
Elliott Management buys stake in Twitter and seeks to oust Jack Dorsey - tankenmate
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/29/paul-singer-elliott-management-twitter-jack-dorsey
======
hn_throwaway_99
I read the article, and as much as I see a lot of Elliott Management's tactics
as personally odious, this action seems very much par for the course for them.
That is, I don't see the political angle having much weight.

Elliott has always been very clear the absolute only thing they care about is
making more money, and finding companies that they believe have a management
team that is not 100% laser focused on increasing shareholder value have
always been a target for them. Given Dorsey's dual CEO roles and his persona
as the tech-male version of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle brand, not out of
character at all that they'd be eyeing a change in management.

As an aside, would someone who is more versed in the world of finance explain
how these PE companies are able to have so much leverage when the stakes they
take are still relatively small (e.g. single digits). Management in firms
across the world shudder with fear when Elliott takes a sizable stake, but I
don't understand how Elliott can wield so much power without having a greater
percentage of shares.

~~~
Avshalom
>absolute only thing they care about is making more money

That is a political angle.

~~~
loceng
You're right. The problem is people in their thinking silo and try to
differentiate to claim that not everything is political - when in fact,
someone who only is interested in earning money is inherently impacting
politics.

------
tptacek
"Republican mega-donor"? Elliott is one of the most famous activist investors
in the world. Nobody talked about the "Republicanism" when Elliott started
pushing Softbank around. And it's absolutely no surprise that an activist
would push on Twitter; its CEO isn't even full-time.

~~~
gist
> And it's absolutely no surprise that an activist would push on Twitter; its
> CEO isn't even full-time.

For those to young enough to remember (you do) there are so many things that
happen in this day and age in public companies that would never fly years ago.
Part time CEO and for that matter Dorsey's planned move to Africa means he
can't be fully focused on what is right for twitter. Which has been the case
for some time.

I remember when Obama took office and in the first few weeks he found it
necessary to go to a meeting at his kid's school. I can think of many ways
political spin wise why he might have done that (people mumbled something
about setting a good example for other fathers iirc) but honestly the angle
seemed to be 'important that I know what is going on with my kids'. As if his
wife Michelle wasn't good to drive that event. Or that somehow the kids of a
President need to be hovered over at all lest at that age.

~~~
Scipio_Afri
He had kids before he was president, you don’t think it was routine for him to
go to his kids’ parent teacher conferences before being president? I think
both of his kids were around late elementary or middle school age at the time
of being president which is also an important developmental time for kids.
Being a CEO or any job shouldn’t mean that it clones at the sacrifice of being
a good parent. To me it sounds like it’s someone keeping up the routine they
had before they got a new job. Being president is just another job, albeit far
more high profile.

~~~
gist
Development time? He is President. You make as if they are going to have some
kind of normal life in any way shape or form.

> Being president is just another job, albeit far more high profile.

Just another job? More high profile? You are joking right?

~~~
dillonmckay
Bill Gates drove his kids to school.

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mrtksn
There seems to be a strong desire around the world to implement the Turkish
media business model: Operate the media as a loss leader and make your profits
from your other businesses by being favourable to the politicians in power and
get just as favourable treatment.

This also scales nicely because you can start getting way overpriced ad buys
when other companies also want to get favourable deals with the politicians,
so you become a direct broker for access to the government.

Of course, the quality suffers and other media begins to emerge but you can
keep buying the challengers or the govt can take care of them.

In Turkey, the pro-govt media is called "pool media" because a bunch of
businessmen close to the ruling party created a pool to buy out newspapers and
TV channels and an audio recording of them discussing the details was
leaked(which is also very complicated, way out of the scope of this comment).

~~~
mc32
I find it ironic that now that a right leaning investor might influence [which
we don't know if it would have an effect but may] Twitter people are having a
fit, but not many have a problem with Twitter when it favors the leanings of
its left-leaning management.

When Twitter suspends people it's always been "but they are private company!"
We'll see how they pull that same line if this goes through.

