The social media and communication platform Twitter, responded to the bid by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk by announcing Friday the Twitter board of directors has unanimously adopted a “poison pill” defense in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the company and take it private. [LINK to Press Release]
Twitter said the move, formally called a “limited duration shareholder rights plan,” aims to enable its investors to “realize the full value of their investment” by reducing the likelihood that any one person can gain control of the company without either paying shareholders a premium or giving the board more time. Poison pills are often used to defend against hostile takeovers.
According to Twitter’s plan, if Musk or any other person or group acquires at least 15 percent of Twitter’s stock, the poison pill will trigger.
At that point, every other shareholder, aside from Musk, would be allowed to purchase new shares of Twitter at half the going market price, which stood at $45.08 at the closing bell on Thursday.
The flood of half-price shares would effectively dilute Musk’s ownership stake, making it massively more expensive for him to build up a controlling position. Twitter said its board had voted unanimously in favor of the plan, which will remain in effect until April 14, 2023.
Obviously, the people in control of Twitter really do not want to lose control over the platform. Elon Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share, represents a value of 38% more than his first shares purchased. The public shareholders would make a sizeable return on their investment. However, the fiduciary responsibility of a board of directors to its shareholders is really not what this is about.
In the big picture, Twitter is a bottomless pit of financial cost. Once you understand the technology behind Twitter, it is easy to understand why the public speech platform is not a viable business model, and it never was.
Twitter is exclusively a ‘user engagement‘ social media platform with no hosted content. Twitter is massively expensive to operate because the costs of operating the technology, all of which are driven by the substantive issue of ‘simultaneous users‘, exceeds the capacity of the platform to generate revenue.
Almost all other internet websites and social media have two structures: (A) Content, and (B) User Engagement.
Content represents a small part of any internet hosting expense for a platform and represents almost 100% of the platform’s ability to generate money. User engagement on the other hand, costs massive amounts of money – due to the need for data processing to handle the engagement and simultaneous users – and provides almost no revenue.
Many news and information content providers do not even host a user engagement commenting system any longer. User engagement is just too expensive and requires monitoring, moderation and massive amounts of data processing space on the platform servers.
Twitter’s operating model only consists of ‘user engagement.’
The platform itself is a massive global commenting system – the ‘public square’ discussion.
♦CONTENT is the material that can be monetized easily. Content is the article, graphic, podcast, or video you would see and watch. Content is profitable based on advertising. Eyeballs on content means eyeballs on internet advertising. This is how websites and content providers are able to pay for expenses and operate as a business model for the continuation of content. Hosting costs for content, even on a massive scale of viewership/readership are low, and the income from advertising increases with more readers and viewers. This is the traditional business model of content providers.
♦USER ENGAGEMENT is the part that is not as easily monetized, and user engagement drives a higher cost. User engagement is the comments, likes, dislikes and discussion that takes place based on the users who view the content material and discuss. More user engagement, particularly more simultaneous users, costs more money for the platform, because the random capability of the audience to interact with the server network creates exponentially more data processing demand. Data processing, not capacity, drives the cost.
Server capacity is a relatively easy issue to solve for content providers. In order to see the content, the host needs to ensure they have enough capacity for the audience to arrive and view, read, or watch the content without overwhelming the server network. Server processing speed and data performance are a part of the construct to ensure everything is smooth.
Server capacity is not the challenge for ‘user engagement.’ Processing trillions of simultaneous user-activated functions is the tech challenge for ‘user engagement.’ It’s not the capacity, it’s the data processing. As a result, it is far more expensive to operate social media than it is to operate a simple website construct, because user engagement is the entire premise behind social media.
Facebook and Instagram have a more viable business model because users provide the content they host. Content can be monetized, and in the case of Facebook, Google, Instagram and YouTube they can also monetize the user that provides it. Twitter does not host content at all.
Facebook makes money by selling advertising like a traditional website. Facebook and Google have also specialized in the micro-targeting of advertising to very specific tailored advertising audiences. Advertising agencies pay a premium for the micro-targeting of a specific audience.
Facebook also makes money by selling data on users. You may remember the reference of Cambridge Analytica purchasing micro-targeting user information from Facebook for use in elections and voter targeting efforts. More recently, Facebook has cut out the middlemen and started micro-targeting for politics and getting paid directly by political campaigns for their efforts.
In almost all social media, the user is providing the content that the platform can monetize. In the Facebook example above, the platform can offset the extreme increases in user engagement costs (data processing) by making money from the hosted content, and from selling the data of the user (there are many purchasers).
However, for Twitter the business model problem is: (a) the absence of content to monetize, and (b) the extreme costs of user engagement that dwarf the “simultaneous user” data processing costs for Facebook.
As Facebook grows, they can grow their revenue. As Twitter grows, it increases their expenses massively and only moderately increases their revenue.
Twitter is not making a decision to decline the generous offer by Elon Musk because of stewardship or fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. The financials of Twitter as a non-viable business model highlight the issue of money being irrelevant. Twitter does not and cannot make money. Growing Twitter only means growing an expense. Growing Twitter does not grow revenue enough to offset the increase in expense.
