Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Settle His Jet-Tracking Beef, New Book Claims

Incidentally... https://mastodon.social/@elonjet is still going strong.

Yeah, no. Musk bought Twitter because he HAD to. He very publicly made comments about buying Twitter at absolute meme-stock prices, but didn't disclose that he already owned a LOT of Twitter stock. So, when his comments predictably increased the price of Twitter stock, he had two choices: Either it was just talk, and he was BLATANTLY guilty of stock manipulation and the Feds put a target on his back, or he acts like he totally meant it.

So he went with option two, acted like he was serious and wanted to buy twitter. Then he tried everything he could think of to kill the deal, accusing Twitter of all sorts of wrongdoing and lies, but Twitter was more careful than that. They got their shit right, and Musk couldn't back out. So he bought Twitter, rather than go to prison.

The fact that he could also kill the tracking twitter account was completely incidental. Musk is an idiot, but even he isn't that stupid. Musk initially offered $5,000 to the account holder to stop, and then balked at the return offer for $50,000. Now, I may not be a billionaire tech-bro, but I'm pretty sure that spending $50,000 to achieve a goal is preferable to spending $44,000,000,000. He's dumb, but he's not that dumb.

Ok. Musk offered the kid $5,000 to delete his account, the kid countered with $50,000. Musk refused so he spent $44 billion instead to get rid of the account.

Just fucking stop.

Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter after doing several incredibly stupid things publicly.

Quit assisting this fascist dumbass in his attempt at laundering his reputation.

Elon Musk burning billions of dollars to not have his public information publicly posted is one of the biggest Ls he's ever taken and that's a long list to fight to the top of.

I think he was trying to get out of Twitter and wanted to do a real life version of his Dogecoin pump and dumps. You know, talk a big game, hype up how the stock is gonna go to the moon after he brings his genius to bare on the company, then dump the stock and pull out of the deal. However, during the hype phase he managed to say some legally binding things and suddenly found himself forced to honor what he thought was going to be empty hype.

Money well spent: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet

Stop talking about this guy.

Muskrat bought it because he has poor impulse control. There's no "grand design," just a man child who desperately needs a mommy to protect him from himself.

So is Taylor Swift going to buy it next?

For perspective, $30 billion would afford the food and freight to feed every human on Earth for a year.

Less than that would make him a god in Haiti (that is, elevate the nation out of crisis and put a bronze statue of Musk in every state park commemorating how awesome he is.

A few billion could provide free high-speed internet to everyone worldwide. Curiously Musk considered this, but then wondered how to get everyone to pay fees for it.

ETA I got these values when we were discussing Bloomberg's wealth in 2019 when he was trying to Secret Hitler the Democratic party, and how much could be bought with the $500 million (at the time only 200 million was declared) he spent on his campaign. The $30 billion to feed the world value came up in in one of the news articles.

Well, the economy is much different and we're dealing with considerable inflation (and our billionaires, including Bloomberg are much richer.)

What a snowflake

So the full story would be that Elon stayed up until 5:30 a.m playing Elden Ring in a Vancouver hotel - was very stressed, saw on Twitter that people knew he was raging in Vancouver based on the Jet Tracker - stressing him out even more -
Though "Fuck it, maybe I can't beat Malenia, but at least I can beat this asshat on Twitter tracking me!"

...If only FromSoftware had added some pay-to-win elements... Like "For A Small $1 billion Micro-Transaction you get the uber Malenia slayer sword!" -
We would be living in a totally different timeline

If they weren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't care who watches where they go, right?

Even when he wins he does it like such a loser. Fuck this guy.

Called it! 100% called it!

LOL. There's a silicon valley bigwig jet tracker that I see pop up on my Reddit account, and I'm not even that interested in it.

Yes this makes far more sense then the brain dead “bought it to kill it” theory that’s just cope for phony stark

this is so astoundingly petty, it might just be true.

although i doubt that's the only reason he bought it, i wouldn't be surprised if it's a major factor that got him serious about buying it.