~~~
arcticfox
The false equivalence between left and right here is the issue IMO. I truly
believe the left-lead media largely acts in good faith, and the right-lead
media largely does not.

I understand that people on the right feel the opposite, that's fine. But I
don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a
fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.

~~~
luckylion
> But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media
> behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-
> sidesism.

You're saying that you want the media to be a political instrument, but you
want to make sure it's a political instrument used only by the party you
prefer?

Because the alternative wouldn't be "it should be used by both sides", the
alternative would be "it shouldn't be a political instrument".

~~~
luckydata
The alternative is "tell the truth". The truth as of late has a strong
preference for left leaning positions.

~~~
Veelox
> The truth as of late has a strong preference for left leaning positions.

Can you give 3 examples?

~~~
luckydata
I can give you hundreds lately. If you didn’t notice you’re probably part of
the problem.

I'll give you one for free, the rest you're going to have to bother googling
by yourself:

[https://www.gq.com/story/coronavirus-trump-
conspiracy](https://www.gq.com/story/coronavirus-trump-conspiracy)

------
predators372
Well, maybe it'd be wiser to start with keeping media platforms as platforms
for the media rather than outlets for opinions, political or otherwise.

I remember the days when Twitter was weird and diverse and interesting. There
was a group of people making *-ebooks bots for strange content, there were
people walking in traphouses in major cities and basically doing photo essays.
There was so much interesting, unique content on Twitter back then.

Granted, Twitter is certainly imbalanced from the political perspective and
it'll be good to see a better balance, but I think that the platform will
almost inevitably sway further from the coolest things that they were doing
before.

I LOVE politics, but damn if it ain't ruining all kinds of cool tech.

~~~
beamatronic
Well there’s no moat so anyone can make a Twitter competitor

~~~
0x445442
Until the hosting provider de-platforms the competitor for differing political
views. Or the competitor's payment processor de-platforms them for their
political views. Unless the competitor is it's own cloud provider and it's own
payment platform they're at risk.

~~~
didericis
I really hope we can get some more serious decentralized infrastructure
mainstreamed so this sort of partisan platform stuff becomes a non issue.

Centralized, corruptible bottlenecks like political payment processors and
political big cloud providers are eroding the open nature of the internet.

Although I think it’s possible to replace and/or reform some of the current
sore spots, the pessimist in me is worried we have deeper social and
philosophical problems that will prevent things from moving in that direction.
Many people now seem to reject the very idea of apolitical utilities. They
consider it immoral to allow the existence of services for people they
consider to be severely harming others through their use of that
infrastructure, despite the often political and highly debatable nature of
that harm.

A free and open internet is built on the same philosophical principles as the
first amendment. The spirit of the first amendment is something the people as
a whole need to respect in order for it to work.

People forget how much religious sects hated each other when the Bill of
Rights was drafted. Europe had been fighting a seemingly endless series of
religious conflicts since the protestant reformation, and adherents believed
allowing opposing adherents to spread their corrupting influence would
literally damn the world to hell.

The first amendment was about allowing others to practice beliefs despite
sincere fears that such beliefs would damn the world to hell. If we can’t
allow people we consider corrupting to operate, and need to bar all of those
corrupting influences from access to core utilities, we are failing to live up
to the principles underlying the first amendment and risk plunging back into
the kind of sectarian and philosophically based conflict the enlightenment
helped us to escape from. If those we dislike and may consider evil are
respecting our property rights and are not committing physical violence
against us, we should be tolerant and allow them to exist and operate in
society and seek to change them only through open dialog, not forceful
coercion.

------
loceng
I'd be curious to know Scott Galloway's response to this.

Is this action that of a mainstream media channel being bought and control
shifted way from Jack and current board's leadership, where they seem to be
trying to at least do good - even if they are faltering some?

I'd speculate that they will push for political ads to be allowed, and false
information to be perpetuated. To me this situation is highlighting that we
can't depend on platforms that depend on advertising revenue as its operations
budget.