There is only one way for Twitter to exist as a viable entity, people are now starting to realize this.
What matters to the people behind Twitter, the people who are subsidizing the ability of Twitter to exist, is control over the global conversation.
Control of the conversation is priceless to the people who provide the backbone for Twitter.
Once people realize who is subsidizing Twitter, everything changes.
That’s the fight.
.
And so now WE KNOW the government controls Twitter. Very interesting development.
The shareholders be damned…will lawsuits fly next? The stock price? Will there be ANY investigation or discovery?
Where does this leave Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street?
The truth would put 99% of people in the hospital.
Yes there will be an investigation… by the government of Elon Musk.
And to the point Sundance clearly makes, a tweet from Sean Davis…
“The insane response to @elonmusk’s proposal to buy Twitter at a significant premium proves that he isn’t acquiring a private company, he’s acquiring a global government censorship machine.
Capitalists don’t turn down $10 billion in free money. Only totalitarians would do that.”
How many people will finally understand what is going on? Not enough I’ll bet.
Well said by Sean Davis.
It really was. To the point, and in few words.
$10 billion dollars is nothing to these totalitarians when trillions are at stake.
Chump change.
He has to be willing to risk his agreements with the gov to do this, though.
Somehow I believe he won’t have a problem with that. I’d assume a contract already signed couldn’t be broken without severe costs. Now, future contracts? Those might not happen.
But for the moment, if both parties have signed legally binding ones, my guess is that the stupendously wealthy Musk won’t lose too much sleep over what he might or might not lose in the future. Just a guess on my part….
So Trump is last week’s saviour?
There is no comparison. One cannot compare apples to fine leather shoes.
so only one person at a time?
We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
And I get the feeling Melissa Hodgman (Mrs. Peter Strzok) will the SEC case officer leading the investigation(s) of Musk.
She’s all over it already, I believe. Took her about 2 seconds once he acquired his initial stake. Now that really is the biggest tell of all.
Already in progress. The DO(in)J and the SEC have announced investigations of Musk for his activities in and with other companies.
Probably the rest of the alphabet will jump in by the end of the month.
Yes…I thought so.
We know the USA tax dollar finances twitter.
The government is such a broad term……which departments in the US are funding it?
Department of Education (joke)?
Or, is it the United Nations, or World Economic Forum, a George Soros initiative, etc. etc.?
My guess would be the NSA since they’re already keeping tabs on it all anyway for FISA purposes. It’s probably running directly off their supercomputers and they just cut out Twitter acting as the middleman. Just a guess though…
Plan explained…
“limited duration shareholder rights plan,” aims to enable its investors to “realize the full value of their investment” by selling shares at half price. This will dilute the percentage of ownership of each share reducing their weight. Shares with less weight will float higher when thrown into a swimming pool and with summer coming, value will be significantly increased..
Actually the government controls the shareholders who make decisions regarding the direction and operation of the company via the Board of Directors.
Bring on the lawsuits, it’s gonna be good.
I’d be shorting this if I traded equities, my opinion of course. If Twitter is financially expensive than buying more shares at half the price is more losses. You average up, not down.
Btw, my opinion on shorting;
I would wait for taking any position as I expect a spike in price. They know what will happen when he “Reconsiders his position”.
More than likely, those lawsuits will be dismissed without any testimony or evidence allowed, just as they were when the 2020 election was stolen…
Don’t think so. There will be a lot of law firms filing class action lawsuits claiming the board violated its fiduciary responsibility. Suits like that are gold mine for lawyers and the shareholders get pennies.
But Musk can watch and laugh at the reservoir dogs.
what court will be hosting these? the ones that listened to all the 2020 election fraud evidence?
Musk’s $54.20 offer is 20.2% higher than TWTR’s closing share price on Thursday, not 38% higher.
Than his first purchase.
Much clearer now that you changed the wording in the sentence. Thanks.
He is using the valuation of TWTR before Musk started buying the stock.
Sundance is pointing out from his article, “Elon Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share, represents a value of 38% more than his first shares purchased.“
Yes, he added those last words as an edit after my original comment appeared here.
It is a great service to make the puppet masters dig into their wallets again. Disney/CNN for example.
Hmmm, let’s see, so far Americans have……….
1) Been locked down
2) Forced to wear masks
3) Forced to take 1-3 jabs
4) Lost their job if they refused
5) Had their businesses destoyed
6) Lost income
7) Dealing with 15-20% real inflation
8) Seen the rule of law being trampled and ignored
9) Election integrity violated
10) Lost Freedom of speech
11) Not allowed to visit the People’s House – Capital
12) Seen our leaders completely ignore our southern border
13) The pushing of CRT everywhere
14 Now demanding to by pass parents so they can teach sex to 4 year olds
So yea, if Musk possibly suggests buying shares to help save free speech and expose more possible government fraud, I’m all in.
15) Pushing transmania everywhere, with the result of permanently damaged teenagers and young adults and traumatized, broken families.
Read and weep:
Personal Stories and Essays by Parents Impacted by Transgender Ideology
https://pitt.substack.com/
The end result is functional sterility in huge numbers of young people who will never have a chance to be parents and who are now being told they don’t want to! This is nothing less that nihilism and satanism.
