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Twitter adopts poison pill in bid to thwart Elon Musk takeover

36 points| ChainReaktion | 4 years ago |axios.com | reply

26 comments

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[+] axg11|4 years ago|reply
Elon’s views are extreme in the sense that no current and popular social media is being run with a light touch approach to moderation. I’m not sure how he plans to combat scams and bots, two issues which go against an absolutist free speech approach.

I do think Elon being closely involved with running Twitter is a net good. We’ve tried a lot of different approaches to social media, now perhaps it’s time to try laissez faire.

The unfortunate side effect of experimentation is that if Elon succeeds in a Twitter takeover, Twitter is both more likely to become much more successful, _and_ more likely to die. Right now Twitter is floating in between, a solid offering with few prospects for growth and unlikely to be superseded in the near future.

[+] mlindner|4 years ago|reply
> Elon’s views are extreme in the sense that no current and popular social media is being run with a light touch approach to moderation. I’m not sure how he plans to combat scams and bots, two issues which go against an absolutist free speech approach.

Bots can be shut off in a pretty easy way. Detect and prevent any kind of automation (something that randomly mangles the javascript/html to prevent scraping for example) and also completely delete the Twitter API that allows automated tweeting. Tweeting should only be done by humans.

Also auto IP bans of any "rapid" tweeting coming from any IP.

[+] mountainriver|4 years ago|reply
Elon taking over Twitter would be a good thing for Twitter and probably a bad thing for him.

Twitter is dying, and could probably use a fundamental revamp which Elon would provide. However Elon really has more important things to worry about.

[+] mlindner|4 years ago|reply
As a fan of Elon I completely agree on your second point. Tesla and SpaceX are WAAAY more important for the future than Twitter.
[+] hooande|4 years ago|reply
every suggestion he's floated so far is bad. edit button, open source algorithm, "time outs" instead of bans, "free speech". all of these ideas have obvious flaws that he does not address and none of them would be sufficient to drastically change twitter's stagnant share price.

If Musk, or anyone, has solutions to the problems with freedom of speech that have existed since civilization, let's hear them. If the ideas are good and he's the best person to implement them, then there's a good chance that people will want to do it.

[+] aluminum96|4 years ago|reply
Elon is a self-professed "free-speech absolutist." I don't think it's good for absolutists of any stripe to run our social media companies. There's no quick fix for the problems twitter faces.
[+] edmcnulty101|4 years ago|reply
I don't think free speech is being absolutist. The goal in the constitution is to have free speech be the norm.
[+] gloriana|4 years ago|reply
Ideas on what Musk could do?

Maybe he could control much more twitter stock through friendly shareholders. e.g. I buy $1B of Twitter stock with money I borrow from Elon and pledge those shares to elect Elon's board members and what not. He'd just need 4 friendlies, and they don't even have to be billionaires.

What can we collectively do to help Musk take control of twitter? Are there are any GameStop short-squeeze strategies here?

[+] hooande|4 years ago|reply
It's a poison pill. My short version understanding is that if anyone tries to control 51%, they can issue more shares to make it too expensive.

There may be some kind of WallStreetBets technical maneuver around it. But it doesn't sound like it will be easy

[+] Centigonal|4 years ago|reply
This means Twitter's board probably isn't interested in accepting a buy-out at a significant price premium. Very curious to see how this develops, and I'd love to know what's going through twitter's boards' heads.
[+] CryptoBanker|4 years ago|reply
The board explicitly stated they’re not opposed to legitimate and beneficial acquisition offers.
[+] pablok2|4 years ago|reply
So Twitter changes the rules after a move from Musk?
[+] aaroninsf|4 years ago|reply
This is standard de rigeur defense against the prospect of an hostile takeover.