicator is accounts that have over 10k followers on them, nut every tweet they make has only 10 or less likes on it. They cover that activity up by retweeting others/old posts that have multiple likes on them.

I won't mention names, but just the other day I made a tweet about a news outlet reporting on a terrible homicide and the news outlet was using a celebrity's photo rather than a photo of a victim in the incident or no photo at all, and suddenly the celebrity artist's name started trending with tons of old posts retweeted and obviously simple (bot-like) posts were made tagging the artist's name to bury my comment out of view... It happened twice that day.

I am used to the dysfunction and subtle marketing tactics used on the site, not really anything worth protesting against any more.

Most of the deal is financed by banks and they have a vested interest in Twitter having at least a shot at being more valuable or profitable.

He is but it with cash but (mostly) not his own so deliberately running the company into the ground could make him liable for damages.

Those 2 goals are aligned.

It's more complicated. The incumbent management of Twitter are not the owners of Twitter.

Initially, Musk bought shares of Twitter on the open market from willing sellers (previous homeowners in your analogy).

Because of various regulations he could not just keep doing that, and instead had to go via the complicated takeover route.

Twitter's incumbent management is a bit like the janitor in an apartment block, not the homeowner.

(Just to be clear, I am not making any moral arguments here. And when in doubt, I defer to whatever Matt Levine says on the topic.

I have opinions on 'hostile' takeovers, but this comment is not trying to express any opinion on whether the 'janitor' should have a right to interfere with 'homeowners' who are willing to sell.)

Are you referring to Twitter management also holding shares? Or some other aspect?

For my argument, it's perfectly fine if some shareholders are also employees. In their role as shareholders, they would still be selling voluntarily (or not selling, as the case may be).

TLDR: The worlds richest man, insecure about his wealth decided to show off and failed due to a lack of wealth. To somehow save face he claims that his change of heart is not financially motivated.

Lesson, no one in this world is above being insecure about their wealth or status. It just happened to the worlds richest dude.

So the manner in which they conduct their private business, which is well within the rule of law, makes them ineligible for protection from those violating securities and contract law?

GP said he doesn't feel sorry for them. He said nothing about legal protections being inapplicable to Twitter. You just brazenly made this up out of whole cloth.

So at this point, pending adjudication, Twitter has not been “denied protection.” The court is the protection. The two parties are suing each other, and the court will decide the appropriate remedies for whatever each of the parties has been “denied” due to any willful breach of contract by the other.

This is a phrase right out of this playbook. No thank you.

https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-an...

Twitter's not trying to keep gender critical viewpoints a secret, or remove them from anywhere outside of twitter.

I don't want to fuss about what counts as "censorship" or not. That's not productive.

Bald-facedly denying censorship is certainly not intellectually productive, might I suggest you simply stop doing that?

https://www.businessinsider.com/truth-social-is-shadow-banni...

Twitter is full of very prominent hard-right voices. Douglas Murray! Charles Murray! Tucker Carlson! Dave Rubin! Ben Shapiro! Edit: Bannon! Paul Joseph Watson! Jack Posobiec!

I'd encourage you to read this thread about moderation on social media platforms from the former CEO of Reddit: https://twitter.com/yishan/status/1514938507407421440

Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?

Con: LOL no...no not those views

Me: So....deregulation?

Con: Haha no not those views either

Me: Which views, exactly?

Con: Oh, you know the ones

https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/105039166355267174...

And you really need to explain how that proves your point about twitter. In general, if someone makes a really dumb response to you, that doesn't prove you right about anything. And if your argument is "twitter has bad comments" then a bad comment on HN doesn't prove that right.

It’s okay for some opinions to be suppressed in most places! Some opinions are almost universally considered to be bad, there are some really easy & gross examples that I think most of us can think of. Some are considered bad in a particular context.

The ones you mentioned are great examples of reasonable policy:

- banning covid misinformation to reduce deaths is good, look up “herman cain awards” to see some of the damage the misinfo has done

- banning harassment in the form of misgendering / deadnaming is good

Every rule that has ever existed for people is enforced with some degree of selectivity, if nobody reports a tweet there won’t be action. Posters and moderators are human, reported tweets are probably mostly different from one another and every human doing reviews is different.

It’s okay if your opinion is that a website or all websites should have no moderation based on opinions or anything at all. But Twitter disagrees and I’d guess most people do too!

