Elon Musk appointed to twitters board of directors

Elon Musk appointed to twitters board of directors(twitter.com)

41 points by vikingcaffiene 4 years ago | 12 comments

0des 4 years ago |

The last thread here said it was a passive investment or something to that effect. Does this mean that has changed? I presume a board of directors does things rather than remain passive observers.

ckastner 4 years ago |

I am not all too familiar with U.S. securities regulations, but one issue raised yesterday was that Musk disclosed his 9.2% stake on Schedule 13G, rather than 13D.

"By signing below I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were acquired and are held in the ordinary course of business and were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect, other than activities solely in connection with a nomination under § 240.14a-11." [emphasis mine]

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/240.13d-102

Can anyone with subject matter expertise share info on how this is possible?

variant 4 years ago | |

I'm not an expert, but this article may be relevant:

https://securitiesregulationmonitor.com/Lists/Posts/Post.asp...

He may ultimately file an amendment. Seems like 13G doesn't preclude some discussions w/ the board but less certain what happens once you're appointed to the board.

ditonal 4 years ago |

Elon does not get along with the new CEO, as Elon is friends with Dorsey who got run out. One of the major points of contention is Twitter as a free speech platform. While Twitter now allows remote, it’s still centered around SF and it’s employee base skews heavily “woke” (and like most SV companies , the non-woke keep their mouth shut). These woke employees constantly call to censor those who they perceive as more right wing while giving left wing stuff way more slack. (see: Netflix and Spotify employees upset over Rogan/chapelle).

Project veritas exposed a lot of this by having a journalist match Twitter engineers on tinder, get invited to their holiday party, and secretly record them admitting to targeting conservative accounts.

Besides now being the biggest shareholder, Elon also has a lot of Twitter followers. He threatened to make a new platform, but did this instead.

The new CEO is a former SWE and a more typical SV guy. I don’t think he’s especially woke but he’s also down to bow to peer pressure. Elon doing this is now massive peer pressure in the opposite direction.

Given how often Bay Area engineeers forget their own bubbles and biases and accuse dissenting views of being “intolerant”, this is likely great news for proponents of free speech and Twitter shareholders.

adwww 4 years ago | |

I'm not sure shareholders stand to gain much from the platform getting more un-woke (racist?).

The less brand safe the platform becomes, the less big corps will want to be associated with it or maintain a presence there.

Jtype 4 years ago | | |

I think that you severely underestimate the pushback against the woke crusade that is building. The fact that you think anyone who isn't woke is racist, shows your ignorance in the matter.

ditonal 4 years ago | | |

Twitter stock up 30% on the week.

freddybobs 4 years ago | |

"Woke" doesn't really seem to mean much anymore. It has become a code word used by the right, which could be summarized as "the enemy". There are other code words like "cancel culture" which similarly applied, but not apparently applicable to right wing cancelling.

I wouldn't take anything too seriously from [Project Veritas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas) who have an ongoing issues of distorting, misrepresenting and the like - the ACORN case being most obvious.

"Elon doing this is now massive peer pressure in the opposite direction."

What is the opposite direction? Why is that better/good? I honestly don't know what the opposite of "woke" is, because "woke" is used as a reactive response. It's whatever it needs to be to attack.

This all seems part of a wider "culture war". Like many wars it's actually hard to know what underlies it.

"Libertarian" style free speech is widely available. Unfortunately it seems to just degenerate into trolling and the worst of human behavior. (say like 4chan/8chan etc).

If you want "Authoritarian Conservative" you can go to Truth Social or "r/conservative" on reddit.

"this is likely great news for proponents of free speech"

Free speech protects citizens from the government. If twitter doesn't want Nazis (or whatever) on it's service then it can do that. It is not a free speech issue.

Alenycus 4 years ago | | |

If there was a kingdom hundreds of years ago, and every printing press was owned by a church that did not allow itself to be criticized, no one in their right mind would say that kingdom had free speech.

That is the current situation in the west with social media and the woke religion.