wouldn't want any binding constraints on his maximal free speech.

This. Musk has already discovered with Tesla that people who run publicly listed companies do not have the right to maximum free speech. Becoming a board director at Twitter would very likely have further limited his right to free speech.

Secondly, if Musk's 'vision' was to let Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and various terrorist organisations back on Twitter, while the investigations and trials for last year's coup attempt are still ongoing, that could have a disastrous effect on Twitter's capacity to do business.

Every. Single. Word. Of. Yours. I. Downvote.

2019 called and they want their trends back.

won't be on the board but will be on the phone.

Hopefully not while driving one of his cars in "autopilot" mode.

Hopefully not while driving one of his cars in "autopilot" mode

Musk seems to be convinced that Tesla "autopilot" mode is the best thing since sliced bread, so why shouldn't he use it all the time? Particularly while spouting forth on his mobile.

Cause, I followed a Muppet using autopilot around London the other day. OMG, the autopilot is worse than a child driving.

It's bad. Really bad, that at the traffic lights I shouted at him to turn it off or I'd drag him out his toy car and hold him facedown kissing that tarmac until the either police came on charge of dangerous driving or he stopped crying for his mummy.

He has the right to waste his money in any way he sees fit.

Considering that $3B is now worth $3.5B, I wouldn't call it that much of a waste.

There's been weeks were I don't add 500 million dollars to my net worth.. Quite a lot of them actually. Hardly a waste of money.

Huh?

1. They discussed it, offered him a seat on the board and were excited about it.

2. They think it's best for the company that he's not going to join the board.

It sounds as though they don't need Musk to make the current board dysfunctional.

I think this is what happened.

1) Musk told them he was planning to purchase a significant stake (apparently he held talks with the CEO for a while before it became public and before he purchased).

2) The board had to weigh various conflicts. Do we want an irritant outside the tent pissing in or inside the tent pissing out? Once he purchases the stock, can he be more of a nuisance as a vocal large shareholder or as a board member? In which position is he of best value to the company (considering Musk's primary skill is being a marketing machine but he's also a major liability)?

3) The board figured it was better for them to have Musk muzzled by fiduciary duties and SEC regulations so they offered him a board seat.

4) Once it became clear to Musk what it would really entail to be on the board, what the board demanded in return for his board seat, and what he could no longer do or say about Twitter, either he decided not to pursue it or the board said 'take it or leave it'.

Also, I think the board seat deal included a prohibition on him owning more than a certain proportion of shares: he may have decided it's simpler to eventually buy 51%.

Twitter probably offered him the place as a sop but in reality he would have created a massive headache if he had joined. How would it go down with shareholders if he was regularly boosting / denegrating crypto (for his own obvious financial benefit), 4am drunk / drug tweets or flat out calling people pedos? What if he crossed the line and said something worthy of a suspension (arguably something he has done many times) and still they refused to act? Their stock price would go up and down like a yoyo and there would be lawsuits galore from shareholders.

Anyway, the Onion says it best about Musk:

https://www.theonion.com/please-like-me-1848674003

Ouch, the Onion doesn't disappoint. And there I was, thinking that I was the only one seeing this.

(anonymous because saying that the world's richest man behind Vladimir Putin is not wearing any clothes is a point best made anonymous).

That is good. Really good. I too thought that level of meta-awareness had been stomped out by the 'progressives'.

But then, he isn't THAT bad. He's much better than knobhead Jobs. And... many successful people have a desire to be liked and succeed.

Honestly, I dont think I could do as good a job a Elon as done with all that power and money. I know he drinks deeply from the Tony Stark well, but even so, if I had that power and money, you'd all be dead!!! LOL

The Onion makes it look so easy it is hard to believe there are people in the world who aren't multibillionares yet.

"Elon has decided not to join our board." --> I suspect this should be read as: After extensive talking I've managed to persuade Elon not to join the board.

And no ads. The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money to survive.

I don't see how he expects Twitter to generate an income then. As I see it, if no advertising revenue, then income would have to come from either (a) subscription model (I don't think enough people would be willing to pay to cover the shortfall in advertising revenue), or (b) mining/analysis/sale of users' data on an obscene level (would enough people be prepared to sign up for that?).

Hmmm...looking at option (b)...yes, there probably are enough stupid/gullible people.

What's the point of mining user data if you don't show them ads?

That's easy. There are many "data brokers" that pay good money for data sets. You don't need to run ads yourself (the Google model), you can just sell the data to data brokers that combine, filter and repackage that data to sell on to other companies.

If your data is part of three different data sets then a data broker can combine information about you into a new data set containing more or better info about you. That new data set will be worth more than a sum of its parts.

Mine it well enough and there's enough intelligence in there to tell your customers "Twitter user equates to Facebook user so target them on that platform"

Looks like it’s time to move on from Twitter. It’s been an enjoyable platform but between bots, trolls and now this, I think I’ll be winding down my use of it.

The admin of one of the world's largest Mastodon servers [1]said that he noticed an increase in sign-ups since the Musk/Twitter announcement . [2]Mastodon is essentially a decentralised version of Twitter.

The [3]aggregated user count of most Mastodon instances ( [4]Gab and [5]Trump's Truth.social are also using Mastodon but have chosen to be walled gardens so have disconnected themselves from the global Mastodon network) seems to support that statement.

[1] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/108079650359688993

[2] https://mastodon.social/

[3] https://bitcoinhackers.org/@mastodonusercount

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20051043

[5] https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/29/22752850/mastodon-trump-truth-social-network-open-source-gab-legal-notice

Nice insight. TU