Incidentally... https://mastodon.social/@elonjet is still going strong.

Yeah, no. Musk bought Twitter because he HAD to. He very publicly made comments about buying Twitter at absolute meme-stock prices, but didn't disclose that he already owned a LOT of Twitter stock. So, when his comments predictably increased the price of Twitter stock, he had two choices: Either it was just talk, and he was BLATANTLY guilty of stock manipulation and the Feds put a target on his back, or he acts like he totally meant it.

So he went with option two, acted like he was serious and wanted to buy twitter. Then he tried everything he could think of to kill the deal, accusing Twitter of all sorts of wrongdoing and lies, but Twitter was more careful than that. They got their shit right, and Musk couldn't back out. So he bought Twitter, rather than go to prison.

The fact that he could also kill the tracking twitter account was completely incidental. Musk is an idiot, but even he isn't that stupid. Musk initially offered $5,000 to the account holder to stop, and then balked at the return offer for $50,000. Now, I may not be a billionaire tech-bro, but I'm pretty sure that spending $50,000 to achieve a goal is preferable to spending $44,000,000,000. He's dumb, but he's not that dumb.

Just fucking stop.

Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter after doing several incredibly stupid things publicly.

Quit assisting this fascist dumbass in his attempt at laundering his reputation.

Ok. Musk offered the kid $5,000 to delete his account, the kid countered with $50,000. Musk refused so he spent $44 billion instead to get rid of the account.

Elon Musk burning billions of dollars to not have his public information publicly posted is one of the biggest Ls he's ever taken and that's a long list to fight to the top of.

I think he was trying to get out of Twitter and wanted to do a real life version of his Dogecoin pump and dumps. You know, talk a big game, hype up how the stock is gonna go to the moon after he brings his genius to bare on the company, then dump the stock and pull out of the deal. However, during the hype phase he managed to say some legally binding things and suddenly found himself forced to honor what he thought was going to be empty hype.

For perspective, $30 billion would afford the food and freight to feed every human on Earth for a year.

Less than that would make him a god in Haiti (that is, elevate the nation out of crisis and put a bronze statue of Musk in every state park commemorating how awesome he is.

A few billion could provide free high-speed internet to everyone worldwide. Curiously Musk considered this, but then wondered how to get everyone to pay fees for it.

ETA I got these values when we were discussing Bloomberg's wealth in 2019 when he was trying to Secret Hitler the Democratic party, and how much could be bought with the $500 million (at the time only 200 million was declared) he spent on his campaign. The $30 billion to feed the world value came up in in one of the news articles.

Well, the economy is much different and we're dealing with considerable inflation (and our billionaires, including Bloomberg are much richer.)

Money well spent: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet

Stop talking about this guy.

Muskrat bought it because he has poor impulse control. There's no "grand design," just a man child who desperately needs a mommy to protect him from himself.

So the full story would be that Elon stayed up until 5:30 a.m playing Elden Ring in a Vancouver hotel - was very stressed, saw on Twitter that people knew he was raging in Vancouver based on the Jet Tracker - stressing him out even more -
Though "Fuck it, maybe I can't beat Malenia, but at least I can beat this asshat on Twitter tracking me!"

...If only FromSoftware had added some pay-to-win elements... Like "For A Small $1 billion Micro-Transaction you get the uber Malenia slayer sword!" -
We would be living in a totally different timeline

What a snowflake

If they weren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't care who watches where they go, right?

Even when he wins he does it like such a loser. Fuck this guy.

Yes this makes far more sense then the brain dead “bought it to kill it” theory that’s just cope for phony stark

LOL. There's a silicon valley bigwig jet tracker that I see pop up on my Reddit account, and I'm not even that interested in it.

this is so astoundingly petty, it might just be true.

although i doubt that's the only reason he bought it, i wouldn't be surprised if it's a major factor that got him serious about buying it.

Or really, he wanted to talk shit and pump and dump, and he got caught by some savvy lawyers at twitter.

Then he tried to turn it into a political tool sprinkled with his narcissism, hoping foreign governments would pay him to manipulate narratives. But now nobody gives a shit, he has lawsuits left and right and is likely going to go broke, and he's scared away all the advertisers who were his life blood.

He tried to pull a trump but nobody actually backed him up, and they're likely going to let him fall.

I've read all his texts. He definitely bought it because d-list celebrities in his chat groups begged him to.

What stopping someone from recreating this on mastodon or any other website?

There is nothing special about Twitter which allowed people to track this jet.

Considering that...

• The Republicans encouraged him multiple times to buy it
• He quickly stopped blocking (mainly Russian) state-sponsored social manipulation campaigns
• He allowed right wing agitators back on the platform
• He almost immediately banned droves of journalists that weren't blindly Pro-Russia and Pro-GOP.
• He censored / banned all kinds of activists that pushed back against authoritarian (Russia-backed) regimes in other countries

...I have a hunch that he also served the interests of certain political actors with the acquisition. Public town square my lower backside.

So... it was a really good call from the CEO to not remove the account?

Elon is first and foremost a con man.

He gives them the old razzle dazzle, and even tech investors get so impressed with his confidence and his technobabble and his statements like “This is ready to ship today” that they’ve just lined up to give him money.

I think what’s happening now is that the blush is coming off the rose. Elon first got his money because he was involved as a founder in a company that he was fired from because of incompetence, but kept a large enough founder equity stake that he cashed out a billionaire. Then, because money was cheap and because you hit a tipping point where it’s easier to make money than lose money, he failed upwards.

Now reality is starting to catch up with him, and he’s in a panic. He’s psyched himself out enough that he’s turned pure Trump, doubling down and becoming more outrageous instead of taking his responsibility to his companies into account.

All that money could have gone to something useful that would have benefited everybody and instead it went into investors pockets