Elon Musk

as far as predicting what hell do i guess we can look at what hes done with his other businesses which is some sort of mix of extravagant lying in the media and shady accounting, to his credit hes been insanely successful with that approach

I mean yeah, he's successful in the same sense Trump is. which is a sense that's divorced from what we might think of *real* markers of success like, you know, doing things that are innovative or smart disruptive or actually delivering on any of your promises at all. I mean it's the same with crypto, you can make all the arguments and two-hour long videos you want explaining about how the stuff is idiotic & completely useless, but that only matters if "value" is a tangible thing, and in 2022 what's "valuable" is convincing people who spend 80% of their waking hours on social media that they're cool and smart and that everyone else sucks

Eventually, the house of cards comes down.

yeah i'm not doubting that he has a certain kind of genius, but buying twitter and putting up your car company as collateral is a dumb risk, even if it winds up working out.

I feel like we’re ramping up to the second Brosnan Bond flick, folks, the one with Michelle Yeoh

tbf tesla does make and sell actual cars which differentiates it from crypto which is just nothing, but yeah their certainly is a lot of hot air around both

yeah i'm not doubting that he has a certain kind of genius, but buying twitter and putting up your car company as collateral is a dumb risk, even if it winds up working out.

― in places all over the world, real stuff be happening (voodoo chili), Tuesday, April 26, 2022 11:54 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

saw someone who knows things about him call him the most risk tolerant person theyd ever encountered, which yeah thats prob not going to end well

just going to put this here...

"What is more, Musk has agreed to take out a risky $12.5 billion margin loan, secured against his stock of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), the electric-car maker that he leads, to pay for some of the $33.5 billion equity check. Were Tesla's stock to drop by 40%, he would have to repay that loan, a regulatory filing shows."

and then note that tesla is down 10.2% so far today.

that's from https://www.reuters.com/business/musk-tears-up-buyout-playbook-with-465-bln-twitter-financing-2022-04-22/

i mean he doesn't actually repay the loan. he just takes out another loan if that happens. but he's stretched!

i do think twitter might be difficult to accomplish the same stuff with because its a more mature business and it has an extremely high level of visibility and scrutiny

true for the content more or less, but their revenue is nearly entirely from the quasi-invisible and underscrutinized world of digital ads

And monetization of user data.

Melty but authoritative tech journo I know says ‘wait, he still has to pass due diligence and a shareholder vote, not so fast’ but OTOH was like, ‘he’s not buying it’ seconds before the announcement. 🤷🏻‍♀️

xp
yeah it's 89% ads, 11% data licensing

tesla is down 10.2% so far today.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, April 26, 2022 12:10 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQzMUM7WUAMly1w?format=jpg&name=medium

back of the envelope calculation, only googled quick facts that might not be accurate today
Elon has 17% of Tesla, at today's valuation, that's roughly $176 billion
twitter deal is for roughly $44 billion

margin loan is for $12.5 billion

if the payback is really 5x if he fails to pay it off... he's out $62.5 billion (probably off, considering he inked the margin deal at +10% stock price)

so he'd lose 35% of his Tesla stock

idk that still seems like a drop in the bucket

losing that much tesla stock makes him likely to lose even more wealth if the price drops

Each quarter, if Tesla meets certain revenue, earnings and stock price goals, Musk can earn up to two tranches of Tesla options from this award. The $70.01 per share Musk will have to pay to exercise these Tesla options is less than 10% of the company's closing stock price of $977.20 per share on Wednesday.

Nope, as long as Tesla makes money, which they seem to finally be doing, he gets stock at $70 and the current price is still hovering around $900

good work if you can get it

succession clip logan roy asks son kendall roy “is that why you’re paying a billion dollars for a gay little website?” pic.twitter.com/VzsaQmZhdt

— succession clips and reaction videos (@successionreact) April 26, 2022

Was wondering when the Succession refs were gonna start

Wait until X Æ A-Xii grows up

"I think people are recognizing that Elon Musk has created a lot of value for his companies by being unhinged on Twitter." @matt_levine got Chotiner'd but not in a bad way!!!! https://t.co/lZv0mzISj0

— Silvia Killingsworth (@silviakillings) April 26, 2022

max's take seems about right to me

https://maxread.substack.com/p/elon-musk-wont-fix-twitter-but-he

Agree. Max's key point:

"Elon Musk's experience with Twitter is that he tweets, and then, whatever he said, whatever the context, he becomes richer. Why would he do anything to change that?"

idk i dont think elon is buying twitter to keep it the same is a real strong theory

like he might not be buying it to change it but hes buying it for some reason

is max gonna come back too

he def thinks he can optimize it at the very least, which is change anyway even if its motivated admiration rather than distaste

i heard elon musk just bought gawker

"Granted, one reason that many commentators believe Musk is buying Twitter to "fix" its commitment to "free speech" is that he has said more or less that. What I am proposing here is that he is full of shit."

this is sound. the idea that he's buying it not to change it is a shakier leap but seems entirely plausible.

as in he's deliberately lying about making any "free speech" related changes or more that he'll merely announce some essentially meaningless tweaks to moderation policies and call it a day once he realizes what he's stepped in?

well, i think more that he is known to lie all the time about his plans and there's no reason to pay any attention to what he claims his plans are.

lol fair

why would he buy it to keep it the same does he think its gonna change so much that he wont be able to post, credit to max where its due twitter works good for musk and hes not going to do things to threaten that, but still his motivation for the buying it remains mysterious, maybe he just likes twitter so much he wants to have it hold it in his hands idk, i do suspect hes got some more businessy plan too tho

the free speech thing is transparently at least mostly bs tho i bet he does change the rules some maybe back to where they were a while ago when you were allowed to make death threats

but hes buying it for some reason

idk if you were actually formally allowed to make death threats but you at least could do it without censure

if i had to guess at his business ambitions for twitter id guess they lay at the nexus of thinking he can make it better and thinking he can pump and dump it

he’s doing it so he can slide into the dms of women not following him

xp problem is there's only one rich idiot willing to buy Twitter

xp self tho matt levine suggested a third use in that nyer interview i posted upthread which is using it to pump and dump other things, which of course is something elon has already done extensively but could do even more if he controlled the platform and had access to all its data

He might say, “Look, I get so much value out of this direct access to the public.” Owning that direct access to the public—owning that thing that creates so much value for Elon Musk and Tesla—it has to be valuable somehow, whether it’s by increasing the value that it creates for Tesla, or whether it’s by finding a way to monetize the value that it creates for sports stars and celebrities and Donald Trump and lots of other people. You know, Donald Trump’s tweets back when he was on Twitter could create billions or trillions of dollars’ worth of market moves, right? And Twitter never made a lot of money off of that. It’s not obvious how the company would, but if you’re sitting on top of a thing that can create that much value, surely, if you’re really smart then you can extract some value out of it.

problem is there's only one rich idiot willing to buy Twitter

― frogbs, Tuesday, April 26, 2022 3:55 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he could take it public again and rely on his arm of fans to buy it

he is actually on the record now about what he means by "free speech", and his definition is not maximally bad fwiw.

By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022

he definition seems idiotic, but it's not "twitter is now international waters"

twitter is maritime law

flying under the "I LOVE CRICKET: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX" flag of convenience

of course

reasonable point

"Far" is the (welcome! and valuable!) giveaway that this is essentially bullshit https://t.co/OBvRQsW1as

— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) April 26, 2022

eh, if musk were a careful writer i would agree, but i don't think a precise, word-level reading of musk tweets is a good use of scocca's time.