If you want a “propaganda spewing device” all you have to do is go to YouTube.
That’s a pretty ominous – even dystopian – view of the situation. I can’t see Musk having any interest in propagandizing anything other than himself.
My personal assessment – based on nothing except Musk’s public persona and general track record – is that the Twitter purchase (which he genuinely tried to back out of after it turned out that they (gasp!) took him seriously) was mainly for self-glorification on a grand scale, and secondarily because he’d make Big Money at it since he is, you know, a genius in every field.
People are gwtting their accounts suspended and restricted for changing their handle to “Elon Musk”, so I guess we now know where the standard for “free speech” is.
And the possible damage it could do to our currently fragile democracy until it gets switched off.
He is taking the company private, isn’t he? Where is is he going to find buyers for his shares?
I saw the same thing happen with Chris Kluwe (a former NFL punter with the Minnesota Vikings, and an MMORPG player) yesterday. The homepage for his account says:
What a quick transition – from “the Howard Hughes of his time” to “the late-era Howard Hughes of his time.”
This is fascinating to watch, in our time. In a weird true stories kind of way.
He inherited so much money that he can afford to fail a thousand times and still be able to keep investing until something finally pays big.
Most people get one big chance, if at all, and they’ll probably fail and then they’ll be done.
Remember he grew up in a household with so much money they couldn’t close the door to the safe.
… and then his dad impregnated his (basically) sister. It’s that kind of people he comes from.
He thinks he’s Tony Stark when he’s actually Gilderoy Lockhart.
Another thought occurs to me – if they actually try to go ahead with this $8/month blue check subscription plan within a week of taking a chainsaw to their staff, they’re going to become a Happy Hunting Ground for crooks looking to steal credit card numbers.
I saw someone call him “Phony Stark”, which feels fitting.
The fact a company is private doesn’t mean you can’t sell shares in it. Companies bring in investors all the time and sell them shares.
He’s going to have to try to get his money back somehow.
Now I’m not an expert in securities laws, but I suspect trying to sell someone stock in a company that is not publicly listed is a lot harder and requires more hoops to jump through to do legally compared to having those hoops automatically be needed to be jumped through when the company lists publicly. If the company stays private, they don’t need to get an audit, as I doubt any regulatory commission would require one of them. That’s a large expense that private companies can avoid if they want. But I don’t think you’re going to be able to sell shares privately without an audit. I’m sure there are other things, but I’m not an expert in this area.
Yes, companies do bring in outside investors into private companies all the time - that’s what the private equity market is - but they generally do so in various rounds of funding, when they comply with the securities laws as necessary. They can’t just randomly sell a few shares here and there. While he might be able to get a large valuation on an investment round if he manages to hype it up enough, private valuations are almost always lower than what the public valuation will be, given the illiquidity of the position. That’s a large reason why companies tend to go public eventually as they grow.
It’s going to be lot harder for the richest man in the world to swindle a handful of his fellow billionaires than it would be for him to float public shares.
So far, that’s the only affected person I can find. Others I know who have impersonated Musk (e.g. one of Patreon’s top 10 creators @JephJacques) seem to be unaffected.
I’m not saying he didn’t get suspended for impersonation, but it doesn’t seem they’re willing to actually push too hard on this.
Of course you can legally sell shares without an audit. Private transactions are far LESS scrutinized than public ones.
Now, whether or not anyone with a lot of money would buy a chunk of Twitter without insisting on an audit is quite another matter. But I didn’t say Musk was going to commit fraud. Inflating quarterly earnings with short term tactics isn’t illegal.
Propaganda from other countries is one revenue stream. User data being sold, especially that of dissenters, is another possibility.
Well, that’s dark. I’m not on Twitter. If a SM site were to sell data to a Kleptocracy would they have to disclose it, or could Putin just monitor Twitter and find out himself?
In reality, he put every nickel he made from Paypal into Tesla and SpaceX. Both were huge gambles, and succeeded largely because of Musk himself.
At one point, if the Falcon 1 had crashed one more time he would have been broke. He had invested everything he had into that rocket and was living in a small apartment. Luckily, the launch worked, and it allowed him to get a government contract (fee for service, not a handout or subsidy), which he then met and wass off to the races.
And once Falcon 1 was successful, he could have rested on that and built a nice traditional space company. Instead, he put it on the line again to build a reusable version. And when he got that working, he started immediately on Starship.
Any other space entrepreneur could have tried it. Bezos, Branson… But their vision was more constrained than his, and they lacked confidence in their own judgment so they hired others to run their companies for them, and wound up WAY behind.
When he bought Tesla, it was a small car company trying to electrify a Lotus Elise. That’s what the Tesla roadster was. They didn’t know how to build cars, and had to buy their batteries from others. It was Musk that turned Tesla into a massive auto manufacturer, and it was his insistence on vertical integration with battery production that kept Tesla from having the sourcing problems other car manufacturers have now.
Whatever Musk does with Twitter, he has already established himself as a once-in-a-lifetime visionary who has revolutionized multiple fields. And if Starship works, he’ll change the world and open up space to mankind as something other than a few robots and some people in low earth orbit.
Ironically, if he had just taken his Paypal money and spent it on hookers, blow and yachts, you guys wouldn’t have a problem with him. He aimed to do something better with his money, and he’s hated for it.
He’s also living proof of this famous quote from Robert Heinlein:
My understanding is that if there are fewer than 500 investors, you don’t have to make the SEC filings necessary for companies with more investors. Still, I can’t imagine making offers to others without putting some value on the company and that’s going to become public.