[JohnWhigham]

1 billion to just to say "nah I actually don't want to do this". 1 billion for, after all is said and done, nothing to actually materially change. Does that sound supremely fucked up to anyone else? All that fucking money...and it just goes to whomever bank is financing this because nothing happened?

What a massively fucked world we live in.

[Sebb767]

Absolutely not. Imagine I want to buy your house for, let's say, 200k$ and sign the contract. So need to quickly find a replacement, move out, clear the legal stuff and probably miss work. Then, at the last moment, I back out. Don't you think 5k$ would be appropriate for all the now useless work and money spent on your side?

It's the same number with Twitter, just scaled up to the actual offer.

[dabinat]

I interpreted this comment as not saying a $1 billion penalty is necessarily inappropriate for this particular deal, but it’s a waste of money in general to pay $1B to achieve nothing when that money could have been put to better use or donated to charity.

[interestica]

I mean a lot has happened because of it. It's been a top news story across fields. It's affected Tesla stock. It's affected public perception of Musk. It has caused deeper analysis of the financial viability of Twitter. It has allowed new parties to get closer looks at Twitter's books. It may have left to the ousting of several Twitter execs. It has normalized a return of Trump to the medium.