Elon Musk Buys $3 Billion Stake in Twitter
Elon Musk – a prominent lockdown sceptic and free speech proponent – has bought a 9.2% stake in social media platform Twitter worth nearly $3 billion U.S. dollars. Guido Fawkes has more.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has bought a $2.89 billion stake in Twitter, making him the largest outside shareholder in the social media firm, not long after criticising the company for failing to uphold the tenets of free speech.
Musk now owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, which represents a 9.2% passive stake in the company, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing released this morning. The stake is worth $2.89 billion, based on Twitter’s closing price on Friday. The stock has shot up some 25% in pre-market trading.
This comes less than two weeks after Musk criticised the company, polling people on Twitter about whether Twitter adheres to free speech principles. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” Musk tweeted. “What should be done?”
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It could be good news. I’m very unsure what to make of Elon Musk.
I’m increasingly of the view Musk is a bored guy with the cash to indulge in every passing whim. I don’t think there is much more to him than that. A less socially retarded Bill Gates basically.
Yeah. He’s a bit of a strange one alright. Difficult to pin down but there’s something off about him.
What a shame Jeffrey Epstein can’t tell us his opinion of Musk.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeffrey-epstein-dinner-bezos-elon-musk-bill-gates-report-2011-2019-9?r=US&IR=T
Musk claims Ghislaine Maxwell was only photobombing him when this photo was taken:
Is she fancy dressed as the mermaid who marries the penguin?
She gets where a fart wouldn’t
He’s a WEF alumnus….
I think he is one of the greatest living geniuses.
He is a genius at getting other people (politicians) to give him other people’s money (taxpayers’).
At all else, he is decidedly mediocre.
The Subsidy Truffle Hound and Pretengineer.
Do tell: WHY???
Why is it when people do the right thing there are so many ready to pounce? I never understood this concept.
Well, I’m not sure exsctly how much clout a 10% stake in a large cap listed company like Twitter gives you. I suspect quite a bit.
So I guess we’ll find out pretty soon how committed he is to free speech.
In the UK his hands are tied because the online harms bill will force Twitter to censor things whether they want to or not.
It’s enough that you can get the CEO on the phone whenever you want. You’re going to need other shareholders to support you though if you want to make board changes or strategy changes.
I think the problem is that if the tech companies have signed deals with the US government that essentially means they have to do their bidding or face confiscation of personal assets and/or 20 years in jail, (as per RFK book and other sources), then what changes can he make?
In order to avoid profanity, my idea of him is that of a jerk chicken who got very rich in seriously dubious ways, just with the chicken, which is entirely innocent of this, removed. 🙂
You could make some pretty potent hash brownies out of him, I’d imagine.
Exactly my thoughts. I think it’s just a case of wait and see.
Mr Elon Reeve Musk is a dangerous, intelligent crook.
He doesn’t give a DAMN about free speech.
Research what he did to Laurence Fossi, Martin Tripp, Martin Eberhard, Vern Unsworth, the list goes on and on.
The SEC has forbidden him to declare that he did not commit securities fraud (“going private” tweet about the Saudis buying Tesla). Why the SEC didn’t get him convicted… Well, I think we can all guess.
It’s another rabbit hole, if you need one.
After reading this I am too!
https://ia802301.us.archive.org/11/items/gov.uscourts.cand.359812/gov.uscourts.cand.359812.76.3.pdf
I don’t think Twitter could become worse or that Musk would buy this huge percentage of shares to simply protect the company and allow it to continue as is.
But, like others, I’m unsure what to think about this.
I wish someone like Musk would start a competitor for Facebook, which really is – or could be or should be – “the town square.”
What to make of Elon Musk? If you said what to make of Boris Johnson, Rochelle Wallensky, Joe Biden I could understand your concern.
What is the significance of being a passive shareholder.
It’s something to tell the monopoly investigators.
Actually that’s a joke because nowadays they hardly exist. Google has its tentacles practically everywhere.
Indeed, I’d expect regulatory capture is now baked into the system. You’d only get into the “regulation” game if you couldn’t pass the interview to get into Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet or Meta, but still fancied receiving a slice of their profits one way or another.
Twitter is actually pretty small fry by those standards. It’s a loss making (and user losing) company that’s never really explained how it plans to monetise itself beyond “We have eyeballs. You want eyeballs?”
I hope Twitter goes bust when Musk meets his nemesis, which can’t be far off. Space travel and cryptocurrency – like yeah, right. And tulip bulbs too?
Musk will hopefully end up in prison. After all, when he got fined $40m for deliberately misleading investors, he said his action had been “worth it”. I’d call that sentence far too mild and a failure of the justice system. It’s not good for justice to have a criminal swanning about saying the crime he committed was easily worth the paltry penalty that the judge made him pay.
Musk advocates “free speech” so hard that he calls a man (Vern Unsworth) a paedophile just because the other guy said Musk was engaged in a PR stunt rather than really trying to do what was best to rescue some boys who were stuck in a cave. What kind of moron reaches for an insult of that kind when he wants to express frustration at somebody? And don’t forget the classic that Musk loves “free speech” so much that he will allow his son to “choose his own gender”.