All funded with printed money out of thin air.
Well… A wise man keeps reminding us that we are in an abusive relationship with our government.
Has anyone posted the Sundance thread link directly to Elon Musk’s Twitter page?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/14/elon-musk-make-a-massive-proposal-offers-to-purchase-twitter-for-41-billion-with-plan-to-take-company-private/
I don’t tweet or I would.
Surely he has already thought of what Sundance has speculated about?
Also it might be worth Tucker getting a link to Sundance’s speculation.
How soon till Judicial Watch submits a FOIA request on all documents that contain the words Twitter and subsidy in it from the government?
The government chooses what they will release for any FOIA request. Do you think you get the truth.
I worked at a law enforcement agency in the Freedom of Information Office.
My powers to redact were very broad, sure there were regulations and oversight.
My bosses however were political appointees.
Enough said!
No, but I also know that we are past time of taking our government back and resetting the legal law of the land in the Compact of the US Constitution and very limited and specific powers of authority of the federal government once again.
Take back your communities and your States first. The rest will follow as the States have more powers of authority than the federal which was created by the states.
Know the truth, it can and will set you free.
Yes… Wake up, stand up, one state at a time… https://conventionofstates.com/?ref=6659
Hey Elon……….
Call Sundance
If I only had a Twitter account.
Just deactivated mine. Only lasted a few day. I”Oh, Twitter, I barely knew you.”
Glad I possess no Twitter stock.. Sinking turd.
All “news” media is owned by multinational corporations. News outlets lose money. But they are not there to make money. These corporations use them to advance the their own political and legislative interests.
Twitter likewise never had a profit model, outside of selling control of itself to parties with an interest in controlling the flow of information. Aside from the US government, the most interested party of all appears to be Saudi Arabia.
CNN is a perfect example.
MSNBC as well. Loss leader for NBC.
You absolutely summarized the situation perfectly.
This whole saga really puts into perspective what we, the collective freedom loving citizens are up against. Wishing you all a blessed Easter.
Stay off Twitter, keep your kids off Twitter, keep your grandchildren off Twitter, use alternate sites, make it an echo chamber for libtards.
Communizing the commons. Corporatism indoctrinates by institutionalizing its employees and stakeholders, and its customer by any means necessary where possible.
These corporations are non-human alien persons. They should have no standing in our politics or our elections. They are not human persons. They have no legal standing to cast a vote or participate in our electoral processes as an influencer.
They are an alien influencer and not a citizen registered voter in good standing. They are absolutely and categorically nothing of the sort.
These zombies are a malignancy on the politics of our republic and a parasitic predator upon our election and governance processes.
This article makes no sense to me.
If Twitter makes no money, and loses more money the larger it gets, and by SD estimation is a money sink hole, why is it worth so much to share holders. Yesss I understand the influence part, but you still have to have cash flowing in to pay investors, employees and maintain facilities etc.
Does this mean this company has always been peddling its tracking info to the government so to that extent it is opposite what SD asserts, and is a cash cow?
This just makes no sense to me.
How does the government function with expenditures exceeding receipts by trillions of dollars.
$1500 hammers, $2500 toilet seats etc, etc
Probably not actually the government but Davos.
There are many companies that do not make a dime in profit yet see their stock value increase.
For Twitter the issue is a subsidy where they are not paying for the tech infrastructure or data processing. The money Twitter can generate (ads, user fees, etc) can pay for the wages, salaries etc because their operating expenses do not reflect the true cost to operate.
And if you were to audit their books, you would see subs underneath them that are footing the bill for that infrastructure. Those subs are government shell companies. It won’t just be the feds sitting their with their nose out. But it will be very obvious when you then go to that shell company and gather supporting documentation.
OMG
Thanks for the reply SD.
These are mind bending revelations. Maybe this is why truthsocial is a flop. They just do not understand how the competition works, supported by the IC perhaps on a global scale.
Zuckerberg the multi-billionaire still insists he makes most of his money from selling advertising.
It’s easy to make money when somebody else is footing the bill for your expenses. DARPA “killed” their Life Log program Feb 3, 2004 due to privacy criticisms. Facebook was founded Feb 4, 2004. And yet…. people still don’t “get” it.
SD’s argument is this: Twitter does not make enough money to be even a viable commercial proposition, much less make a profit. But it does collect masses amounts of information about users GIVEN FREELY AND WITHOUT ANY COERCION by the users. This is, metaphorically, a massive gold mine for the Deep State – or for the fourth branch of government, which is the Intelligence Community of the US Federal Government. The IC of the USA, as with all intelligence organizations, understands, and has always understood, that gathering such information takes time and huge resources. This information comes to the IC without having to invest all the manpower (Ooops! Politically incorrect terminology – I meant manpower, womanpower, personpower, transpower, and whateveryousayyouarepower!!) it would otherwise need. In return, the IC funds Twitter to stay afloat and make it seem as if it has a profit. But that is done SECRETLY.
The IC doesn’t even need to cut them a check or fund them directly. Just let them use their supercomputers to keep their expenses down enough to be viable. Plus that gives the IC direct access to the data. Win-win for the Deep State and Twitter. And a huge loss for us.
