Twitter board endorses Elon Musk's $44bn deal.UPDATED: Users regain access after Twitter outage.Musk, he said, “made it clear that he would roll back Twitters’ community standards and safety guidelines, which would turn the platform into a fever swamp of dangerous conspiracy theories, partisan chicanery and white supremacist radicalization. This deal is collapsing because of Elon Musk’s own erratic behavior, embrace of extremists and bad business decisions,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit watchdog group that’s been critical of Musk’s Twitter bid. “Despite what Musk may claim, this deal isn’t ending because of Twitter bots or spam accounts. Groups opposing the takeover from the outset - including those advocating for women, minorities and LGBTQ people - cheered Friday’s news. Inside Twitter, Musk’s offer was met with confusion and falling morale, especially after Musk publicly criticized one of Twitter’s top lawyers involved in content-moderation decisions. He sold roughly $8.5 billion worth of shares in Tesla to help fund the purchase, then strengthened his commitments of more than $7 billion from a diverse group of investors including Silicon Valley heavy hitters like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. When Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, he inserted a “420″ marijuana reference into his price. His bid to buy the company came together quickly after that. But six days later, Agrawal tweeted that Musk would not be joining the board after all. Then, on April 4, he revealed in a regulatory filing that he had became the company’s largest shareholder after acquiring a 9% stake worth about $3 billion.Īt first, Twitter offered Musk a seat on its board. That’s when Twitter said he contacted members of its board - including co-founder Jack Dorsey - and told them he was buying up shares of the company and was interested in either joining the board, taking Twitter private or starting a competitor. Musk’s flirtation with buying Twitter appeared to begin in late March. Twitter was required to “preserve substantially intact the material components of its current business organization,” the letter said. The sale agreement, he wrote, required Twitter to “seek and obtain consent” if it deviated from conducting normal business. Musk’s lawyer also alleged that Twitter broke the agreement when it fired two top managers and laid off a third of its talent-acquisition team. “It just seems as if they’re hiding something,” said Bouzy, who also believes the number of fake or spam Twitter accounts is higher than what the company has reported. On the other hand, Bouzy said, the letter from Musk’s legal team makes some valid critiques of Twitter’s lack of transparency, including its apparent refusal to provide Musk with the same level of internal data it offers some of its big customers. It’s odd that he would use bots and trolls and inauthentic accounts as a way of getting out of the deal.” “This whole process has been bizarre,” said Christopher Bouzy, founder of research firm Bot Sentinel, which tracks fake Twitter accounts used for disinformation or harassment. One of the chief reasons Musk gave for his interest in taking Twitter private was his belief he could add value to the business by getting rid of its spam bots - the same problem that he’s now citing as a reason to end the deal. Last month, Twitter offered Musk access to its “fire hose” of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets, according to multiple reports at the time, though neither the company nor Musk confirmed that. To calculate how many accounts are malicious spam, Twitter said it reviews “thousands of accounts” sampled at random, using both public and private data such as IP addresses, phone numbers, location and account behavior when active, to determine whether an account is real. The accounts represent well below 5% of its active user base each quarter. Twitter said it removes 1 million spam accounts each day. On Thursday, Twitter sought to shed more light on how it counts spam accounts in a briefing with journalists and company executives.
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