Not true. “eIonmusk” (with a capital I instead of L) was banned, presumably for impersonation.
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My statement wasn’t “this happened”, it’s “this is what twitter can do to force the sale”
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You know he can afford a better defence attorney than your amateur pro bono offerings, right?
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They can ban him for violating the terms of service. They can’t ban him for backing out of buying the company.
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That was exactly what they were saying on Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast - they had some M&A journalist experts (William Cohan) on who were absolutely astounded that Tesla’s lapdog board was so weak that they let their fearless leader bet the farm (in a way that could really harm Tesla) on this bizarre stunt. The podcast was titled “Is Elon Musk about to the King of Nothing?” The nightmare scenario for him was Tesla falling 40%… so far it’s down 25%.
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The terms of service that say
Our Services evolve constantly. As such, the Services may change from time to time, at our discretion. We may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services or any features within the Services to you or to users generally.
and
We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason
Those terms of services?
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My guess is they’ll ask the court for $8-10-billion (including the termination fee) and then tell him they’ll go away for $4-5-billion. He might take it if they allow the settlement amount to go undisclosed but the knives will still be out for him in the boardrooms of Tesla and SpaceX.
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I don’t think twitter is likely to amend its terms of service to say “if you sign a contract to buy the company, you can’t back out of it and then try to get out of the agreed upon fee”, but I would be delighted if they did.
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Why would they need to amend? “Any or no reason”
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The man is an idiotic narcissist. That said, I think not buying Twitter because if is chock full of 'bots and fake accounts is probably one of his broken clock moments.
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Increasingly Musk’s tweets are just the twitter equivalent of a fart noise.
Apparently it’s so much worse than that - he’s legally on the hook for the full amount. There’s a “specific performance” clause, which is quite unusual in contracts like this, but it means he agreed to pay the full 44 billion, no matter what. (Lawyers have been laughing, incredulously, about this on Twitter, that Musk and his lawyers ever agreed to this.) Legally Musk is in a terrible position, of his own making.
That’s not going to come out in court (even if it were relevant, which it isn’t to Musk breaking the contract - he waived due diligence and foolishly agreed to a “specific performance” clause). As the article says, the question isn’t even really relevant or fully make sense, and full access to all of Twitter’s data and some serious data analysis is only going to give you the basis for a complicated discussion (which is also why, if Musk brings up what he thinks the number of “bots” is, it won’t mean anything). Also, even if it were cut-and-dried, “how many ‘inauthentic accounts’ are on Twitter” isn’t, by itself, interesting or informative. Leaving aside labeled bot accounts, the interesting bit is how they’re distributed, who uses them and why and how, and that’s really not going to come out in a court case.
It’s 100% a distraction to make people think he has a valid reason for walking away from a binding contract. Not even as a legal argument - in that respect, he’s totally screwed himself - but just the general public.
It’s highly amusing to see the response of lawyers on Twitter now that contract details have been revealed. The consensus seems to be that Musk must have ignored his lawyers’ strenuous objections in order to agree to some really dumb provisions in the contract that totally screw him over once he decided to back out, because there was no way his lawyers were so inept as to be fine with what he signed.
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Not necessarily, there could be some self-selection here. Will he fire anyone that tells him “no”?
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Time has shown that even “geniuses” like Kasparov (proponent of “Russia First” alternative history) and Bobby Fischer (noted anti-semite & conspiracy theorist) aren’t otherwise that “smart.”
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I read somewhere that Twitter already discloses information on bots in its quarterly SEC filings. I have not verified that personally because I simply don’t care enough, but if true, what makes you think Twitter will say anything different in court?
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So, shitty company meets shitty person, shittiness ensues. Shocked.
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Well, the nature of legal advice is that it’s just that - advice. The lawyer doesn’t tell the client “no” - the client ultimately does what they want to do. In this case, his lawyers would have told him, “Here’s what this provision does, and why it’s a bad idea to sign it as is.” and his reaction was, clearly: “Don’t care. Wanna sign it. Want Twitter now! [/grabby hands]” And his lawyers sighed, shook their heads, cashed their checks and looked forward to a lot more work when it all inevitably blew up in his face.
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Doesn’t “disclosure” work both ways, tho?
Won’t Musk have to disclose lots and lots of info about his financials and life to twitter’s side - info he may not want known even if not-illegal?
Heck, we just found out he tried to keep the fact he recently had children with one of his employees secret.
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IANAL, but disclosure is not “anything and everything,” but rather “anything and everything that is relevant to the case.”
Twitter probably can use disclosure to get information on Musk’s financials (if he literally does not have the money, then he was acting in bad faith). But I don’t think that they could get any information on his private life unless it directly pertained to Twitter (such as private emails discussing his plans for this deal).
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I see that Kasparov has repudiated Fomenko’s pseudohistory (but not the general idea that history has been falsified), which makes sense because he wouldn’t want to be associated with Russian imperialists.
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