Do you ever wonder the reason why the CA is often called the company? Many shell companies are set up simply to conduct business on behalf of its government master and making a profit and secondary.
Further to my last reply, it also means that the IC gets to keep control of much of what is expressed in the Public Square, and it can effectively censor – ie silence – the voices and ideas it does not like.
Found posted among the comments to this story on zerohedge. Posted bu in-the-ether. Good to see.
1 hour ago
Conservative Treehouse had an interesting, if convoluted, article a day or two ago – about some of the behind the scenes things about twitter that could be exposed by it going private. Such as just how deep the inbreeding goes with them and the US government, especially the IC, and just how much it is “subsidized” by them in a round about way.
So yeah, I think there is a lot more at stake for the globalists than just what the sell price is.
Also an article on American Thinker today which mentions Sundance and the Treehouse.
The board’s priority is to protect the shareholders. B as in B and S as in S! Their foremost priority is to ensure they enrich themselves along with the top executives. Boards nowadays are just rubber stamps for mgmt. and a place to show up for a free lunch.
Board’ss priority is to do as they are told!
..Unless the board is comprised of commies and fascists. Then, capitalism goes right out the window.
Screwing over stockholders is a given with woke corporations.
Disney doesn’t care that it collapses the financial holdings of its stockholders. It is more concerned with pushing leftwing politics because the executive management and board of directors focus their attention on the approval of their peers. Plus of course, they are big time leftists and they naturally don’t care about stockholders.
There is one thing Twitter can do that does provide “value”. That is mass data mining of the people using Twitter. The resources of the government to tag every individual user and cross tabulate their politics, interests, location, and yes, their identity would be of intense interest to the likes of the FBI and DOJ. Which of course, simply means the left.
Unleash the shareholder lawsuits. The Twitter BoD will do plenty of damage breaching their fiduciary duty by causing rapid and extreme deflation selling common stock at 50% off. That’s a potentially huge loss in valuation of the company. It will take a wrecking ball to the balance sheet. And to imagine the liability and loss of E&O board member liability coverage for doing so with apparently willful and malicious intent in a capricious and arbitrary manner proving reckless disregard for their fiduciary duty to shareholders.
What a way to turn the board and executive into a sausage factory.
Never mind Carlos Slim or Jeff Bezos or…..
Unbelievable lack of self-reflection, hello, the Washington Post, YOU are owned by a billionaire. Omg, these people.
The fact that journalists are so opposed to Elon Musk buying Twitter because it would promote free speech and challenge Democrat establishment talking points is everything you need to know about the media today.
Elon profits and exposes the corruption at the same time. There’s a reason why filings are lagging. If Elon “Reconsiders his position” come next week, then I would not want to be on the long side. My opinion of course.
Ukraine exposed and now Twitter. Gonna be good.
Especially with Goldman Sachs valuation at the $30.00 range. Lol……
Plan B?
Oh yes, yes yes yes!
Sue em, Elon.
Can a publicly traded company discriminate on who it sells it stock to at a certain price.
The flood of half-price shares would effectively dilute Musk’s ownership stake, making it massively more expensive for him to build up a controlling position.
While that may do what is stated, it would also lower the price of the stock by half, which screws every person holding the stock. What am I missing?
Why would this not be a good opportunity to start shorting this POS CIA run gestapo jack boot outfit?
Stock dilution. We can all buy 10 shares, and give our proxies to Elon to vote.
Think of what this would do if only 10% of Trumps voters did this?? We still own the stock, UT he votes it for us.
Get the APE Army on it.
Its why Tucker was talking about giving proxies to Elon.
I like this idea !!!
Plan B Mr Musk
Let’s Roll
Elon said yesterday he has a Plan B ready if the Board were to go this route. I have a feeling they will regret this decision.
Once people realize who is subsidizing Twitter, everything changes.
Well now, getting a critical mass of people to “realize who is subsidizing Twitter” is the sticky wicket, isn’t it? I mean, who–or what–is going to make the revelation that; A. is believed by enough people, and; B. how to defeat / combat the efforts of the subsidizers to defeat this revelation from reaching critical mass.
Perhaps Elon bit off more than he can chew?
Then he spits it out and takes smaller bites.
Obviously the Twitter BOD is not acting in the best interests of the shareholders. Free speech is obviously not a Twitter priority. I don’t have a Twitter account but if I did I would cancel it. Nor am I a Twitter stockholder. One would hope they could sue the board especially in some form of class action should the stock tank subsequent to Musk withdrawing his offer because of the red pill.
The pivot to “stakeholder” interests, so as not to contaminate decisions with capitalism, is a tyrannical cover.
They have a duty to be good corporate citizens per their charter. With apparent malice aforethought they have begun a fundamentally seditious campaign to liquidate or otherwise usurp the constitutional and civil rights of American Citizens.
What is willful anti-Constitutional behavior and the associated scheme to monetize same. And what of foreign interests being represented, protected and/or knowingly served by Twitter corporate officers and fiduciaries apparently conspiring in part to champion monetized the anti-Constitutional behavior and conspiracy against the exercise of constitutionally protected free speech and against the civil rights of individual American citizens in the potential furtherance of unlawful civil abuse and the possibility of presently undisclosed foreign and/or alien person interests and unconscionable infiltration and perversion of our constitutional society and its public commons?