Reality is not harassment. If somebody is upset they can't control someone's else words or perception, they can go to therapy about it. This remains true even if you invent a couple of dumb words to describe the words or perceptions that upset you, like 'deadnaming' or 'misgendering'.

There is a difference between deliberate selectivity based on ideology, clearly and nakedly what twatter does, and simple errors and human variability.

Yes, I'm entirely free to think anything I want and disparage any website or any other group\institution of people for not agreeing with me, and being happy that dumb anti-free-speechers are dragged to court and toyed with for months. What I don't understand is how your dumb role-playing of an imagined strawman of me in your first reply says anything about me or my opinions.

The contract states the place of the law. Specifically: in the Delaware Chancery Court. The contract also states the time and conditions of the contract.

Have you read the contract? Its public. Furthermore, the date of the court case has been set for October. It seems unlikely that Delaware law is going to change dramatically between then and now.

And doesn't the US legal system allow for escalation to the Supreme Court, which can override lower courts? So technically whatever the Delware Court is not the final say on whatever happens.

>Trial date set to October

This is so so awesome, I will get to see Twatter defenders rage and fume for 2 more months? ^__^

There's no twist or turn of the law I can possibly imagine between today, and October, in the Delaware Court of Chicanery.

There is a reason why contract laws are written to be argued in this court. Its considered one of the most straightforward courts in the entire country, with legal expertise / judges who specialize in corporate contract law.

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But sure, I'm all ears. What kind of "surprise legal twist" do you think will happen over the next 2 months? I really don't think its too complicated of a court case. Its just fun / fascinating to watch from the perspective of internet celebrities.

In any case: the time has been set. October 2022. The location has been set, Delaware Court of Chicanery. The arguments have been set: we know what Elon is seeking to argue, and we know what Twitter is seeking to argue. Not much else to hypothesize here, really.

If you're not a lawyer, this has 0 value. If you're not a highly paid team of several top lawyers, this has less than 0 value. Their entire profession is to spin circles around common sense or naive reasoning, so just wait and see. Law is harder than you think. Don't Dunning-Kruger your way into a highly complex domain, it never works.

>What kind of "surprise legal twist" do you think will happen over the next 2 months

By my own admission, I'm not a lawyer. So I don't understand why you think you or me can answer or predict this question better than those studying for decades and highly paid for months to think about it.

* "There's a good argument for Elon Musk's side of the case out there, floating between Earth and Venus if only you'd look at it".

* "Oh, I'm not an astronomer, you shouldn't expect me to point out this teapot to you or tell you where it is".

Okaaaaaaaay. But that's not how discussions work in practice. I put forth the best arguments I'm aware of, and you put for the best arguments you've thought of, then we both evaluate the evidence for ourselves. That's... normally how discussions work.

If you're not interested in the legal minutia, then you don't have to discuss them with me? I'm not saying I'm a perfectly good lawyer myself (indeed, I'm an engineer). But there's value in the struggle to understand these things, even things outside of my field.

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The legal arguments for this case so far, are actually really simple. You don't need to be a lawyer to understand:

1. That the Court of Delaware has been chosen.

2. That the judge (Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick) has been chosen. She has set the date on October 2022. Her history of cases is public and well known.

3. The contract in question is public, well known, and well discussed.

All of these items are publicly available to you and me. Maybe I'll get some facts wrong, as I struggle to understand the case, but we're not exactly in rocket-science level or PH.D levels of legal theory here yet.

You're seemingly trying to make some kind of weird... meta-Argument like this is too complicated to understand? But its actually really simple so far.

>If you're not interested in the legal minutia

How can I be interested in that which I don't even know ? I'm neither interested nor disinterested, I simply don't know. This doen't require a big brain to understand.

>The legal arguments for this case so far

Those are not arguments, what you listed are the facts of the case. Some of them are even 'future facts' that have not happened yet, but are scheduled to happen with high (but not certain) probability. All of those facts are and will be subject to the experience and argumentation of a team of lawyers who spent the last decades learning and practicing how to extract the most favorable interpretation out of any set of facts, and dismiss and trivialize those facts which can't be interpreted favorably.