~~~
pembrook
Galloway bought $10 mil worth of Twitter shares with the goal of doing the
same thing Elliot is doing.

Don’t let the political clickbait headline fool you, this is all about
profiting off twitter by removing Dorsey and bringing in a CEO who _actually
works full time at the company he runs._

This has absolutely nothing to do with politics.

Activists get a bad rap but they make our economy more efficient. The reason
we’re having so many governance problems with big companies like Uber, WeWork,
etc is because they stayed private for so long with zero accountability. If
they went public earlier, activists could have made them a target much sooner.

*edit: I see mods changed the headline to something more accurate

~~~
tschwimmer
Those big public companies are really being reined in by their shareholders:
Comcast, Verizon, Exxon Mobil, Valeant, Equifax, Wells Fargo. Oh wait...

The public equities market has failed and will continue to fail to punish
unethical behavior. Elliot, Scott Galloway, all the biggest equity funds all
only care about returns. Scandals and misbehavior can affect returns but it’s
often more efficient to cover them up or lobby to make them legal than
actually fix the issue.

I almost feel like CEO owners have more of an incentive to prohibit bad
behavior to protect their individual legacy. Adam Neumann made out great from
WeWork but it’s rumored he left America and I don’t blame him. Jack probably
doesn’t want to be the guy who led to the downfall of the American democracy,
and I’d trust him to do more about it than any combination of nameless funds.

------
karl11
Kind of a misleading headline. Elliot has a long history of activist investing
primarily motivated by profits and having nothing to do with politics.

~~~
ajaygeorge91
it made you click on the article though ;)

------
Danieru
Oh wow, getting Argentina to make good on their defaulted bonds is about as
Mission-Impossible as activist investing gets. Not much productive to say
about the political aspect of this move on Twitter, but I can say I would not
want to be fighting Mr. Signer.

~~~
aurelianito
He even deposed a democratic government. He was a big Macri supporter, and
several 'ongs' supported by him where presided by members of his government
(for example, Laura Alonso). If this guy gets Twitter control it will make
Twitter complete trash.

------
smkellat
This could lead to good outcomes. Mr. Dorsey is effectively an absentee
landlord, metaphorically speaking, for this online property. I am hopeful.

------
bryanmgreen
Here is the original source, can we update link?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/singer-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-29/singer-
s-elliott-is-said-to-seek-to-replace-twitter-ceo-dorsey)

------
jariel
The bit where he said he wanted to 'move to Africa for a few years' was such a
big red flag, I can't imagine any CEO without a retirement horizon ever saying
that.

It's like he was signalling to the market he wanted to get taken over.

Of course, it's not an unreasonable sentiment, but from a corporate / investor
relations communications perspective it's fatalistic.

------
modwest
people are bad & should be avoided

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botwriter
Fucking YESSS!!!! Get in there my son!

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SpicyLemonZest
Come on, this article is the poster child of unnecessary politicization. The
Guardian isn't claiming that the buy is about politics, and there doesn't
appear to be any evidence it is, so why call Singer "Republican mega-donor" or
talk about what Trump has to say about him?

~~~
kyledrake
Calling him a Republican mega-donor is if anything an understatement
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_(businessman)#Poli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_\(businessman\)#Political_activity)

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I'm not saying it's inaccurate, I'm saying it's irrelevant. Not every story is
about national politics.

~~~
kyledrake
I think the politics of billionaires attempting to take control of the engines
of discourse is quite relevant, especially given the current political
landscape where no less than two of them are dumping an enormous amount of
their own money to attempt a brokered DNC convention and push out a
progressive candidate.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I don't agree with the fundamental premise. "How might this news affect
political elections" is usually not a question we should even try to answer.

~~~
kyledrake
It is completely plausible given his political track record that he is
attempting to take control of Twitter to inhibit a progressive movement
addressing wealth inequality issues. I don't think you can cover this story
honestly without addressing the possible motives of a very active actor. This
is a major public social network, not an oil refinery. It feels really
inappropriate to treat this as an apolitical business move and I think the
speculation on motives is more than warranted, that the story would be
incomplete without it.

