Filing: Elon Musk acquires a 9.2% stake in Twitter, worth ~$2.89B at Friday's market close, becoming its largest shareholder; Twitter shares rise 27.2%
You may have already heard the news that shocked the internet yesterday... Michelle Chapman / TIME : Elon Musk Will Join Twitter's Board of Directors Yashu Gola / Cointelegraph : Elon Musk's Twitter investment puts a 150% rally into play for Dogecoin Alex Gatewood / KnowTechie : Elon Musk might finally bring an edit button to Twitter Fred Lambert / Electrek : Elon Musk joins Twitter's board, but it caps his ownership of the social media to 15% to avoid hostile takeover Silicon Canals : After becoming Twitter's largest shareholder, Elon Musk asks followers if they want an edit button: Here are some of his other viral tweets Sam Shead / CNBC : Twitter shares jump after Elon Musk takes board seat Reuters : Tesla's Musk may add to SEC ire with late report about Twitter stake Liz Wolfe / Reason : Elon Musk Buys 9.2% of Twitter, Mysteriously Polls Users About State of Free Speech Florence Muchai / Cryptopolitan : Elon Musk triggers a 10% Dogecoin spike after his $3b stakes in Twitter Matthew Humphries / PCMag : Elon Musk Asks If We Want a Twitter Edit Button Olivia Brooke / CoinGape : Elon Musk Triggers Another Spike In Dogecoin (DOGE) Price Tyler Esguerra / Dot Esports : Tesla CEO Elon Musk might be bringing an edit option to Twitter after joining company's board of directors Maurice Frank / 20 Percent Berlin : #62: Cheap BVG, Russian demo, NFT fest, fertility app Rob Thubron / TechSpot : Twitter majority shareholder Elon Musk asks followers if they want an edit button Fossbytes : Elon Musk's ‘Twitter Takeover’ Begins With A Poll For The Edit Button Victoria Batchelor / Bloomberg : Musk Polls Twitter Users on Edit Button After Taking 9.2% Stake Vlad Savov / Bloomberg : Musk, Twitter CEO Wade Straight Into Old Debate Over Edit Button Tweets: Elon Musk / @elonmusk : Do you want an edit button? Parag Agrawal / @paraga : The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully. https://twitter.com/... Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : A lot of people are underestimating the abuse potential of an edit button. Recently looked at a massive cryptocurrency scam that was supported by automated editing of a verified FB page's posts to create a legit-looking brokerage. The abuse state diagram here is massive. Elon Musk / @elonmusk : Oh hi lol @boztank : @Liz_Wheeler @elonmusk We solved this on Facebook a long time ago. You just include an indicator that it has been edited along with a change log. If you are really worried about embeds they can point to a specific revision in that history but with a link to the latest edit. Not a real issue. Ben Thompson / @benthompson : Elon Musk has already made ~$750 million on his Twitter trade, which is approximately double Twitter's net income for the last 3 years. Mahir Zeynalov / @mahirzeynalov : For weeks, Elon Musk trashed Twitter and then purchased nearly $3B worth of Twitter shares for a low price on Friday. Since Friday, he made close to a billion dollars on the back of Twitter. Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : The set of people who want an edit function is a proper subset of people who think trust and safety is easy and if techies were just more ethical/smarter (like them) then it could all be solved. Piers Morgan / @piersmorgan : 🤣 Got to love this guy.. a genius maverick who speaks his mind, takes risks, loves stirring things up and really seems to enjoy his life. We should all be more like Mr Musk. https://twitter.com/... Tim O'Brien / @timobrien : .@elonmusk isn't in Twitter for the $$ - though he's already made about $1 billion on paper. He invested in Twitter to push it around — and that should worry free speech advocates. (Musk fashions himself a free speech purist, but bullies critics.) https://www.bloomberg.com/... Mike Solana / @micsolana : “sorry it's a private company, it can do whatever it wants” *elon musk buys twitter and does freedom* “wait no not like that” Alex Stamos / @alexstamos : A realistic social media simulator with tunable product design, user behavior and content moderation would be super useful as well as educational for those with a bumper sticker understanding. ("Free speech network!" “It's all surveillance capitalism!” “It's the algorithm!") @turnernovak : Elon is Twitter's top creator and owns 9.2% of the company Living the web3 dream in web2 Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : If Twitter is gonna implement the edit button, can they at least keep the edit history around and make it obvious when the Tweet has been edited? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : If I wrote a script about the world's richest man being a shitposter, people would have said “sorry, too unbelievable.” Anyway, as I wrote, Twitter isn't a science challenge, it's a human/social one, and Musk has shown zero capabilities on that front. https://www.techdirt.com/... https://twitter.com/... Liz Wheeler / @liz_wheeler : @elonmusk Here's my argument against an edit button: What if a tweet goes viral, lots of retweets & millions of impressions, & then the author completely changes the meaning? Not just a grammatical fix, but a TOTAL ideological change? Or shameless self-promote? Austen Allred / @austen : I think everyone calling it a “passive” position is probably technically correct but practically wrong. There's no such thing as a truly passive biggest individual shareholder. Representative Mike Loychik / @mikeloychik : Elon Musk just became Twitter's largest shareholder. He should buy Facebook next.
Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
Musk’s initially disclosed passive stake was quickly followed by a board appointment that capped his ownership at 14.9%, framing the investment as governed influence rather than an immediate takeover bid. The subsequent record shows that constraint did not settle the ownership question: Musk later made a proposal to buy all outstanding Twitter shares.
A lot of people are underestimating the abuse potential of an edit button. Recently looked at a massive cryptocurrency scam that was supported by automated editing of a verified FB page's posts to create a legit-looking brokerage. The abuse state diagram here is massive.
@Liz_Wheeler @elonmusk We solved this on Facebook a long time ago. You just include an indicator that it has been edited along with a change log. If you are really worried about embeds they can point to a specific revision in that history but with a link to the latest edit. Not a…
For weeks, Elon Musk trashed Twitter and then purchased nearly $3B worth of Twitter shares for a low price on Friday. Since Friday, he made close to a billion dollars on the back of Twitter.
A realistic social media simulator with tunable product design, user behavior and content moderation would be super useful as well as educational for those with a bumper sticker understanding. ("Free speech network!" “It's all surveillance capitalism!” “It's the algorithm!")
The set of people who want an edit function is a proper subset of people who think trust and safety is easy and if techies were just more ethical/smarter (like them) then it could all be solved.
🤣 Got to love this guy.. a genius maverick who speaks his mind, takes risks, loves stirring things up and really seems to enjoy his life. We should all be more like Mr Musk. https://twitter.com/...
.@elonmusk isn't in Twitter for the $$ - though he's already made about $1 billion on paper. He invested in Twitter to push it around — and that should worry free speech advocates. (Musk fashions himself a free speech purist, but bullies critics.) https://www.bloomberg.com/...
I think everyone calling it a “passive” position is probably technically correct but practically wrong. There's no such thing as a truly passive biggest individual shareholder.
If Twitter is gonna implement the edit button, can they at least keep the edit history around and make it obvious when the Tweet has been edited? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
If I wrote a script about the world's richest man being a shitposter, people would have said “sorry, too unbelievable.” Anyway, as I wrote, Twitter isn't a science challenge, it's a human/social one, and Musk has shown zero capabilities on that front. https://www.techdirt.com/...…
@elonmusk Here's my argument against an edit button: What if a tweet goes viral, lots of retweets & millions of impressions, & then the author completely changes the meaning? Not just a grammatical fix, but a TOTAL ideological change? Or shameless self-promote?
On the one hand this is *very* bad news, on the other hand if he kills Twitter maybe? We'll finally figure out how to get people onto Mastodon en masse https://twitter.com/...
Can he do anything with that? Perhaps not directly. But Elliot Management, the activist investor that reportedly led the campaign to push Jack out, owns 4% of the company. It does carry real weight. Especially if he can get other shareholders on board with him.
Elon about to learn that content moderation at scale is a harder problem than launching rockets and landing them again. One of those two things is impossible. https://www.theverge.com/...
The Boring Company happened because Musk was mad at traffic, right? His Twitter stake seems like an attempt to... influence a platform where he spends a lot of time?? It's baffling.
Considering how much of my life I have spent writing or thinking about both Musk and social media you would think I had a take on him taking a stake in Twitter but I can't come up with anything more complicated than “he likes to take a stab at things that affect him personally”
Why make your own social media platform when you can buy one? This is quite a fascinating move by @elonmusk right out of last season's @succession playbook. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
March 14: Elon Musk acquires over 5% of TWTR. March 24: 13G filing was due. March 25: Musk poll about Twitter. Consequences “important.” Apr 4: Musk files 13G 11 days late. Claims he is passive despite clear intent to influence Twitter management. https://twitter.com/...
Just take the simplest possible case: spam. No one likes it! But private companies are able to filter unsolicited commercial mail in ways the Postal Service cannot, because the USPS is bound by the First Amendment. Does filtering spam come under the “principles of free speech”?