Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I suppose I need to add that I'm not talking (and don't care) about your position on Muskness, Xness, or anything else. I'm just responding to a pattern of unsubstantive/flamey/snarky comments in your account history. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
To be clear though — Musk acknowledged it was worth a fraction of what he paid for it many months before he paid for it. In his view, the company's value crashed in early 2022 and that more information came to light during the acquisition process which further changed his view of the company's value.
This is objectively true, since every other tech company's stock prices dropped dramatically. Twitter's stock price was pinned because Musk made a commitment.
> more information came to light during the acquisition process which further changed his view of the company's value
This is objectively false, he misread Twitter's quarterly statements and didn't understand what mDAU meant, he wasted months and millions of dollars dragging Twitter through court, only to be forced to follow through on his commitment or get a worse judgment from the court.
> This is objectively false, he misread Twitter's quarterly statements...
Whether it's objectively true or false is irrelevant. What I said was it changed his view of the company's value which resulted in him acknowledging that his estimation of Twitter's worth had dropped.
And while I don't disagree that Musk had a different interpretation of mDAU than Twitter did, I don't sign onto the assertion that how 2022 Twitter's view of the world is anything like objective. These numbers have been considered controversial and suspicious long before Musk's interest in Twitter.[0] Twitter had a history of dodgy numbers.[1] And there was substantial evidence that Twitter was turning a blind eye to bot traffic in their mDAU analyses.[2]
The reason the previous owners were eager to dump Twitter was because Elon offered far more than it was worth, despite it being a cash flow positive business.
He backed out because he was foolish enough to think that the legally binding offer was not in fact binding.
I suppose I need to add that I'm not talking (and don't care) about your position on Muskness, Xness, or anything else. I'm just responding to a pattern of unsubstantive/flamey/snarky comments in your account history. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.