[3cats-in-a-coat]

Surely they wouldn't pay $20 billion to a guy who purportedly is buying Twitter because he's a "free speech absolutist" and is "defending the future of democracy of the world".

Even if it's just PR (and it is just PR, evidently), it's an additional burden to have your PR and your actions be consistently at 180 degrees.

Also, $20 billion aren't the "price tag". That money didn't go to Elon. They went to Twitter's shareholders. Elon only ended up with losses and loans, so far, to the tune of another 20-30 billion at the very least.

So where's the "payout"? If you "hired" Elon to do this for you, as a Saudi, and you spend $20 billion as a co-investor, and need to cover Elon's $20-30 billion loss, "the price tag" is now up to $50 billion, but we're still only at break even in the short term, and only when we don't consider opportunity cost of Tesla stock dropping last year and future losses to Elon's company brands and so on, because he's coming off as a lunatic and wasting his time on Twitter, instead of being at Tesla and SpaceX.

So what's the price tag now? $80 billion? $100 billion? $150 billion?

Reminder, the entire Saudi family, all of them, together, have about $1.4 trillion, and that's not cash in the bank, but assets, oil, real estate, all of it.

Which means any such "price tag" would imply them giving up all their liquid assets and maybe liquidating more assets, in order to afford this "price tag" so quickly.

It's just nonsense.

[mosselman]

Thanks for this delightful breakdown of how dumb this theory is.

By now I am very much aware that there are lots of people who believe conspiracy theories, yet I am still surprised when those people are from the tech scene. A developer who believes in the dumbest conspiracies is such an odd thing to me. It is so odd to me that someone who supposedly things about problems in a systematic way and has to break them down into their parts, can fall for something as dumb as the richest man in the world taking some sort of payoff to kill twitter.

I should know better by now, but it still takes me by surprise sometimes

[3cats-in-a-coat]

I don't want to insult anyone, and I see your logic about systematic thought. But being a programmer doesn't mean you're good at it.

Shrug.

[LexiMax]

The conspiracy theory does not exist in a vacuum. People simply don’t want to admit to themselves that they were wrong for idolizing him, or they have a distaste for the kinds of people who attack him, so they choose to believe in the 5D chess game as a way of saving face or refusing to give ground.

[code_duck]

Elon seems strangely desperate for money sometimes though. Despite his vast stock holdings, he feels compelled to play games with announcements that manipulate stock prices, and try pump-and-dump schemes on minor crypto.

[mikrotikker]

Come on, conspiracy theories are fun. It's fun to engage in thought experiments about what could be going on behind the scenes and even more fun to throw them out there to see what other people think.

The original guy didn't even say he 100% believed it as fact. It's just a thought experiment

[HWR_14]

Your $50 billion math is obviously wrong. You try to add up all the pieces and total $50 billion. But we know the total - $44 billion. Of which we know $12.5 billion came from the banks (secured only by Twitter itself). So for the Saudis to repay him (and his investors) would cost $31.5 billion.

Meanwhile, you've offered Elon the opportunity to justify liquidating billions of TSLA stock at its height without triggering a massive crash right before the entire market sank. And his reputation outside running a social network doesn't seem to have suffered much at all. Do you need to offer him a premium or does he offer one to you?

(And on financing, the Saudis' credit is fine)

Now, it's nonsense because controlling Twitter and using it to silent dissent algorithmically is better than blowing it up. But the math could easily work.

[hnbad]

It's nonsense but your first two sentences are nonsense. Elon Musk never demonstrated any genuine interest in "free speech". There never was any reason to believe this is an ideological core value to him. He always clearly just wanted crowds to cheer for him.

It's also not at all a burden for your PR to be diametrically opposed to your actions, especially if your actions are seen as bad. Absolutist regimes love portraying themselves as the victims because it gives them a moral justification (no matter how flimsy). And "free speech absolutists" are a great example given how many people publicly adopt that stance but then use it to justify shutting down their opposition for being "against free speech".

The reason people are creating nonsensical conspiracy theories about the Twitter buyout is that they want to believe there's a rhyme and reason to the madness, the same way they created nonsensical conspiracy theories following 9/11 because it meant that the US was in control after all and not actually (figuratively) brought to its knees by a handful of foreigners with box cutters.

The truth is that Elon Musk shitposted his way into being forced to follow through on an acquisition he never really wanted, used his business connections to coordinate a hamfisted leveraged buyout and got too high on his own supply after being the dog that caught the car. Now he's stuck in a midlife crisis trying to relive the failure that was his involvement in X.com but without Peter Thiel being able to stop him.

[oneeyedpigeon]

> The reason people are creating nonsensical conspiracy theories about the Twitter buyout is that they want to believe there's a rhyme and reason to the madness, the same way they created nonsensical conspiracy theories following 9/11 because it meant that the US was in control after all and not actually (figuratively) brought to its knees by a handful of foreigners with box cutters.

Exactly. People want to believe that the richest man in the world somehow deserves to be so, mainly through their effort. They want to think "if only I put a bit more work in, I could have it all!" The thought of somebody becoming the world's richest man AND being as unstable and erratic as Musk appears to be is disconcerting for those who want to live in a world with some kind of order in it.

[notahacker]

Musk never had any genuine interest in "free speech", as opposed to playing to the gallery of his fanbase, but from the POV of the Saudi conspiracy a Twitter takeover by an utterly boring conglomerate who quietly made it as compliant as possible with local laws (including Saudi ones) and tweaked the algorithms to make political stories less likely to surface would have been much more helpful than one by a fame-magnet pandering to a fanbase which loves populist politics and has no love whatsoever for the House of Saud. If you're working for the Saudis and playing 5D chess rather than 2D tech investing, that insincere posture isn't much use because he and his acolytes aren't holding that posture for you.

[ModernMech]

> The truth is that Elon Musk shitposted his way into being forced to follow through on an acquisition he never really wanted

Yup. The real reason behind all of this is not the market or the Saudis nor anything else. It’s because Musk wanted to be on the board, and he was rejected. He suffered a huge narcissistic injury, and then said “Fine, if I can’t be on the board, I’ll be the board and just buy the whole thing outright”

That’s why he waived due diligence and offered so much money. He was high off his narcissistic rage and flexing. He was on the warpath and forcing a hostile takeover. But then he cooled down, of course, and realized what he did was a fucking mess for himself. So he threw a tantrum in court.

This is all explained very easily by his personality disorder.

[peyton]

But he turned down the board seat: https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1513354622466867201

[ceejayoz]

Because it came with a "don't shit-talk the company in public" requirement, yes.

[andrekandre]

  > he's a "free speech absolutist" and is "defending the future of democracy of the world".

thats what he says....... his actions say otherwise