Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter, really?

I feel like people miss just how hard he tried to not buy Twitter. It seems clear that he was doing his usual market manipulation/dick swinging on social media, and went a little too far. He tried to bail, Twitter took him to court and before the court could force the sale, he said "OK yeah sure. I'll buy it."

It was a clown move, by a clown.

Here is an old New York Times article on the (leaked) pitch deck that Musk presented to potential investors explaining his plans for Twitter.

https://archive.ph/9PG3M

Here is an article about Musk's plans for "Twitter 2.0" now, I think, called the X application.

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Elon-Musk-Shares-Roadm...

1. He thought they had a lot of extra fat - Judging by the fact that he basically kicked off the silicon valley firing trend, he might have been right.

2. He thought advertisers/power users were locked into the platform but didn't pay enough - Judging by the fact that he had to hire a new executive from traditional media whose job is to likely negotiate with advertisers he was likely very wrong on what he though the power balance between twitter and ads was.

3. He thought the platform lacked core products - Since there are still no tangible new products at Twitter not sure how to grade him.

Overall, this is basically what a PE buyout of a shit company looks like. Except this company's product is used by basically everyone(on the free tier) and we get to watch the turnaround/last breath from the first row.

In the end, because his choices were to agree to the purchase or wage a court battle that he wasn't likely to win. The former costs ~$44 billion; the latter probably still costs $44 billion, but also court costs and whatever embarrassing/damaging stuff that comes out in discovery.

As to why he made the offer in the first place, who knows? But whatever the reason, it's fairly obvious that he regretted it almost as soon as the ink was dry.

I just love these responses so far. It really does seem like it’s “a little of column A, and a little of column B”.

The takeaway I get is that he got stuck buying an overpriced tool, without understanding how it works, or how to use it, and is slowly starting to break it with his mishandling of it.

Reality must seem a lot different to someone with more money than anyone. With my finances I can only afford to eff up so much. He can afford a lot more than me.

I assume he never actually intended to, but didn't understand what he was signing. It's fairly clear he didn't have a coherent plan.

One stated reason was to build a 'super app'. Take Twitter and its user network as first step, then add features like peer-to-peer payments, app store

https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23687125/elon-musk-...

Same was reported about Zuckerberg and Meta

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-dreams-buildi...

I'm not convinced there's a hidden answer, or anything. He saw a very poorly managed operation, went "I could do that", and then fucked up even worse. Shareholders probably knew Twitter was overvalued, so selling at market-price to one madman was better than trusting another not to capsize your investment. So, they did what any reasonable investor would do, and they fucked over the users.

Let it be a lesson to anyone who puts their faith in a private platform. These people don't care about you - they just get paid to pretend to.

It’s getting re-litigated now, if you missed it the first time. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/musk-sues-law-fi...

I assume for the same reasons Jeff Bezos bought his media mouthpiece.

A combination of basic human competition and desire to have more influence over public perception.

As far as his stated reasons: He was fairly open about thinking Twitter was some leftist cabal holding back the truth.

As for my own take, twitter addiction seems to warp you, in ways that send you more reactionary. See Jordan Peterson's recent output there for example. It's like your own Overton Window gets shifted by the people you interact with.

Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter, really?

I don't know but I can guess. If I were as wealthy as him and I operated a few companies like SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, etc... and I wanted a way to promote them I would look at buying Alphabet, Meta, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft. Twitter was probably in the most likely position for acquisition of those but I am just guessing.

Whoever controls the media can adjust the public perception of reality. This could be beneficial for a myriad of reasons. Consolidation of media occurred with physical media, then radio and television. It worked well for them. Perhaps it is a stretch for me to compare Elon to the likes of Rupert Murdoch but Elon could be the governments next golden child. Let's see if he buys more social media companies. Is Mastodon gGmbH immune to acquisition?

I think he started buying it for Trump but then when Trump said he wouldn't join, Musk tried very hard to get out of the deal.