When Twitter agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk for $44 billion on April 25, the two parties agreed to specific terms of the merger, signed a document, and filed it to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Musk doesn’t yet own Twitter, and he won’t for many more months, but he is now locked into a contract with the social network’s current management, and there’s a $1 billion penalty at stake if he pulls out. The two sides also agreed to certain rules of behavior for the period before the deal closes. And one day after that agreement was reached, Musk already broke the rules. What rule did Musk break?
Musk’s agreement with Twitter allows him to tweet about the merger “so long as such Tweets do not disparage [Twitter] or any of its Representatives.”
But on April 26, Musk tweeted what could be considered two separate disparaging comments about Twitter employees.
After Politico reported that Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and head of trust and safety, had cried in an internal meeting following news of the acquisition, conservative journalist Saagar Enjeti tweeted a screenshot of the article alongside the message: “Vijaya Gadde, the top censorship advocate at Twitter who famously gaslit the world on Joe Rogan’s podcast and censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, is very upset about the @elonmusk takeover.”
Gadde’s team, which is in charge of content moderation decisions at Twitter, briefly blocked a link to an October New York Post article about a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of soon-to-be-US president Joe Biden. It also temporarily locked the Post’s account. The laptop was eventually confirmed to be Biden’s, and then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey apologized, saying Twitter made a mistake.
On Tuesday, Musk jumped into the fray, in essence agreeing with Enjeti’s critique of Gadde. “Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate,” he tweeted.
Just hours later, Musk replied to a tweet by right-wing conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich alleging that Twitter lawyer Jim Baker, a former FBI general counsel, “facilitated fraud.”
“Sounds pretty bad …” Musk replied. Elon Musk can’t stop tweeting
This is far from Musk’s first play at toeing the line on Twitter. As CEO of Tesla, his tweets led to a lawsuit from the SEC over what the regulator determined was a misleading tweet about securing funding to take Tesla private. In a consent decree, Musk agreed not to tweet about the company without a lawyer’s approval—an arrangement now known as Musk’s “Twitter sitter“—but he still often tweets about Tesla. Musk recently sued to change the terms of the settlement, but a federal judge in Manhattan upheld the Twitter sitter arrangement on April 27, signaling that Musk won’t be getting out of it any time soon.
While it’s unlikely Musk’s most recent tweets will have major consequences for him or the Twitter deal, they are further evidence that even a signed agreement—and the opinion of future employees—can’t keep the idiosyncratic CEO off his favorite platform.
This is just Trump. They're expecting norms to not be broken and he's breaking them. So we're going to keep getting Trump-style reporting on this matter. Elon Musk ignores the Twitter parliamentarian, Elon wasn't supposed to ban these people, Elon should sign a mission statement about his commitment to free speech.
So you're telling me the only way to stop the sale is for a bunch of people to break into the capitol building? :very-smart:
Tldr: Musk promised not to tweet mean things about Twitter but he did! Stop the sale!
Lol. Whatever.
$1 billion penalty
$44 billion deal
Yeah I'm sure he's terrified of that
But when I do it, everyone's all like "what the fuck, man" and "500 feet away at all times"
See this is exactly the kind of thing he's buying Twitter for
:think-mark:
I told some landlords I was going to take them to a people's court and they permabanned me lol. The website is very much adheres to the "liberal rules based order" so to say.
Wait, what the fuck? Isn't threatening to take someone to court literally the definition of "liberal, rules based order?"
Punishment for offenses, as with online platforms so also with real world crime, seems to be more a function of the target and the perpetrator rather than the offense itself
Without reading anything, I am simply astonished to learn that Elon Musk was a co-founder of twitter.
Okay, they agreed to rules.
But what happens if he breaks the rules?
Have these nerds not learned from Trump?
It's not a violation for him to break that clause. It's a violation for YOU to break that clause if you were in a similar contract.
If I was in a $44b contract it wouldnt be a violation for me to break that clause either.
Sure the rules say he can't, but since when did rules apply to him and have any enforcement? For that matter, when's the last time the self described "technoking" was told "no?"
It would be a fuckfest since the federal government doesn't have any legal authority over the election process, such as putting candidates on the ballot. So Constitutionally it would be strictly illegal, but if enough individual states put the name on the ballot it would be hard for the federal government to strike it down.
Of course, according to the constitution the people do not elect the president at all. The electoral college does, and most (all?) states have state laws saying their electoral college is determined by their states' popular vote. IANAL, but I could concieve of a this situation.
A popular non-American runs on the Republican ticket and the Red states fall in line, putting him on the ballot. The courts cannot shut the election down in time (and legally are barred from changing the election date) and in a weird scenario the non-American wins. The electoral college vote would likely get tied up in court proceedings and from there it depends on the Supreme Court. A non-American cannot be president by the constitution, so they might rule that while elected president, they cannot serve and invoke the 25th amendment for presidential succession, making the Vice President the new President.
But I really don't see this happening, especially with a Musk type guy.
musk is the kinda guy to talk up a whirlwind about how hes gonna run and change history and the laws and shit and then just drop it after reaping whatever benefits he wanted. pump and dump baby.
Strikes me as the kind of guy who'd rather own a president than be one.
