I want to discuss the recent hot topic, Elon Musk Acquires Twitter for $44 Billion. First, let’s briefly review the process. The acquisition started at the end of January this year, and it started relatively low-key. Until April 4, he announced that he had become Twitter’s largest shareholder as early as March 14, and he had completed the push. The acquisition of 9.2% of the special shares suddenly hit public opinion.
On April 5, Twitter invited Musk to join the board of directors on the condition that his shareholding ratio exceeded 14.9%. Musk first accepted and canceled the decision after 5 days, and then proposed 43 billion yuan on April 14th. U.S. dollar acquires Twitter Inc. Twitter’s board of directors was eager to activate the “poison pill” clause, giving shareholders other than Musk additional equity, valid for one year. The purpose was to make Musk’s acquisition more expensive, but this blockade ended in failure after about a week, because Musk’s price was too attractive, no other bidders joined, and Twitter’s board eventually backed down and accepted Elon Musk’s offer of $54.2 per share brings the total value of the deal to $44 billion. Musk’s financial plan disclosed by the Wall Street Journal is roughly like this, and his entire acquisition payment plus various expenses are about 46.5 billion US dollars.
Musk obtained a $13 billion acquisition loan from a consortium of 12 banks including Morgan Stanley, Barclays Group, and Bank of America. He owns about $60 billion worth of Tesla stock and will use some of it to pledge to the bank. Musk can get $12.5 billion, and then he has to come up with $21 billion in cash, which means he will sell part of Tesla Pull the stock. Tesla is in a rising period, and the CEO’s reduction of holdings and cash will pull down Tesla’s stock price for a period of time, and investors will definitely not like it. However, Musk doesn’t care too much.
According to the option incentive plan given to him by Tesla’s board of directors, as long as Tesla’s performance grows, he can continue to get more shares, so the left-hand pays and the right pays again, just like an acrobat Like playing a tossing game, it’s okay to control the rhythm well. Musk has experienced many financing crises in the process of starting a business, so he is very relaxed in the face of this financial pressure.
About three-quarters of the funds for the acquisition came from his assets in Tesla, so the possibility of passing the bid in the process is also very small. At the same time, the process is also legal and compliant, and there are no obvious faults that are picked out and are unlikely to be rejected by the regulatory agency.
At present, the advisers of Musk and Twitter are meeting. It is estimated that a more detailed timetable for the acquisition will be released in a very short time. The entire transaction process will be completed by 2022 at the latest, and Twitter will become a privatized company by then. , will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. However, Musk also said that he would not hold all of Twitter’s shares all the time, and would consider allowing as many other shareholders as possible within the scope of the law and on the premise that he controls the company.
It can be said to be the most eye-catching acquisition in the Internet field after Google acquired YouTube in 2006, not only because of the huge amount but also because it will change the ecology of Internet public opinion. The left-wing public opinion field was challenged by a counterattack. Elon Musk is quite maverick and atypical in every way, so I won’t rashly label him as a rightist here. Judging from Musk’s own stated goals, the transformation he wants to make on Twitter is in line with the voices of conservative groups that are suppressed on Twitter.
He advocates: reducing censorship and allowing more voices blocked by political correctness to be retained; adopting open-source algorithms to make traffic rankings public, reducing the possibility of behind-the-scenes operations restricting the traffic of certain users, which YouTube also desperately needs; weeding out spam bots, authenticate real users; and add editing functions.
The last one is especially needed by users like me. Because of Twitter’s weird rules, some 50 cents will block me first, and then follow other people’s comments under my tweet. In this way, only the person who is followed by him has the right to delete and block him, but I, as the host, cannot complete the deletion operation. Since I couldn’t get in touch with everyone he followed, I had to stop. I guess all Chinese dissidents on Twitter have been harassed this way. If you can increase the editing authority of the landlord, of course, I am very welcome.
There was also a story in the acquisition process. On March 20 this year, the American conservative website “Babylon Bee” joked that Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, was the man of the year. The dude who was ridiculed (sorry, because of the Chinese habit, I had to call him dude) completed sex-change surgery in 2011 and turned into a woman. He is the first transgender person with the rank of four-star general.
The Twitter official thought the joke was deeply offensive and involved hatred, so it suspended the official Twitter account of “Babylon Bee”. “Babylon Bee” refused to delete the tweet and admit its mistake, and Twitter also refused to unblock it. But in the middle of the controversy, the CEO of Babylon Bee got a call from Elon Musk. Musk came to confirm that the Twitter account of “Babylon Bee” was indeed suspended, and revealed that he wanted to buy Twitter. Sure enough, on March 24, Musk issued a statement criticizing Twitter and launched an investigation into the freedom of speech.
After Musk’s takeover was finalized, many conservatives welcomed it, and some House Republicans hoped Twitter’s new owner would bring Trump back to Twitter. Of course, this step is not appropriate for Musk or Trump immediately, because it will drive the left into a frenzy, gather forces to use a magnifying glass to pick faults, make the acquisition case unnecessarily long, or prolong the process unnecessarily. Trump said that he was still willing to stay on his own platform truth social. Musk also made fun of Trump with his usual cynical tone. He felt that the name truth social was not bright enough and should be called trumpet (trumpet). He also mocked Trump for bragging. mean.
In fact, it is beneficial for Musk to keep a distance from Trump, so that the acquisition can be successfully completed. Trump and Musk are both quite smart people. If they have such a tacit understanding of each other, it would be better. If things are slow, the deal will be completed and the acquisition will be finalized. In the future, the first thing that needs to be adjusted is the internal process, the replacement of management, and the improvement of the design and function of the software, and then gradually let the conservatives who have been expelled come back. better.