Here is a game you can play with a person you know : Tell the person to select N public cases at random from a source you are not allowed to read. For each case, the person should tell you the facts of the case but not a single argument from the trial, the facts include anything known about the case prior to the trial. See if you can guess which party will win the case. How many cases out of N you think you will get correct on average ? You will not exceed 40%.

>All of these items are publicly available to you and me.

The entire history of China is publicly available to anyone with an internet connection, can anyone be a foreign diplomat to China ? A vast trove of medical and biological information is publicly available to anyone, can anyone be a doctor or even an assistent to one ?

Facts are not knowledge. Books are not knowledge. Records are not knowledge. These are "String Representations" of knowledge, crystallized and ossified remains of true knowledge, which are the mental representations inside the brains of people who studied and thought hard about the domain. You're not going to replicate those mental representations simply by reading their dead remains, you can say something, it's just not going to be very useful or truthful.

For someone "neither interested nor disinterested", you're making a lot of posts about this subject matter.

Don't you think that if you're in a topic posting about the Twitter vs Elon Musk court case, that you should at very least _PRETEND_ to have interest in this case? Or what are you trying to do to me, just waste my time with these replies of yours?

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I'm not saying you have to be _correct_ in your posts. All I'm asking is for you to be interested enough to seek the truth in the case before you write up a post.

Your statement was "If you're not interested in the legal minutia", and I replied that I'm neither interested nor disinterested, *in the legal minutia*.

I'm mildly interested in the outcome of case itself, namely my preferred outcome is that of Twitter losing as much value as possible and its users lose as much of their time and peace of mind as possible. I don't particualrly care how much Musk loses or wins.

This still doesn't need to imply I need to be interested in legalities. You can perfectly well be interested in your health without being interested in medicine and biology, you're interested in the 'what', not the 'how'; in the ends, not the means. I'm interested in a prticular outcome for a legal case, but not interested (and not necessarily disinterested either) in the legal intricacies of a country I don't live in when I'm not a lawyer.

>that you should at very least _PRETEND_ to have interest in this case

I don't need to pretend, I *am* interested in a very narrow thing about that case, namely that of twitter losing or signficantly suffering damage at least. I don't have to be interested in every single thing about that case to participate in the discussion, I mostly care about 1 thing and stated it very clearly all of my comments.

>All I'm asking is for you to be interested enough to seek the truth in the case before you write up a post.

I did read up 1 expert talk about Musk's legal chances posted here about 2 weeks ago, and he did give Musk low chances of winning according to several reasons I found convincing, but - like a true expert - he also acknowledged that he is (1) Not Musk's legal team or any one of them (2) Not in possesion of the full facts since he is not a party of the dispute or the judge (3) That there is enough stake on the matter, billions of dollars and reputation, that the judge can significantly hesitate and not be as straightforward as her history implies.

So that's enough for me to still have reasonable hopes that my preferred outcome is going to happen.

This topic is legal minutia of Twitter's counter-argument to Elon Musk's legal-claims. The very topic of discussion, is Musk's bot analysis tool behind his legal claims. (Which is beginning to look a lot like bullshit).

> Twitter says Musk’s spam analysis used tool that called his own account a bot

The topic of discussion. Are you interested in this topic or not? Do you have something relevant (not necessarily correct, but at least __relevant__) to the stated topic at hand?

Because as far as I can tell, you're just interested in publicly declaring that you're ignoring the topic of discussion.

But the topic of the super comment we're both arguing in reply to is "Who could possibly be on the side of Musk", i.e. a question about the relative sympathy both sides of the legal dispute evoke. My reply to that, the one this entire sub-thread is a reply to, is that Musk evokes greater sympathy, because of how twatter abuses their power and position as a social media monopoly and how much this harms online conversations. So, in this particular scope, you're the one who is actually off-topic, my reply was about who I'm more sympathetic to.

>Do you have something relevant (not necessarily correct, but at least __relevant__) to the stated topic at hand

Do you mean the bot issue ? it's probably bullshit. Every social media cesspool is full of bots, some more, some less. There is no reason to think twatter is any better or worse on that particular front. It's probably instagram who's the filthiest bot playground.

I think its pretty obvious that Musk will try to milk every single point, fair or not, to improve his position in the court. Bullshit or not, it ties up important resources out of twatter's legal team and gives legitimacy to his claims (because if you spend several lawyers trying to debunk bullshit, then you at least take that bullshit seriously, which gives legitimacy to the bullshit).

