Look for a protracted ugly, and fundamentally costly battle between Elon Musk and Twitter. Here’s the gist of where things stand right now. Common Dreams:
Mega-billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, on Friday officially moved to pull out of his bid to buy Twitter, claiming he was bailing on the $44 billion deal because the social media giant made “false and misleading claims” during negotiations and was in “material breach of multiple provisions” of the agreement.
“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,'” Musk’s team explained in a court filing. “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”
Response to the breaking news included rebuke from progressives like Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.) who tweeted, “Hey Elon Musk, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
Digital rights campaigners, media critics, and even public health experts had warned that the purchase of Twitter by Musk posed a direct threat to democracy and the common good by placing the highly influential social media platform—which is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide—under the control of one man.
This is a developing story and the details of the legal parameters will be explored when they become available. It’s been speculated that Twitter might force Musk to complete the purchase. That’s one possibility. It’s also been speculated that Musk will pay a $1 billon fine for backing out of the agreement. We will soon find out. This is the big Friday night news dump, right here.
And here is MAGA’s reaction.
Junior says Musk backed out because he found out twitter was all bots. pic.twitter.com/jQp0Gjd0C5
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 8, 2022
Hell hath no fury like MAGA scorned. pic.twitter.com/ZQ6Mux9aR5
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 8, 2022
It looks like the MAGA love affair with Musk is on the rocks for sure, if they’re calling him filthy names like “Democrat.” My oh my. Where will it end?
And here is the unkindest cut of all. Are you ready for this? The MAGAs have been waiting for Elon Musk to give them Twitter for their toy because Truth Social has turned into such a bomb. But the only problem with that is that Truth Social is under investigation by the Securities Exchange Commission. That’s why Trumpty Dumpty bailed and left Devin Nunes holding the bag, remember that from the mists of time, oh, excuse me, I meant yesterday?
You can’t keep up with it. The hits keep on coming, faster than a ’50’s oldies station. And the common denominator in all of it is Donald Trump and the people who foolishly listened to him — which was 74 million, last we knew.
Most of us didn’t expect the deal to go through. Musk is the sales guy who’s been promoted way way above his level of competence – though not yet beyond his ego!
I suspect some on the Twitter Board of Directors never wanted the sale to happen at all, and will be glad to have Musk out of the picture. Others of course saw dollars in their own bank accounts and lord knows what kind of under-the-table deals were made to get them on board with selling to Musk. As you know I don’t Twitter but from what I gather the sale wasn’t all that popular with the users of the platform either. In the end I suspect most of Twitter including management will be glad when this is over. And while quite a few public insults will take place a settlement will get negotiated that gets Musk out of the deal for far less than a billion dollars. I’m guessing perhaps a quarter of that will do the trick – a nice little cash infusion for Twitter and for Musk it’s a bit more than tip money but still not a huge price to pay for what he surely knows is a mistake.
musk, or his lawyers (?), keep hammering home ‘bots and about Twitter not providing info for them to peruse but I have read in numerous publications that Twitter did indeed provide data captures from which statistical analysis could be performed certainly. Unless that is a lie, and way too many outlets wrote about it, musk will be..what.. $2b poorer?
The talking beard provides another pithy assessment. Where’s my coke spoon?
The original agreement included a provision that if he were to back out of the deal, he would have to pay Twitter a $1 billion fee. He’s stuck with this whether he likes it or not. He signed the agreement with this in it and agreed to it. Tough shit, Mr Musk!!