Elon vs Twitter update: Elon helped America win , Tesla stock through the roof

To be honest I am not even sure what free speech is anymore.
There's one thing I know in life, there's no such thing as free.

 

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/04/an-ekg-on-esg-investing.php

POSTED ON APRIL 18, 2022 BY STEVEN HAYWARD IN ECONOMY, ENERGY POLICY, WALL STREET, WOKE CAPITALISM
AN EKG ON ESG INVESTING

The hottest new thing for Woke Wall Street is “ESG” investing, where ESG stands for “environment, social, and governance.” In other words, investing in politically correct sectors like “green” energy, media, and so forth, and avoiding investing in tobacco, arms manufacturers, and above all fossil fuel energy companies. ESG has become, Barron’sreports, “one of Wall Streets favorite buzzwords.”

Only the name and acronym are new. Twenty years ago “sustainable” investing was all the rage, but it turns out that the only kind of investing that is truly sustainable is in companies with growing profits. I’ve seen estimates that pension funds lost billions in gains by dumping all of their tobacco stocks (which have continued to climb) starting 25 years ago, and it is telling that Harvard, Yale, and other elite leftist hedge funds that run schools on the side have declined to divest their fossil fuel stockholdings because it would be bad for their returns, and might even breach fiduciary duty.

What does the wider public think of ESG investing? One recent survey found that “about one in four people believes the acronym stands for ‘earnings, stock, growth,'” which is just the right way to think about investing. Barron’s continues:

“Retail investors don’t understand ESG investing—only 9% say that they have ESG-related investments, and the familiarity with the concept is not as high or as broad as some of the coverage on the topic of ESG investing might suggest,” says Gerri Walsh, president of the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, which conducted the retail investor survey with NORC of the University of Chicago.

Only 24% of the 1,228 investors surveyed could correctly define ESG investing, and just 21% knew what the letters in ESG stood for. Walsh says the finding is “both surprising and concerning.”​

But it gets worse. ESG investments aren’t doing all that well. A separate Barron’s reportnotes:

By eschewing traditional energy stocks and defense shares, which are having a banner year, and embracing low-carbon-footprint technology stocks, which aren’t, many ESG funds lost money in the first quarter, and underperformed their benchmarks.​

One way around this problem is to redefine what qualifies as an ESG investment. Britain has decided that natural gas companies are just dandy ESG investments, while Sweden has decided to admit arms manufacturers into the ESG club, on the sensible ground that if you aren’t able to defend yourself against aggressors like Russia, you pretty much fail the most basic test of “sustainability.”
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hope this helps

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Not so different from today

 

I wish it did, but it appears totally unrelated to the article I was responding to and the questions I was asking.

 

10% extreme left and 10% extreme right is rather meaningless without an agreed upon notion of where the center is. I guess Musk, like most people, assumes he is at the center.

 

That's the whole point, being meaningless and exactly right, it's up to his judgment on what that is. Everything he does is with his ways.

But what he is saying in that tweet is he's not for a completely open platform. His proclaiming to be for free speech fooled a lot of people. In reality, he's probably much more likely to push for less banning but also an open platform on who is promoting what tweets and how and he would crack down on those 'bots' and 'enemies' of state and gov and whatever else that has a destabilizing function to society. But hey, fools be fools.

 

perhaps this one then:

DeSantis Threatens Twitter with Legal Action in Elon Musk Dispute

https://www.nationalreview.com/news...itter-with-legal-action-in-elon-musk-dispute/

excerpt:

During a Tuesday news conference, DeSantis said that the state’s lawyers were reviewing options for legal action against Twitter’s Board of Directors, to “hold them accountable for breaching their fiduciary duty.” Florida, through its Retirement System pension fund, is an investor in Twitter.

The move comes after the Wall Street Journal on Monday quoted sources who said that Twitter plans to reject Musk’s bid to purchase the company at $54.20 per share, an 18 percent premium over the closing price of $45.08 on the day of his offer.

***
In his remarks, DeSantis claimed that Twitter’s motivation for halting Musk’s acquisition was political rather than financial.

“They rejected it because they know they can’t control Elon Musk. They know that he will not accept the narrative and that their little play toy of Twitter, it would not be used to enforce orthodoxy,” he said, adding, “And so that’s why they did it. It was not, in my judgment, because it wasn’t a good business deal.”

DeSantis also cited instances of Twitter placing restrictions on accounts of media outlets such as the New York Post and Babylon Bee as evidence of his claims.

DeSantis claimed that Florida’s purchase of Twitter stock had been “stagnant” and “an injury to the fund,” hinting at a lawsuit by the state against Twitter’s board. He further claimed that, given Musk’s offer of a 20% premium on existing prices, Twitter’s approval of the sale would be a “massive return for shareholders,” which the rejection of Musk’s bid would prevent.
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more at the link

 

I guess you didn't understand what I asking for. Nevermind.

 

either that or you didn't understand what Turley was discussing

 

Well, it's both. I said I didn't understand what he's talking about, hence I asked for his explanation on what he means by Twitter not respecting free speech. Neither of the articles you've posted provides any clarity on that.

 

well, that's the clear part. if you don't understand that part of it, you probably haven't been paying close attention to the whole Twitter/Elon Musk issue.

that's because the two articles I posted were about ESG investing and how Twitter may be at risk for putting politics above profits.

 

Maybe not as much as you, though I think I've been paying a reasonable amount of attention to it and I've been rather shocked by how little emphasis people on putting on what "respecting free speech" should actually mean for a social media platform like Twitter. I had hoped Turley might have explained his views on this matter somewhere, but I guess not.

