HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why does Musk want to own Twitter?

6 points by strangattractor ↗ HN
There has been much speculation as to why Musk wants to own Twitter. I would like to add to it. His 2 hobbies appear to be 1. Trolling people on Twitter 2. Trolling about Cryto.

Maybe Twitter could be a vehicle for promoting/implementing a new coin or FinTech. Musk isn't stupid and neither are the backers of the 44 billion in loans. It seems ludicrous to me that he would be able to do this without a serious plan to increase the value of the investment. Having guarantied access as some have suggested just isn't enough. Any thoughts?

12 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 40.4 ms ] thread
trifit
Trolling people on twitter seems to be a past time for a lot of folks
minimaxir
> It seems ludicrous to me that he would be able to do this without a serious plan to increase the value of the investment.

There's been much more ludicrous abuses of financial instruments in tech.

strangattractor
True - but one has to convince investors of the 44 billion that they will get their money and then some. Maybe he would like to revisit his PayPal past - make a Cryto version using Twitter users as a base.
FrenchAmerican
1/ Political power: allowing Trump back or not give him a huge leverage. On Democrats, on Trump, on Republicans still loyal to the Constitution (therefore anti-Trump). That decision will be more influential in the 2024 election than any of Putin's pro-Trump propaganda in the last two elections.

2/ God's eye on one of the main place of discussions on Earth. He could basically monitor the evolution of the opinions in many countries. It's an huge intelligence hedge on an infinity of subjects.

3/ Being in position to say whatever he wants without risking being banned like Trump. He'll still have to respect the law, but he doesn't care paying millions in fines in a worst case scenario (except if the SEC considers it a market manipulation).

4/ Decide what is free speech and what is not. Here again, he and Twitter can be sued. But a court decision often takes time. Furthermore, Musk will use his top lawyers to make his decision to allow speech A and forbid speech B. The same for ads.

jfengel
Has Musk ever gotten in trouble with Twitter?

He certainly gets in trouble with the SEC for what he says on Twitter, but buying Twitter won't fix that.

Perhaps he's been self-censoring, though it seems unlikely to me. I can't imagine what he feels he can't say without getting banned, but is nonetheless legal. He doesn't seem to think all that much before he opens his virtual mouth and inserts his virtual foot.

FrenchAmerican
I don't know, really. You may be right but he's smart and very familiar with Twitter practices so despite the apparent no self-restraint, maybe he knows how to stay on the edge?

So I guess we'll see if the tone of his tweets changes when he's really in possession of Twitter. We'll know then for sure.

superasn
My naive self thinks his hubris has a lot to do with it. I mean if I were to speculate I think it's because he thinks he can do a 10x better job at running it if he were in charge of the whole show (esp after the recent shitshows by twitter like the bitcoin hack where his own account has hacked too).

Twitter has a lot of problems, like rampant bots, which have remained unaddressed for a very very long time and it can certainly do a lot better. And maybe he think he is the one who can do it. Maybe this whole thing can be explained by occam's razor afterall.

WheelsAtLarge
Twitter has way more social influence than what its user base would suggest. Much of the world's media use it as a source for daily news. So what trends there will likely be part of the news some where.

A big part of Musk's fortune was created by his ability to promote himself. Tesla and SpaceX have both benefited from that.

Twitter has been a big part of his self promoting. Any possibility of losing access to Twitter by him would be devastating hit to all 3. By buying Twitter he can make sure he never gets banded and he gets a world wide communications vehicle to continue with his promotion.

In the past many tycoons have used newspapers to promote their businesses and point of views. He will do something similar with Twitter and use it to promote his point of view and it will be done at a world wide level. But he'll need to continue to grow Twitter to help him with that. He has to deal with both business and political risk. It's very gutsy but he's comfortable with risk.

WheelsAtLarge
BTW, I predict, he's likely to turn Twitter into something similar to Combination of Weibo and WeChat in China. It will probably become his next trillion dollar company and he will own it 100%. WOW!
entropicgravity
Primarily I think Musk wants to own Twitter is because he does all of Tesla's marketing through Twitter for free, and the value of that is in the billions by itself. If he were to be banned from Twitter, as Trump has been, that would be very expensive and a risk he would prefer to avoid.

Secondary reasons might include, Twitter's stock price has been in decline and it might be a good buy at this price. Musk wants to tweak the rules of the twitterverse.

Finally, when it's working to his satisfaction he'll float the company again on the public markets but he'll own the voting shares so he can't be banned. He might even make a profit in the process.