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Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Settle His Jet-Tracking Beef, New Book Claims

  • Elon Musk purchased shares of Twitter after unsuccessfully petitioning the CEO to remove a Twitter account tracking his private jet.
  • Musk's personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
  • Musk banned the account after promising not to, highlighting his prioritization of getting his way over free speech.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/ttBv9

Lilith_the_serpent ,
@Lilith_the_serpent@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c7963a9d-a44d-4b4d-8f6a-93f107dd6e1e.jpeg

Link ,

What stopping someone from recreating this on mastodon or any other website?

There is nothing special about Twitter which allowed people to track this jet.

telllos ,

I think it's really about visibility. If you don't have the same visibility as twitter, you can have this wherever, it doesn't matter.

ATDA ,

The guy running it did just that.

Musk's actions are hilarious and pathetic. Anti censorship hero censored... Public data.

bisby ,

https://grndcntrl.net/links/

They have links to all of the various social media sites for all the celebrities they track.

seppoenarvi ,

So... it was a really good call from the CEO to not remove the account?

gian ,

Assuming this is true, there are methods to have the same result that are way less expensive...

wildcardology ,

Yes. By giving the jet tracking account $50,000 that the kid asked for.

marth_21 ,

How much even is that to someone like musk?

wildcardology ,

Probably around 1 cent or less.

RonSijm ,

So the full story would be that Elon stayed up until 5:30 a.m playing Elden Ring in a Vancouver hotel - was very stressed, saw on Twitter that people knew he was raging in Vancouver based on the Jet Tracker - stressing him out even more -
Though "Fuck it, maybe I can't beat Malenia, but at least I can beat this asshat on Twitter tracking me!"

...If only FromSoftware had added some pay-to-win elements... Like "For A Small $1 billion Micro-Transaction you get the uber Malenia slayer sword!" -
We would be living in a totally different timeline

Resol ,
@Resol@lemmy.world avatar

Why settle your jet-tracking beef when you can just eat it?

nednobbins ,

I wouldn't doubt that was his initial motivation for making the suggestions.

I also remember that he tried to back out of buying Twitter multiple times. While doing so he was pretty public about all the crazy crap he would do with Twitter.

Despite all that Twitter went to a judge and got them to force Musk to complete the sale. He's a crappy CEO for Twitter but it's kind of on the former Twitter leadership for forcing that situation.

MammyWhammy ,

He offered Twitter more money than the company was worth with no due diligence.

The leadership of the board could have been sued by shareholders if they didn't push Elon to actually pay over market value.

The end goal of any for profit leadership is to make as much money as possible and exit.

BigBenis ,

All that money could have gone to something useful that would have benefited everybody and instead it went into investors pockets

wildcardology ,

Like the $6 billion Musk promised to end world hunger.

crypticthree ,

Muskrat bought it because he has poor impulse control. There's no "grand design," just a man child who desperately needs a mommy to protect him from himself.

Hoomod ,

Made a legally binding decision to massively overpay what the company was worth, or probably ever would be. Of course the current owners are going to take it

tacosplease ,

I think the deal was so good for Twitter that it may have been illegal for them not to sell to Musk because their job is to maximize profits or value for the shareholders or whatever. As a publicly traded company, not doing the deal would be choosing to not maximize profits.

Now in hindsight the idiot is killing current stock value, but that still has nothing to do with the shareholders who had stock when Twitter was sold. Those shareholders were thrilled to sell all their stock well above market price. Corporate ethics.

wildcardology ,

Ok. Musk offered the kid $5,000 to delete his account, the kid countered with $50,000. Musk refused so he spent $44 billion instead to get rid of the account.

chiliedogg ,

That's the definition of "fuck you" money.

zorlan ,

Yeah $50k isn't even that much to Musk, what an idiot.

Art3sian ,
@Art3sian@lemmy.world avatar

He’s still worth $200B.

Spending $44B? $88B? $100B. Doesn’t matter. The dude never, ever has to think about money again. If he lives to 85 and doesn’t earn another cent between now and then, he can splash 6 billion dollars a year every year until he dies.

To give you some understanding of that kind of money, he could roughly buy two Lamborghini Diablos every single day for the rest of his life.

postmateDumbass ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b033fb50-fa1d-40f8-a558-144c9b315829.jpeg

tomatolung ,

Mind you that's mostly non-liquid accounting of his stock and assets. Not that he'll have to worry about what he spends, but it's not cash in the bank billions.

chiliedogg ,

That's the point.

He could burn 40 billion buying Twitter just to spite a kid over 50 grand because money is meaningless for Musk. He essentially has infinite wealth.

He could spend the 50 grand the kid asked for every minute for 7 and a half years and still have 3 billion dollars.

ULS ,

Stop talking about this guy.

Quadhammer ,

Citizens say go

mellowheat ,

Money well spent: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet

theMacerena ,

isnt he also back on twitter?

Fades ,

Yes this makes far more sense then the brain dead “bought it to kill it” theory that’s just cope for phony stark

diffusive ,

Here we are talking of very debatable definitions of “making sense” tbh

BlackPit ,

If they weren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't care who watches where they go, right?

Additional_Prune ,

LOL. There's a silicon valley bigwig jet tracker that I see pop up on my Reddit account, and I'm not even that interested in it.

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