So I don't understand what to discuss, Musk bullshitted ? no shit, he's billions-of-dollars committed to the case now, off course he's going to bullshit and do whatever it takes to win. What's interesting or novel about that ?

It's fine to have your own personal bias here. We all do. But at a minimum, discussing why we hold those views is beneficial for both of us.

If you are just anti-twitter then that's good that you are admitting that. It at least gives me something to work with from a discussion point of view. But ideally, you should be discussing why Twitters argument here is wrong and why you think they'd lose this court battle.

That would imply I want him to win, when in reality I just want twitter to lose. I don't particularly care what happens to Musk, I just want him to deal maximum damage to twitter, at whatever cost to him it takes.

>It's fine to have your own personal bias here. We all do. But at a minimum, discussing why we hold those views is beneficial for both of us.

I did say why I hate twitter and want them to lose this case: they are a bunch dumb anti-free-speechers who coddle certain groups and ban others arbitarily, and on top of that their terrible poisonous platform is not conducive to intelligent speech.

>why Twitters argument here is wrong and why you think they'd lose this court battle.

I don't have a particulary strong expectation that they will lose, indeed if anything their legal position is stronger than Musk, as the experts are fond of saying. My hope is that they will underestimate Musk and do something dumb that will hurt their position and force a favorable concession that will hurt them more. Even if they win, that might anger or humiliate Musk so much that he destroys twitter out of anger, this is still fine by me.

First Google hit for "delaware chancery court appeal":

"The Supreme Court is the State's appellate court which receives direct appeals from the Court of Chancery, the Superior Court, and the Family Court"

For best experience, read it with the Benny Hill theme in a background tab.

It’s almost impossible for a seller to misrepresent anything material in that situation.

But if you have evidence to the contrary, please post.

Although in this case, contrary to what it's arguing, Twitter doesn't actually want the marriage to happen. It just wants to keep the $1B engagement ring.

There are basically two categories of Twitter shareholders: Those who are invested in the business's long-term success, and those who could care less about the business and want to dump the stock as soon as they can get a good price for it.

Right now, the latter category want the sale to go through so they can divest; they don't care if Twitter burns to the ground afterward.

But what is the outcome that people invested in Twitter's long-term success actually want? Twitter's lawyers are arguing that Musk is an incompetent businessman who made a really terrible knee-jerk decision, and in the same breath they're saying that he should be compelled to be made Twitter's new owner -- an unwilling, incompetent owner who will likely tank the business even if he doesn't make any more stupid decisions, just by virtue of how this all played out.

These people, one would think, would prefer to get the $1B parting fee and be done with Musk, even if that means passing up on the potential for a short-term gain that an outright sale might give them.

Similarly, in a romance, whatever short-term benefits you might get by having a wedding, they're never going to be worth the trouble if it means marrying a terrible person.

In many ways they are like Amnesty International in that no matter which human rights issue they report on, there will be a contingent that says, well everything else you says is true, but the stuff you said about me is completely wrong and you've loss all credibility.

It is a hard spot to be in trying to be neutral in a world of actors who only want the other side criticized or censored and never themselves.

I am glade I do not have such a role. I wouldn't be able to take the constant flak from all directions for actions or inaction.

Do you have a link of an example of what you say ? Were the people in those linked example not banned at the time? On average, how many people calling your precious "trans people" pedophiles and groomers are banned vs. how many of the trans people themselves get banned when they say things equivalent or far worse ?

It's mindblowing to me how the most coddled and put-on-a-pedestal group in public discourse is complaining about censorship and unfair treatment. They literally ban people for not using pronouns. It's honestly laughable.

I'm not going to acknowledge the second paragraph because it's just hilariously out of touch with reality.

If the Project Veritas videos are anything to go by then there's not much attention being given to the day job in the first place.

Twitter has done terrible harm to society and whatever and whoever does it harm, it’s doing a good job in my book.

I don't know. It just strikes me as weird as forcing someone to buy something that they don't want to own or run. Especially after fighting it for months and even adopting a poison pill.

Imagine if you agreed to buy a house for $1 million and the housing market crashes and the house is worth $500k. And now multiply those values by 50,000. Why wouldn't you try to get out of the deal?

After they signed a contract to do so... and that is the entire purpose of writing up the contract.