The leftist standard-bearer The New York Times was quite unhappy with Musk’s counterattack, and published commentary articles for several days in a row, pessimistic about Musk’s prospects for taking over Twitter. In addition to depicting a dire future where extreme rhetoric rages, another bearish direction is Musk’s relationship with China. Because Tesla set up a factory in China, which is also an important market for electric vehicles in the future, Amazon founder Bezos began to lead the way, worried that the Chinese authorities would blackmail Tesla and let Musk open the back door to the CCP’s publicity on Twitter.
What do you think of Musk’s acquisition? Some people worry about the capital control opinion platform, which actually happened N times before Musk. Bezos himself acquired The Washington Post in 2013, professional baseball Red Sox owner John Henry acquired the Boston Globe in 2013, and wealthy Chinese businessman Huang Xinxiang acquired the Los Angeles Times in 2018. The difference is that these acquisitions are aimed at traditional media, and the amount is much smaller. The transaction amount is only hundreds of millions or less than 100 million US dollars. Musk’s acquisition of more than 40 billion US dollars is unprecedented in the media industry. It is a platform, not a traditional media.
After completion, it will be the only privatized company among several major social media platforms. In fact, it will break the situation that the social media platform is completely monopolized by the left, and it will force Facebook and YouTubers to relax the scale of speech censorship based on the consideration of traffic, which is obviously more conducive to free expression.
But that result will only happen if Musk sticks to his promise to increase Twitter’s tolerance for conservatives. Musk’s consistent performance is definitely not a politically correct fellow traveler, but Musk’s fighting style is very different from Trump’s. Instead of attacking directly, he often counterattacks by pretending to be cool and creating black humor. For example, his offer to Twitter shareholders of $54.2 per share includes the number 4.20, which is International Cannabis Day. And he joked that he would convert Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, which is also a slap in the face of the left, and let them show love and tolerance through action. This half-joking, not sure whether to take it seriously, style allows him to escape the kind of siege Trump has received, but it does show that he is not a fellow traveler on the left.
Musk posted a cartoon today on April 28, expressing his position, which means that his position has not been moved, but since 2008, the leftists have been running farther and farther. Right, 2008 was the year Obama took office. This is of course far more tactful and clever than accusing Obama directly, or saying that liberals are crazy.
The success of Musk’s counterattack has given us a good example that changing the status quo requires mastering real resources and real business success. When you can’t convince your opponent, maybe you can buy it.
These are all positives, but Musk’s relationship with China remains a matter of vigilance. It is bound to happen that the CCP takes advantage of Tesla’s market in China and asks Musk to open the back door, and there will never be a situation where the CCP does not use leverage. Musk has also tweeted many times praising China’s achievements. He is not a fellow traveler of the Western left, and of course, he may not necessarily be a fellow traveler of the right. It does not mean that he will be tough on the CCP, and we must remain sober in this regard.
Musk’s successful acquisition of Twitter has brought changes to the social media landscape, and change is a good thing. But it also got me thinking what is the healthy path for social media platforms? I still remember the utopian predictions a decade or so ago that social media liberated the power of dissemination of opinions from newspapers and television, and put it into the hands of individuals, helping to bridge barriers and enhance understanding. The flattening of the dissemination will help to open up people’s wisdom, spread the concept of democracy, and achieve broader inclusiveness. It is really a prelude to the harmony of the world. That’s when social media is pulling free users around the world, flooded with fantastic predictions. But in the past 10 years, we have seen more divided opinions, less understanding and respect, and pervasive fake news, which is the opposite of romanticized predictions.
Therefore, in the field of media, although the opinions of a few major media monopolize the interpretation of the truth and the shaping of opinions, it is very unfavorable. Complete decentralization and decentralization are also quite harmful, and it is hard to say which is more harmful. After the messy information fills all the spaces within the eyes and ears, the public is unable to make independent analyses and judgments in all fields from politics, health care, and finance. Instead, it increases people’s sense of insecurity and lacks the necessary professional power to do information.
After the screening and distribution of, people rely more on their own preferences and emotions, the stratospheric coterie has become stronger, and the wall of irrationality in public opinion has instead been raised.
To open the wisdom of the people and to block the wisdom of the people, the two processes are carried out on the Internet at the same time. From this point of view, the multi-center communication method is a better choice than going to a few centers and no center, especially when multiple centers compete with each other.
How to get back to this point? It needs to follow the most common logic of human transactions, and everyone has to pay for the services they enjoy. Assuming that Twitter is a paid platform, one person only needs to pay one dollar a month, and the unsolved problem of robot watering can be immediately alleviated. There is no cost to register a robot account now, delete one and register ten more. Once there is a cost, it can filter out more than 90% of the spam on the platform. Like my membership website, although there are definitely people from the CCP lurking, it is much quieter than the free YouTube platform.
The paid model will directly increase the average age and social class composition of users. Even a small fee, equivalent to the cost of a connecting bus ticket a day, will significantly reduce young and low-income users. It is also possible to consider the coexistence of a paid and free model, but limit the interaction of free users.
Correspondence also affects the content, with less superficial and emotional content, and more rational and persuasive content. This will help reduce extreme speech and fake news more than imposing strict filtering rules.
Is it difficult to switch from free mode back to paid mode? It’s not as difficult as we thought. For the capital side, there is no problem of losing face. As long as the payment model can bring ideal profits, the payment model will certainly reduce users, but also save hardware and labor costs. Therefore, rather than bringing the platform into regulation at the legislative level, it is more worthwhile to inject creativity through spontaneous adjustment through market means. What is most needed at present are several successful cases that are attractive to both capital and the public. Whether it’s Musk or whoever, if he can innovate in this area, it will be real merit.
