Advertisement

Musk Says Twitter Deal at Lower Price Is ‘Not Out of the Question’

Advertisement

OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his deal with Twitter is “not out of the question” at a lower price.

While speaking at the 2022 All-In Summit, Musk said he’s continued to express skepticism about the company’s estimate of spam and fake accounts.

It was originally reported that around 5% of Twitter is comprised of fake accounts and bots. Now, reports have come out arguing that it could be closer to 20%, which Musk admitted concerns him.

Musk said at the All-In Summit that without providing evidence, it “seems beyond unreasonable” that Twitter’s number of human accounts is near 95%.

“Does anyone have that experience?” Musk asked.

Advertisement

In a series of tweets Monday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal defended the company’s estimate of “well under 5%” fake accounts and bots.

Musk had some fun with Agrawal’s lengthy Twitter thread and responded with the poop emoji.

Over the weekend, Musk issued a warning to liberal politicians running California who fostered an unfriendly business environment and allowed chaos on the streets in the Golden State.

Musk took to Twitter over the weekend and wrote: “The Golden State is cooking its golden geese. Sooo tasty at first, but then no more golden eggs.”

He also shared a story from Matt Taibbi, who detailed data and reports about how Democratic rule and policies have driven California into the ground.

Musk clearly believes this given he moved Tesla out of California and to Texas.

Taibbi wrote, “The story also turns out to be in part about why California, which had a growth streak dating back to the gold rush, saw it broken in 2020, when the population shrank by 182,000, causing a first-ever loss of a congressional seat. More tellingly, over 265 companies moved their headquarters out between 2018 and 2021, with the rate of flight doubling just during those years.”

Advertisement

“Based on interviews with current and former executives, congressional and legislative sources from both parties, past and present employment regulators, a handful of public and private litigators with knowledge of the relevant cases, and review of thousands of excruciating pages of court records, here’s the background to sensational cases like Riot Games, Activision, and Tesla that no one told you about,” he added.

Taibbi wrote:

Toward the end of Barack Obama’s administration, the West regional office of an investigatory arm of the Department of Labor called the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP, was asked to conduct a routine compliance review of Oracle, employer to over 130,000 and the second-largest software company in the world.

The OFCCP’s mandate among other things is to promote diversity and bar federal contractors from discrimination, and Obama had a vision for the agency which involved using it aggressively to correct the pay gap. ‘You are in a unique position to fix this problem,’ Obama reportedly told DOL officials early in his term. ‘Why are you not fixing this problem?’

In establishing a “National Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force,” Obama cited census statistics that showed women earned just 77 cents for every dollar earned by men, which he called an “embarrassment.” “The pay gap no doubt existed, but Obama’s claim earned a whopping two Pinocchios from future fact-checking demigod Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post.

Test your skills with this Quiz!

Kessler cited sources saying Obama was comparing apples to oranges, ignoring career and educational choices (men dominated the most remunerative majors like Petroleum and Metallurgical Engineering, while women dominated the least remunerative, like Studio Arts). Kessler cited a study from the St. Louis Fed that suggested that when women and men with similar educational backgrounds working comparable jobs were compared, a pay gap still existed, but it was far smaller than “most think.”

“This would become relevant at Oracle, where experts argued over whether to compare men and women with similar degrees and experience or compare men and women with similar degrees and experience in the same field, among other factors. “In any case, the agency rolled out a new approach that more than ever before would stress using statistical analyses thanks to “access to more data,” to identify actionable pay gap issues.”

Advertisement