 

you could probably use the search function then on Turley's website to get the answer to that question

 

Ha, good point.

 

I've never meet majority shareholders and board members of publicly traded companies actually desiring this. Anyways isn't that illegal? Don't hoard members and execs have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders?

 

Yes that would be illegal to put ones own interests or concerns above shareholders. However, the board can argue they are in fact putting shareholders interests first - a difficult thing to prove in this case. Who's to say that the board believes the price will increase to $80 a share - boards turn down bids all the time. DeSantis is doing this more for show than anything else - wants to be the right-wing hero with a frivolous lawsuit that he knows goes nowhere.

Overall, I think Twitter would be better off selling to Musk at this point - however, they would be foolish to take the first offer and I think Musk knew they couldn't take his offer and was just doing it for showmanship.

 

After some searching, this is what I was looking for from Turley:

The case for internet originalism | The Hill

...
I am not an originalist for the Constitution, but I am an originalist with the internet. The internet was the greatest single advancement in free speech since the printing press. It was an open platform for speech which united the world. It was also a threat to authoritarian leaders who have struggled to control and censor the sharing of ideas. Twitter started as the ultimate platform for free speech for it allowed individuals to connect with others and share instant observations and to debate different views.

Yet the initial unlimited use on the internet has come into conflict with liberal lawmakers who demand that social media sites actively prevent people from sharing information they believe is false or misleading. Joe Biden has demanded that social media sites block postings linking mail voting to fraud. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has threatened legislation should they not stop the groups that spread disinformation.

Democrats ignored admissions by social media executives that they are wrong to bar the article and insisted that they increase such censorship. Senator Jacky Rosen warned that they have not done enough to prevent “conspiracy theories and hate speech” on the platforms. It is why “living internet” policies are dangerous. Technology firms are pushed by profits instead of principles. If Democrats can win control of Washington, social media sites will face greater demands for more censorship. That is when their policies will change as they “encounter new scenarios.”

So the alternative to internet originalism is no censorship. If social media sites could return to their initial roles, there would be no slippery slope of opportunism. If Pelosi demanded that Verizon disrupt calls to stop people from making errant claims, there would be lots of backlash. Twitter serves the same function between consenting parties. It simply allows thousands of people to engage in online conversations. Those people do not sign up to share ideas only to have internet overlords monitor their conversations and protect them from several harmful or misleading views.

It has been years since a bunch of geniuses started Twitter. Its draw was convenience rather than supervision. Dorsey himself said the success of Twitter was based on the notion that you “make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to be perfect.” The Constitution can offer the clarity of that meaning to limit the details to be perfect. To take from the First Amendment, Twitter should return to its position of originalism and make no policies which curtail free speech on the internet.
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So Turley's position is zero censorship of any kind on Twitter. Anything you can say in a phone call should be permitted by Twitter on its platform, per his words here.

I think that's an extreme position -- one that Musk (and the vast, vast majority of the public) does not accept. With good reason -- content posted on Twitter lives forever, is accessible by anyone, and can propagate virally and almost instantaneously to millions of people through follows and retweets. That's not how phone conversations or any other medium of communication pre-Internet works. If you take television or radio airwaves, which is a better comparison in some ways, the FCC disallows "obscene" material to be broadcast to protect viewers from patently offensive sexual material. This would be considered a flagrant violation of free speech on a phone call. It's considered appropriate for television/radio, because the medium enables more people to be affected by the content.

The point being, depending on the medium and the potential for harm that can result, we have different levels of tolerance for censorship. Turley's comparison of Twitter to a phone call really seems to miss this point. There always has to be a balance between respecting free speech and moderation of harmful content. The greater the scope of social harm due to the communication model of the medium, the more moderation is warranted. So if people really care about maximizing free speech on Twitter, the communication model itself has to be altered to minimize potential for harm.

A serious take would recognize that there needs to be some balance struck, and the conversation would steer to finding that right balance. You can't just do away with all content moderation (as Turley is proposing) and act like the problem is solved.

 

Elon Musk Races to Secure Financing for Twitter Bid
The world’s richest man is trying to shore up debt financing, including potentially taking out a loan against his shares of Tesla, so he can buy Twitter for $43 billion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/technology/elon-musk-twitter.html

excerpt:

Elon Musk is racing to secure funding for his $43 billion bid to buy Twitter.

Morgan Stanley, the investment bank working with Mr. Musk on the potential deal, has been calling banks and other potential investors to shore up financing for the offer, four people with knowledge of the situation said. Mr. Musk is first focused on raising debt and has not yet begun to seek equity financing for his bid, one of the people said.

Mr. Musk is evaluating various packages of debt, including more senior debt known as preferred debt and a loan against his shares of Tesla, the electric carmaker that he runs, two of the people said. Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm, is among the parties considering offering debt financing in a bid for Twitter. The equity he needs is likely to be sizable.

Mr. Musk is aiming to pull together a fully funded offer as soon as this week, one of the people said, though that timeline is far from certain. The people with knowledge of the discussions were not authorized to speak publicly because the details are confidential and in flux.

It is unclear if Mr. Musk’s efforts will be successful, but they go toward addressing a key question about his Twitter bid. Last week, Mr. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, made an unsolicited offer for the social media company, saying that he wanted to take it private and that he wanted people to be able to speak more freely on the service. But his offer was regarded skeptically by Wall Street because he did not include details about how he would come up with the money for the deal.
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more at the link

 

How about not banning the Babylon Bee while continuing to let Iranian Mullahs, Palestinian terrorists, Russian war criminals and leftist extremists use Twitter as a platform?