[ideamotor]

I’m not following all that. Someone made an offer, the board legally had to sell as it was in the interest of the owners (the shareholders). What else matters? If it’s deemed to be in the interest of shareholders for Reddit to sell off every sub to a corporate, they’ll do that too.

[xp84]

You’re both kinda right — yes GP’s evaluation was (probably) why the Elon transaction happened, and also it would not have had to happen if the owners were a handful of private individuals who didn’t mind passing up a majorly overvalued offer like that.

Of course, anyone at all who cares about money would have been a fool not to force him to buy it once he screwed up by bluffing in a way that made him contractually obligated to execute the transaction! So in practice, since even super-rich people love getting more money and non-rich people really want to become rich, good luck in practice spinning a hypothetical where Twitter owners would have said no, especially considering what a dog the company was already in terms of making money.

[ideamotor]

Yea. Owners can say no if and only they really are the owners. Being privately owned does not ensure good stewardship but it allows it. Case and point will be Reddit once it goes public. Every single person in tech should take a corporate law class and it should be required in undergrad.