Or really, he wanted to talk shit and pump and dump, and he got caught by some savvy lawyers at twitter.

Then he tried to turn it into a political tool sprinkled with his narcissism, hoping foreign governments would pay him to manipulate narratives. But now nobody gives a shit, he has lawsuits left and right and is likely going to go broke, and he's scared away all the advertisers who were his life blood.

He tried to pull a trump but nobody actually backed him up, and they're likely going to let him fall.

I've read all his texts. He definitely bought it because d-list celebrities in his chat groups begged him to.

What stopping someone from recreating this on mastodon or any other website?

There is nothing special about Twitter which allowed people to track this jet.

Considering that...

• The Republicans encouraged him multiple times to buy it
• He quickly stopped blocking (mainly Russian) state-sponsored social manipulation campaigns
• He allowed right wing agitators back on the platform
• He almost immediately banned droves of journalists that weren't blindly Pro-Russia and Pro-GOP.
• He censored / banned all kinds of activists that pushed back against authoritarian (Russia-backed) regimes in other countries

...I have a hunch that he also served the interests of certain political actors with the acquisition. Public town square my lower backside.

So... it was a really good call from the CEO to not remove the account?

Pretty sure ended up buying Twitter because the courts made him.

All that money could have gone to something useful that would have benefited everybody and instead it went into investors pockets

Elon is first and foremost a con man.

He gives them the old razzle dazzle, and even tech investors get so impressed with his confidence and his technobabble and his statements like “This is ready to ship today” that they’ve just lined up to give him money.

I think what’s happening now is that the blush is coming off the rose. Elon first got his money because he was involved as a founder in a company that he was fired from because of incompetence, but kept a large enough founder equity stake that he cashed out a billionaire. Then, because money was cheap and because you hit a tipping point where it’s easier to make money than lose money, he failed upwards.

Now reality is starting to catch up with him, and he’s in a panic. He’s psyched himself out enough that he’s turned pure Trump, doubling down and becoming more outrageous instead of taking his responsibility to his companies into account.

Why settle your jet-tracking beef when you can just eat it?

So Taylor Swift is going to buy it next?

If that's true, Saudi Arabia probably wouldn't have given him $22B of their dollars with no expectation of a Return on Investment. They have no horse in the "does Elon look foolish?" race.

I think he got talked into thinking the Twitter files were real.

Assuming this is true, there are methods to have the same result that are way less expensive...

I said Musk would attempt to buy Twitter as soon as Reddit started posting about him being angry about the jet tracking.

People told me I was crazy, nobody would buy a social media platform just to suppress one account.

It was obvious - Musk behavior is clearly that of an insecure teenager, paired with a lot of money.

What a fucking glorious waste of fucking money. YOU CAN FLY COMMERCIAL YOU ASSHAT.

So, lawsuit against Bloomberg incoming?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A particular beef involving a college student tracking his private jet was the catalyst for the billionaire purchasing shares of Twitter, commencing his takeover of the social media platform, according to a new book about the ordeal.

“Musk had also unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal [CEO of Twitter at the time] to remove a Twitter account that was tracking his private plane,” says an excerpt from Battle for the Bird, a new book on Musk’s takeover, published by Bloomberg on Thursday.

The book seems to confirm that Musk’s personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.

Musk touts “free speech” as the main reason he bought Twitter, but the billionaire was actively trying to silence a college student he had a feud with before he was CEO.

The person behind the account, Jack Sweeney, is a college student who’s now famous for tracking the private jets of Musk and Taylor Swift.

Musk was heavily focused on promoting right-wing speech when he bought Twitter, which was lacking under Jack Dorsey’s management, but also on settling his internet beef.

The original article contains 405 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 55%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I wouldn't doubt that was his initial motivation for making the suggestions.

I also remember that he tried to back out of buying Twitter multiple times. While doing so he was pretty public about all the crazy crap he would do with Twitter.

Despite all that Twitter went to a judge and got them to force Musk to complete the sale. He's a crappy CEO for Twitter but it's kind of on the former Twitter leadership for forcing that situation.