This is the end of the first week since Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s $ 44 billion buyout offer, and one of the strangest technology transactions ever just continues to add new twists. A detailed report from The Wall Street Journal revealed several layers on the process that began with the accumulation of shares on Twitter in January to Musk and what it might mean when he finally closed the deal and became its owner. Taken with additional information from The Verge editor Casey Newton in Platformer and a new report from Reuters, the picture is becoming clearer.
Reuters added more details to earlier reports by Bloomberg and The Washington Post about ideas Musk offered to bankers who would lend him some of the money he needed to buy Twitter. According to Reuters sources, he told bankers that he planned to develop revenue-raising features, and one example was “charging a fee when a third-party website wants to quote or embed tweets from verified individuals or organizations.”
As the publication notes, in some already deleted tweets from earlier this month, Musk discussed reducing Twitter’s dependence on money-making advertising and suggested changes to the Twitter Blue subscription, such as banning ads. Reuters also reported that Musk had already appointed a new CEO to take over from Parago Agraval, citing a source who said he would not decide on job cuts until he actually took ownership of the company.
Agraval told officials that executives have not seen the plans Musk reportedly shared with bankers
That’s not much we now know about Elon’s plans after he takes office, but according to Casey Newton’s report in his Platformer newsletter at the Twitter general meeting early Friday, it would be more than executives and board members they knew before they voted to accept the redemption offer. Newton writes: “In fact, Agraval said that executives did not even see the plans for the company, which Musk shared with bankers.
But how did we even get here, right? The Wall Street Journal has some color it can provide there, citing a “shadow crew” battling Elon Musk’s Twitter offer, which included his colleague, former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel (who funded the initial initial bid). of Ted Cruz for the Senate), right-wing blogger Charles K. Johnson (who previously sued Twitter) and Seth Dylan, CEO of The Babylon Bee, who the newspaper describes as a satirical right-wing satirical publication modeled on The Onion. These links may explain things to anyone confused by the resurgence of the right wing of Twitter activity and the statements of figures whose accounts have been banned from the platform, such as Marjorie’s Taylor Green or Donald Trump, about the possibility of a return.
However, much of the article focuses on close ties between Elon Musk and Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, despite the latter’s possible decision to ban Donald Trump from the platform and Musk’s choice to appear in one. the only tweet with the phrase “I put art in fart”. The WSJ reports that Dorsey, who was the CEO of two companies at the time, occasionally “showed up at meetings” while sending messages to Musk.
* It is also crazy and wrong for individuals or companies to bear this responsibility. As I said before, I do not believe that a permanent ban (except for illegal activity) is right or should be possible. That’s why we need a protocol that is resistant to the layers above.
– jack⚡️ (@jack) April 29, 2022
After the article was published, Dorsey posted a thread of tweets, despite the fact that he “recently tried to take a break from Twitter.” Dorsey said: “Every decision we made was ultimately my responsibility.” In cases where we made a mistake or went too far, we acknowledged this and worked to correct it. ”
This sudden impulse to take public responsibility included a tweet in response to a Twitter question temporarily and confusingly banning links to the New York Post story about President Joe Biden’s son, where he now says: “When I found out we took this action , we turned it almost immediately. we also had to restore the account without requiring deleting the tweet. ”
The crackdown also comes two days after the future Twitter owner / Dorsey friend reportedly tweeted criticizing Twitter policy and legal manager Vijaya Gade for the incident, calling the action “obviously incredibly inappropriate” and tweeting a meme alleging that the company was a “lion wing bias” depicting her face. Financial Times correspondent Dave Lee said this was followed by a wave of hateful tweets targeting Gadde.
For Jack, the most important point seems to be that “I don’t believe that any permanent ban (except for illegal activity) is right or should be possible.” For reasons that may be buried deep in a text message thread with Elon, Dorsey believes this is a solution that Twitter needs to learn quickly and improve in ways it has never done before.
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