What of that?
What of 5th Column infiltration and prospective evidence of facilitating and/or monetizing organized sedition?
So that’s what happens to the 800 million outstanding shares…
As predicted, Twitter is a government entity to shut down opposition thought or facts.
So if the poison pill didn’t work,
the govt would step in to prevent the sale…tells you everything you need to know.
Fmr SEC Chair Pitt: Gov’t Stepping in to Stop Musk Twitter Takeover ‘a Very Real Threat’
This administration is pretty much guaranteed to oppose this kind of bid. I think the danger that the government or Congress might intercede in order to prevent this takeover is a very real threat.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/04/15/fmr-sec-chair-pitt-govt-stepping-in-to-stop-musk-twitter-takeover-a-very-real-threat/
If that happens, every share of stock anyone holds is worthless. It’s value is determined by the government. Why would you put your money into something that is totally controlled by whatever the government says it is worth at any given time based on political ideology?
You think exactly like me…. it would make all stocks worthless at their core. much like the fiat currency we now used thats back by nothing but promises.
Fascists and totalitarians are nothing if not consistent.
And everyone starts selling- crash. Then lawsuits? Suing the board. Fiduciary duty breached. The government wont give two poos. The rich board members thrown under the bus.
Twitter Permanently Bans President Trump Account, POTUS Account Responds and is Immediately Deleted January 8, 2021
So Twitter, an entity of the US government, banned the sitting president of the US government.
Let that sink in to 100M Patriots.
Control the Narrative via the media
Control Free Speech via social media platforms
Control your money and you via digital currency
Tell me again how I benefit under Globalism?
“Tell me again how I benefit under Globalism?”
If you survive the initial depopulation purge, you get to live forever as a transhuman slave, eat bugs and like it.
Well, the government did a hell of a lot worse than that. Stole the election from him and did their very best to keep him from being elected to start with by the Russian hoax. I am convinced the deep state was involved in the steal.
As hard as they all tried Pres Donald Trump is still out there.
He has not gone away and will not give up or give in.
Neither will we.
brother, they were the steal.
evidence shows they perpetrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014, they attempted same in 2016 in the US but were thwarted, but it is coming to light, then they did again in 2020, this time making sure not to fail, even at the expense of having more votes than registered voters in numerous places.
“The steal,” as in a shadow government of enemy combatants subverting free elections to prevent the peaceful transition of power codified under our Constitution, against the will of “We, the people.”
Is this not TREASON?
And a good chunk of twitter is owned by foreigners!
If you think that is ironic, it is not. The Administration (be it Trump or Biden, Obama or Bush) is not the government. Once you realize that, it makes sense.
There are marionettes and there are those who pull the strings that make them dance. CONgress sold our country out from under us and upended the free world.
Either they sold their souls to Lucifer, or they are simply more afraid of him at the moment than they are of us. Either way, there will soon be a reckoning ..a reckoning of Biblical proportions.
because the sitting president is not the leader of the United States, the DEEP STATE ENTITY IS.
Lucifer is flaunting that flatulent dimwit to taunt us. He wants us to lose all hope and give in to despair. He wants to break our spirit.
Makes a person wonder what thoughts went through President Trump’s head when, while sitting in the Oval Office, he realized how utterly corrupted by the 4th branch our government had become. That had to have been the most lonely day in a person’s life to see, understand, and still have to take actions to dilute that other branch’s strangle-hold as much as possible.
I still remember his words “I guess I’ll have to do it myself”. Hope he realizes that the people, the forgotten men and women, are here, waiting and also doing what we can do on our own, sand at the ready.
Twitter, a non-human alien person and UNELECTED entity of the US government, banned the sitting president of the US government.
Not human. Not a citizen. A non-human alien person being operated by an apparent conspiracy of racketeering human persons who may or may not be citizens of this country, or worse, be of dual citizenship and split loyalties.
What “government” controls twitter, the Fourth Branch? “people who provide the backbone for Twitter…the people who are subsidizing the ability of Twitter to exist” – Sundance. Who are these people? Do they have names? Where does the funding come from to finance the “massive amounts of money -due to the need for data processing to handle the engagement and simultaneous users- and provides almost no revenue”? I’m a simple old man and I have simple questions. Is it our tax money financing Twitter? If so how is the funding approved, where is it buried what budget category? Is it in the omnibus spending bills that Congress routinely approves in violation of the Constitution? How does Twitter get the funding what is the mechanism that transfers the money? I’m confused how this is all legal?? I apologize for my lack of understanding!!!
It’s not legal and is designed not to be seen. It’s the IC, you think they leave you a budget and plan to peruse.
No I don’t think the IC would do that! But I didn’t know that I’m paying to have the free speech of President Trump, his supporters, conservatives, Republicans and Christians censored!!! That needs to stop!!!