Take the son into care.
Jail the father.
Liquidate Tesla and Twitter.
Job done.
Mmm. SpaceX is dependent on US government funds, and Tesla still makes a whopping loss per car and makes it back selling eco-indulgences to real car makers.
Either way, what Musk is best at is spotting a way to divert taxpayer money into his own accounts.
It’s oh soooo refreshing to be amongst people who see the reality of soooo many things. It gives me hooope!
Sceptics rool OK
The US government are using his rockets to get them into space and up to the space station, so I understand, so he is on a winner there, as long as none of his rockets explode before they get the job done – so far, so good, it seems to me. The problem of the Tesla cars is the cost of replacing the batteries, once the first set die, after a year or two and of course charging them up on a frequent basis with not enough power points to do that, in the street. Replacement batteries about US$21,000 – well on the way to buying a new Tesla and who wants a defunct Tesla, when the batteries need replacing anyway – I don’t see any trade in value there at all. The other thing with Tesla’s is their ability to catch fire and once they go up, from an electrical fault, there is no way for the fire to be put out, until the Tesla burns itself out and presumably leaves a hole in the ground. Saw a video of firemen trying to put an electrical fire out – nothing worked on it, water, chemicals, nothing – so then… Read more »
Thanks, Star. Absolutely spot on. We agree on Elon Musk, Tesla etc.
Well, I was hoping that Trump would have been doing the rest of his life in prison, by now and look where that hope got me.
‘If anyone’s going to control free speech, it’s going to be me!’ said Elon Musk, without so much as opening his mouth….
The answer is simple: It ought to operate as utility, ie, provide a policy-free service. But Twitter isn’t really the problem. The problem is people who’d love to patrol streets and public (and preferably also private) places of assembly to punish those who make statements they disapprove of who – as they’re not allowed to do that – patrol popular WWW locations instead based on the claim that this must surely be something completely new and different and inherently very dangerous and hence, it must be censored in the name of the greater good.
Aside: I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had already come up with the justification that speech may well be free but that publically accessible writings are obviously (!!1) something else altogether.
Twitter shouldn’t be able to claim platform exemptions whilst exercising publisher powers.
Exactly. And that applies to all the rest – facebook and whatever the others are called.
That’s the crux of the political deal Twitter (and also, Facebook) have with various public and formally non-public authorities: They must police so-called harmful content in exchange for being allowed to claim they’re not publishers. And that’s the whole problem. But said authorities and would-be authorities should have no more rights to police communication on the internet than they have rights to police communication anywhere else.
This is actually historically typical: Censorship of books, plays and newspapers was abolished in the Weimar republic. But movies were censored, as they were something new and thus, regarded as dangerous and in need of government oversight because of that.
if you want to control it and make it your baby – buy it.
Just as Gates has done with the WHO and World MS Media!
Blimey, when I drunk-buy something, it’s generally some cheap motorcycle tat on eBay. I really need to up my game.
Yup. And you lose money as well – Musk’s purchase shot up in value as the shares rocketed on the news. He’s another billion quid or so richer! 😂
Tennis world shocked after scores of players drop out of Miami Open
https://freewestmedia.com/2022/04/02/tennis-world-shocked-after-scores-of-players-drop-out-of-miami-open/
Fifteen players have already dropped out of the Miami Open, an unprecedented number for a major sports event.
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The Climate Catastrophe must be hitting Miami particularly hard.
Yes, it’s underwater now due to rising sea levels.
I know they make tennis balls that bounce better in wet conditions, but that would be asking a lot.
Miami is in Lockdown dodging Florida. It must be that!
Well, of course, because remember that your vaccine only works if I get vaccinated too.
But why did they drop out?
Great move by Musk. The lefties will be spitting out their soy-boy lattes if he cancels their accounts for a couple of months to teach them a lesson about the importance of free speech.
Yes I’m not too sure about Elon..however he did have a relationship with quite an alternative musician (Grimes) and appears to love his child/children. This affectionate side is very lacking in the Schwabs,Gates,Soros, Blairs, Johnsons’ (not even sure he remembers how many kids he has?) of this world.
So anyone who has shown a bit of human affection by definition cant be all bad?
This is the second best thing that could happen to Twitter, behind it ceasing to have ever existed.
.
I think its good news, Musk has been an advocate of free speech, I bet ya he will now be pulling the fact checkeckers and the censors out on their ears. Next stop he needs to destroy facebook and Youtube
Your hope is misplaced. He wants Twitter to be his mouthpiece.
I’m supportive. He’s been sending cryptic messages for quite some time now (“move to signal”, the “red pill” tweet. Dorsey himself tweeted just before the announcement that “centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame and regret it”. Perhaps the recent warmongering in Ukraine has really opened their eyes to what type of people they are aiding.
I can’t make up my mind if Musk is a good guy or a bad guy, where I see Bill Gates as a bad guy.
What is your take on him?
Perhaps he will do the same with other censorship platforms like Facebook. It is a start.