from Hacker News

Elon Musk appointed to twitters board of directors

by vikingcaffiene on 4/5/22, 12:41 PM with 12 comments

• by 0des on 4/5/22, 1:37 PM

  The last thread here said it was a passive investment or something to that effect. Does this mean that has changed? I presume a board of directors does things rather than remain passive observers.

• by ckastner on 4/5/22, 1:17 PM

  I am not all too familiar with U.S. securities regulations, but one issue raised yesterday was that Musk disclosed his 9.2% stake on Schedule 13G, rather than 13D.

  "By signing below I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the securities referred to above were acquired and are held in the ordinary course of business and were not acquired and are not held for the purpose of or with the effect of changing or influencing the control of the issuer of the securities and were not acquired and are not held in connection with or as a participant in any transaction having that purpose or effect, other than activities solely in connection with a nomination under § 240.14a-11." [emphasis mine]

  https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/240.13d-102

  Can anyone with subject matter expertise share info on how this is possible?

• by ditonal on 4/5/22, 1:29 PM

  Elon does not get along with the new CEO, as Elon is friends with Dorsey who got run out. One of the major points of contention is Twitter as a free speech platform. While Twitter now allows remote, it’s still centered around SF and it’s employee base skews heavily “woke” (and like most SV companies , the non-woke keep their mouth shut). These woke employees constantly call to censor those who they perceive as more right wing while giving left wing stuff way more slack. (see: Netflix and Spotify employees upset over Rogan/chapelle).

  Project veritas exposed a lot of this by having a journalist match Twitter engineers on tinder, get invited to their holiday party, and secretly record them admitting to targeting conservative accounts.

  Besides now being the biggest shareholder, Elon also has a lot of Twitter followers. He threatened to make a new platform, but did this instead.

  The new CEO is a former SWE and a more typical SV guy. I don’t think he’s especially woke but he’s also down to bow to peer pressure. Elon doing this is now massive peer pressure in the opposite direction.

  Given how often Bay Area engineeers forget their own bubbles and biases and accuse dissenting views of being “intolerant”, this is likely great news for proponents of free speech and Twitter shareholders.