I’m with you, Bubby. Being a bear of little brain I get the gist of what Sundance says, but am lost in the weeds. In addition to your questions I am wondering if there is anything a simple deplorable can do right now to help Elon Musk and bring Twitter down.
if you have a Twitter account, deactivate it.
Look to S.E.S. in govt, the long term employees who are unelected and unaccountable.
The S.E.S. seems to behave as a 5th Column of sorts. So do the municipal and government unions. The institutions have declared war on the American Citizen and their children. They apparently seek to make us all subjects and the IC would then become the new iteration of The Hudson Bay and East India Companies.
Empire über alles.
Remember the $3 trillion covid package? That’s 3 thousand billions.
Remember the $1 trillion infrastructure package? That’s a thousand billions.
Infrastructure that included the intent to build out broadband internet access services around the country?
How easy is it to use a few billion to streamline data processing services as part of the federal broadband expansion, only in this case Twitter backboning happens in the same process.
See how that works?
Yes and thank you! I guess they can just let Twitter use our Federal government purchased data processing equipment and not charge any user fees as long as they control Twitter and who has an account!!! Not a bad setup if you get it!! I assume they wouldn’t do the same for you!! Godspeed Sundance!
Somewhere I read that the sea I aye has accumulated $1.5 TRILLION dollars or more and can finance whatever they wish as it not shown anywhere other than their offshore accting ledgers that are not auditable from their illegal business ventures-drugs from IndoChina and South America and Afghanistan, weapons deals all over the world, paid for mercenary armies of “advisors”,etc-so funding a social media platform is no big deal if it is not profitable, just made up somewhere else. Find out where Twatter money comes from and you have a good idea as to why they wish to continue to control Media opinion.
Can you imagine how many hours of phone calls the Twitter BOD and CEO have been making to Obama, Valarie Jarrett and Ron Klain the past few days? LOL
Well looks like those calls worked because now SEC has a bogus investigation of Tesla as of yesterday.
Musk really must despise these people who have created nothing in their lives of consequence and only have intelligence enough to be pond scum.
Washington always wins. Even if Musk does take control there is a high likelihood the DoJ will begin an antitrust case against Twitter, resulting in a judge breaking it up. The new fragments will be headed by woke CEO’s who will continue doing the bidding of the IC and Democrat party, while Musk’s portion will lose Section 230 protection.
I do not understand what the fuss is.
If you do not want to read propaganda and are freedom/liberty loving, you would not even be on Twitter.
Let alone want to buy it.
Twitter is a censoring turdball and you can throw billions at it but at the end it will still be a censoring turdball.
The solution is also not to have one centralized platform change ownership.
The solution is de-centralized everything. Including de-centralized communication.
“Social media” ruined the Internet by reducing the way people communicate to a trio of players.
.
The vast majority of the media uses it to put out, disseminate, and multiply propaganda around the world, and then uses the same material as the basis of “news” stories in newspapers, TV, radio, podcasts, etc. This applies almost as much to conservative and alternate media as it does to legacy media. And it’s amplified by Google, Facebook, et al.
.
A lot of people DO use Twitter and they are being misinformed day in and day out. It has become a dangerous propaganda weapon that MUST be neutralized one way or another. The time has come for it to be reformed, destroyed, or stay the same.
The future of our Republic hangs in the balance.
SUPPORT ELON MUSK 100%
How can media knowingly monetize fraud with impunity?
How the monetization of fraud lawful, especially when it’s apparently willful?
The fuss is that the battle for dominance of ideas is not fought by those who are not on Twitter.
We have no influence, to speak of, except in a passive way, if we are not on Twitter or Facebook, don’t use Google, and don’t read the NY TImes/WaPo, or watch CNN/CBS/NBC/ABC.
We are going to do what we are going to do. Our opponents are going to do what they are going to do.
The battles will be won by convincing the undecided/moderate/non-affiliated voters.
It has always been that way and there is no reason to think it will change.
Kids are born with a natural curiosity, they always ask “why”
Why why why why, that is how they learn
It’s better to spend 40 billion to teach people how to re-acquire (or maintain their “kid-like”) curiosity and critical thinking skills.
Rather than to spend it on a propaganda machine
I do not see it as my personal task to change everybody’s way of thinking, I see it as my personal task to make the most informed decisions possible. Everything is a trade-off so the more you know (why!) the better off you are, so is the thought.
I never once found a ground breaking epiphany on Twitter. Maybe someone else’s mileage varies.
I never joined Fakebook, Twitter or any social media. I’ve avoided many other aspects of the matrix that others seem to find indispensable.
Yet, I am fully engaged in other areas of this town square called life. My impact is surely seen and felt wherever I choose to put my energies.
Once I see their true colors it’s very easy for me to disengage from their matrix. This is why propaganda and censorship are critical to their Great Reset. They can’t have Toto pull back that curtain to reveal some puny Wizard. That’s when people would catch on.. and then quickly move on.
This is fascinating. And completely obvious, it’s one of those “why didn’t I think of this” things.
It’s like a Geico ad, so easy even a democrat can understand.
And I would be remiss to not point out the irony here – Musk, who has multiple ventures that are only successful due to massive government subsidies, attempting to buy/exposing the similarly heavily subsidized Twitter.
