Twitter: Musk tries to cancel the wedding
Will Twitter be able to force him down the aisle?
The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web:
Elon Musk has confirmed what so many have suspected for months, said T.C. Sottek in The Verge: "He doesn't have what it takes to run Twitter." The world's richest man officially announced last week he would seek to back out of his $44 billion deal to acquire his favorite social media company. The predictable move follows weeks of "obvious troll behavior" by Musk — including ridiculing Twitter's employees and management — as he seemingly tried to justify his buyer's remorse. Twitter is calling his bluff and taking him to court to demand he go through with the purchase forged in April, which it believes offers good value to the firm's stockholders. Musk claims he can renege on the grounds that "Twitter won't give him data necessary" to determine the percentage of "bots" — fake users — on the platform. "This is weak, crybaby stuff." The genius who gave us Tesla and SpaceX had promised to bring similar, world-changing energy to Twitter, saying he could "unlock" Twitter's potential as a free-speech platform for "the future of human civilization." Instead, he ends up looking like a fraud who "wrote a check his myth couldn't cash."
The showdown is far from over, said Cara Lombardo and Robert Wall in The Wall Street Journal. Musk provided no evidence that Twitter has a major bot problem, and corporate law experts say Musk is on shaky legal ground for canceling the deal. But "the question remains whether it is really possible to force the eccentric billionaire to buy a company he doesn't want to own." And what will happen if Musk is ordered to complete the purchase and defiantly says no?
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The original deal did include one escape hatch for Musk: a $1 billion payment to Twitter if he didn't complete the purchase, said Matt Levine in Bloomberg. So "the possible outcomes of litigation are extremely binary: He pays $44 billion and buys Twitter, or he pays zero to $1 billion and does not." Forcing an unwilling, vindictive Musk to take ownership of a major social media company would be terrible for Twitter's thousands of employees, "the users, and the world." But would it be worse than "letting the world's richest man get out of a deal for a nominal fee because he got bored with it?" A much fairer outcome would be for Musk to settle out of court and pay Twitter around $15 billion in compensation for the damage this fiasco has done to its market value. But "Elon Musk is rich, weird, and stubborn," so predicting what he'll do next is impossible.
Having been left at the altar by Musk, Twitter now faces the question of "how much worse off it will be," said Dan Gallagher and Laura Forman in The Wall Street Journal. Musk's "initial interest made Twitter seem like an undervalued darling," but his attacks on the platform's employees, integrity, and policies have tarnished it and left lingering questions. Three key executives have left since the merger was announced, and employee morale has sunk to new depths. This much is clear: Twitter is "a husk of the social media company Musk once coveted."
This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Are 'judge shopping' rules a blow to Republicans?
Today's Big Question How the abortion pill case got to the Supreme Court
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Climate change is driving Indian women to choose sterilization
under the radar Faced with losing their jobs, they are making a life-altering decision
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
'A great culture will be lost if the EV brigade gets its way'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
What Elon Musk has to fear from China's 'Tesla killer'
Talking Points BYD is now the world's biggest seller of electric vehicles
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published
-
Elon Musk overshadows his own Cybertruck rollout
Talking Point The X owner's latest bizarre public appearance and incendiary comments threaten to derail the 'biggest product launch of anything by far on Earth this year'
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Elon Musk to X's fleeing advertisers: 'Go f--- yourself' and 'don't advertise'
Speed Read 'What this advertising boycott is going to do is to kill the company,' Musk said at a public conference
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Elon Musk used Starlink, which saved Ukraine, to thwart a Ukrainian attack on Russia's Crimea fleet
Speed Read
By Peter Weber Published
-
Richcession: where have all the millionaires gone?
feature Global wealth has dropped for the first time since 2008 – but it may not be bad news for the economy
By Rebekah Evans Published
-
Elon Musk kills the bird
feature Is X a necessary evil or more of an expensive mistake?
By The Week Staff Published
-
Threads: Meta's Twitter clone gains a foothold
feature The competition to usurp Twitter is heating up
By The Week Staff Published
-
Tesla reports record quarter for sales
Speed Read
By Catherine Garcia Published