I am looking for a lawsuit to join as a shareholder. Please provide links if there any against the board for failing to properly perform their fiduciary role on behalf of the stockholders. This should have gone to a vote. Not refused due to their hubris allegiance to the intelligence community.
Bret Taylor Independent Board Chair; Co-CEO, Salesforce
Parag Agrawal CEO, Twitter
Mimi Alemayehou Senior Vice President for Public – Private Partnership at Mastercard
Jack Dorsey Co-Founder, Twitter; CEO and Co-Founder, Square
Egon Durban Co-CEO, Silver Lake
Martha Lane Fox Founder and Chairperson, Lucky Voice Group; Former Co-Founder and Managing Director of lastminute.com; Crossbench Peer, House of Lords
Omid Kordestani Former Executive Chairman, Twitter
Dr. Fei-Fei Li Professor at Stanford
Patrick Pichette General Partner, Inovia Capital; Former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Google
David Rosenblatt CEO, 1stdibs.com, Inc.
Robert Zoellick Former Chairman of the Board of Directors of AllianceBernstein Holding L.P.
Just wait until next week. Law firms will be coming out of the woodwork filing class action suits trying to get certified. There are always firms who do this as they will get millions if certified and win or settle while the shareholders get pennies.
I would expect them to have problems with their E&O insurance if they willfully breach their fiduciary duty to shareholders. The insurers are under a duty to not pay claims arising from an uninsured loss.
The liability of the board members can become individual and personal under some circumstances of wrongdoing, leaving them personally vulnerable to paying actual and punitive damages in some instances.
Perhaps Musk leads a shareholder action to do exactly that.
The corporate shield is a durable thing and the power of the corporate board is nearly absolute, but that is not a permanent and all encompassing defense in perpetuity. Board service comes with risk of personal peril.
This looks ripe for ravaging beat down of those board members conspiring to abandon shareholder interests who are also found to have breached their fiduciary duty.
This could be an opportunity to demonstrate serving on the board of a publicly traded company is not the venue to conduct personal woke advocacy.
I saw in another post that Twitter’s D&O insurer dropped them — that would need to be verified some how, but that was a comment I read by another poster.
I’m aggravated by the how can this happen, why wouldn’t we know reactions. You’re not supposed to know, what do you think, they are going to tell you? Sigh.
The Right Honourable
The Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho
CBE
Royalty sits on the Royal Court of Twitter Directors. Under whose jurisdiction was Twitter formed? The City of London seems well represented on the Twitter Board. The autocratic behavior is also quite foreign to the American disposition.
How many other board members are foreign nationals demanding the rights of American Citizens be trampled in what appears to be a form of hot war to debase and overthrow the US Constitution on behalf of infiltrating foreign interests conspiring to migrate and consolidate control over the American nation into superior alien government structures.
It’s 1776 all over again. Taxation WITHOUT representation is a thing. They want democratic oligarchy, not representative government. They have come to destroy representative government and representative democracy. They intend to impose taxation without representation upon the people of every nation known today.
Time to show The World’s Fascist Indian (Parag Agrawal) the door.
Never make an engineer CEO — wrong mindset and lack requisite business skills, IMO and experience with engineering firms.
If Twitter is opposed to free speech, then Twitter needs to die. I can’t wait til Truth is available on my desk top.
Sic semper twitteramus?
So, Sundance, if I am following your article correctly …
Given that twitter is the enemy, shouldn’t all of us open accounts and constantly post nonsense in order to drive their operating costs even higher?
Would it also be possible for us to overwhelm and crash the whole thing if millions simultaneously post?
Brilliant analysis and explanation of a very complex subject by Sundance!
Basically, Twitter is the USA’s equivalent of Pravda (USSRs govt news agency), ADN (Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst, the east German news agency), and Xinhua (Chi-Com govt news agency) all rolled into one.
As made clear in Sundance’s analysis, the traditional goal of a “business” is to earn money for the shareholders. The SEC is supposed to enforce the rules so shareholders make money fairly. But in the case of Twitter, rather than enforce the rules so investors make money fairly, the SEC goes after the only person who is actually creating value and increasing the share price. The government will do what’s necessary to preserve Twitter as its de facto (but certainly not de jure) government press agency.
Here’s some information which will be useful to understand Twitters predicament.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/twitter-board-adopts-poison-pill-thwart-musk-takeover-exposing-itself-titanic-legal
That explains why Twitter didn’t care if they lost large number of accounts when they started censoring. They were merely shaving some of their expenses off their books. Eventually, they’ll be one expensive echo chamber. Once they kicked off the President of the United States, I don’t understand why any conservative would use the platform.
Yes. And by placing users they define as against their interest, into specific tech compartments within the processing system, they not only save money – they restrict the engagement, lessen the voice, control the message… etc.
Now you are getting it.
and yet the hypocrites still do.
Lots of conservatives are still using Twitter, including Sundance. I left Twitter when bots started taking over; followed Musk for 7 years and PDJT.
I thought the 140 character limit was genius and wish it would be brought back — if you want to write article or blog, there are places for that.
Wouldn’t the poison pill also dilute Vanguards recent purchase?
Only if it’s exercised! Tells me Vanguard is betting Musk won’t be successful and someone else more acceptable is in the offing? Could be a consortium put together by Vanguard? Free speech has to be stopped and they know how to do it while making a profit!
That’s a risky move then by the Board and Vanguard. As I understand it- vanguards move to purchase slightly more shares than Elon was a sort of “white night” move. But now the board is betting against Elon with vanguard’s money.
Elon should do a Twitter pole asking all share holders if they want to give him their proxy vote for this sale. The results would be interesting, imo.
The position of any stockholder will be maintained if they can afford to buy the reduced price shares. Vanguard of course can do that. All the little fish will be gutted, as usual. And Elon would be excluded from purchasing.
I’m going to take issue with this statement. Twitter does host an enormous amount of data in the form of images, videos, and even the text posts themselves. They are all stored in object databases and flushed to disk for later retrieval. Now is it the bulk of the cost of running the service? Probably not.
Of course that is not the bulk cost of running, because it is all housed in NSA owned and supported data bases. No cost to Twitter at all….
.
Okay… time to start scrutinizing the SEC, other available other public filings… and history…
The government isn’t an adequate explanation. U.S. Government? Other governments? Agency(ies) within the(se) governments? And/or some other entity or entitites…
The strangeness of Dorsey stepping down and a young foreign-born relatively low-paid nobody at the helm…
A globalist cabal. Of… whom? Where? When did this happen? How could it not be known…
.
tell me again these people are for free speech?
like HELL! they are a propaganda arm of the Deep State. BIDEN even showed that fact by ordering agencies of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to go after Musk, that my friends is WEAPONIZING THE FED AGAINST YOUR ENEMIES.
Exercise of that poison pill would result in the total demise of Twitter as an investable instrument, in effect, suicide. It’s only “value” now to investors is as a short target anyway and of course to the investment firms and the political party that want to maintain a stranglehold on the propaganda aspects of the platform and it’s ability to shape the direction of the sheep thinking, single cell users.
Bravo to Elon Musk for the effort. I wish he would focus his efforts on forming a Political Movement to take back our country.
So what happens if Musk sues, the stock price tanks, and then he buys a controlling interest the day the poison pill expires?
The only saving grace in all this is that I believe my Gen Z sons and their friends do not use Twitter and only a little bit of Facebook and that’s the Marketplace. They use Instagram (owned by FB), SnapChat (I don’t know who owns that) and Discord as far as I know.
I wish there was a way to FOIA of the government to uncover their financing Twitter.
I remember when Twitter first started. I thought it was the dumbest sounding name and “tweets” sounded just as stupid. But they got the celebrities on board, and Ellen DeGeneres promoting it and Ashton Kucher’s publicity in getting the first million followers. I wonder how involved they are with the government. Remember that creepy online ad with Demi Moore and Ashton Kucher and a bunch of other celebrities asking us to “be the change” after Obama was elected? I actually didn’t know about it until last couple years. But they acted like Obama was the second coming and we should all be good citizens now. Again, how involved are they with Obama?
So, if 43 B is 20% over present market, then market value is 34.4 B.
Musk owns 9.2%. So, the other 90.8% of shares are 37.9 B.
Controlling interest is 51%, worth 14.23 B. Or, 41.8% of outstanding shares, or 17.47 B.
Musk can buy another 4.8% to make his stake 14% , for 2 B.
He needs 3 other players to each buy 12.33% of stock at 5.15 B each, to enable all 4 of them to be seated on the Board.
Total controlling additional outlay: 17.44 B. Less than half of his tendered offer, but full control of the Board.
He could “loan” the 3 players 5.15 B each and use their stocks as collateral. or offer to backstop any losses up to 5.15 B for future stock value increase over 10% for players who want to play.
Players might include Larry Ellison, Sheldon Adelson, the Kochs, Michael Dell, and Leonard Lauder.
With a Board majority, the Board’s rules could change in a single vote.
Might be legal. Would surely comply with Twit’s Board Rules.
Just a thought.
Oops. Twit Board has 11 members. So musk need 5 more players. Then they control the shares (51%) and the board (6 of 11). Without the poison pill being triggered. Musk at 14% and the rest at 7.4%. Still less than 18 B total outlay additional.
Excellently done!
So, they simply devalue the stock people are holding?
Which just leaves me to wonder – why is Elon Musk now doing this? We must presume that he understands the [non- …] economics perfectly. 🤷♂️ And, I’m certain that he knew perfectly well what the Board would do. “He’s been around this block a few times.”
I’ve been thinking about that too; the only conclusion is, maybe he’s telling the truth, he really does want freedom of speech, the open town square, to prevail. Regardless of anything else, that alone is a perfect reason to do what Elon Musk is doing.
Good for him! Can’t wait to see what his Plan B is!
Well, he is certainly leading us all in a very educational exercise. Twitter will never be the same.
I suppose having a supposed IQ of 190 helps too — some people think Elon is crazy so they underestimate him; they do so at great risk.
Why can’t Elon Musk develop a parallel internet forum for free speech and drive Twitter under (in conjunction with dumping his shares of the stock to screw the Twitter BOD)?