------
olivermarks
Singer is primarily a vulture capitalist, operating on a nation state scale
(he resurrected Argentinian national debt he bought and forced payment for
example and his wealth exploded after 2008 buying up distressed assets and
business). The 'Republican mega-donor' aspect is a tiny droplet of his
corporate wealth, I suspect the main reason for the Twitter pressure is for
Singer the globalist and his elite colleagues to control a global medium and
manipulate it to a much greater extent than it already is, cracking down on
free speech and with much stronger surveillance and data tracking.

~~~
jariel
"he resurrected Argentinian national debt" ... wait, so the money Argentina
borrowed, they have to actually pay back?

FYI this is not 'vulture capitalism', it's not even really capitalism. It's
just basic financing.

~~~
olivermarks
[https://www.gregpalast.com/rubios-billionaire-wins-ransom-
fr...](https://www.gregpalast.com/rubios-billionaire-wins-ransom-from-
argentina/)

~~~
jariel
Or maybe we should redefine 'vulture capitalism' to be borrowing money from
naive Americans, Europeans, and Japanese by blatantly lying to them, then
corruptly stealing and squandering the money, then refusing to pay it back all
the while claiming that _you_ are a victim and that the people whose money you
stole are 'imperialist colonialist aggressors'.

Now that's quite a playbook.

~~~
olivermarks
I don't think you understand the formal use of the term 'vulture capitalist'
[https://prospect.org/economy/vulture-capitalism-killed-
sears...](https://prospect.org/economy/vulture-capitalism-killed-sears/)

~~~
jariel
'Vulture Capitalism' is not a 'formal' term, and yes, I'm well aware of how
it's generally applied. I obviously don't agree with it. Particularly, in this
case, the vulture is the corrupt government of Argentina.

~~~
olivermarks
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vulturecapitalist.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vulturecapitalist.asp)

------
request_id
Peter Singer is the world's worst billionaire.

~~~
smitty1e
Competition is narrow, but scurrilous.

OTOH, as a capitalist, if the oligarchs aren't breaking laws, then it falls to
the dissenters to offer peaceful, appropriate resistance.

#StickItToTheMan

~~~
request_id
I enjoy the fruits of capitalism but Singer makes me look up the various
stages of the French Revolution.

------
throwGuardian
The Guardian would like it if Twitter wrangled to retain Democrats at the
helm. And apparently whoever opvoted this to #1

------
donatj
Say what you will but I would love to see some balance and tolerance.

~~~
charlesju
Balance is a false paradigm, not all ideas are valid, ie. just because some
people believe the earth are flat doesn't mean that in school we have to teach
the earth is both flat and round. (a more 50/50 idea would be evolution or
carbon dating)

I would also say Jack Dorsey has been pretty fair about the platform. I don't
think the left feel like Twitter is exceptionally more open to them.

~~~
asdkjh345
When you get banned for simply posting facts that one group dislikes, while
"KILL ALL WHITE MEN" is totally fine and acceptable, there's definitely a
balance problem. The idea that one socio-political viewpoint is objectively
correct, and another is the same as believing the earth is flat is not a
reasonable analogy.

~~~
no_wizard
Source?

Also, I remember when Twitter was getting really big one of their prominent
founders (May have been jack but I can’t remember) did an interview in which
they positioned themselves that social media platforms should use
“constitutional logic” (for those not in the states, that’s the USA
constitution) when regulating speech in their platform l, which, for better or
worse, depending on context and things, “kill all white men” would pass the
fee speech test.

Interestingly enough I actually can’t find anything that supports the example
you’re referring to here. On the other hand I’ve seen tons and tons of sexist,
misogynistic, white supremacist tweets that are super prominent on the
platform.

------
sytelus
Money is a measure of labor you own from an average human. A billionaire owns
labor from about a million humans perpetually to practically any of his/her
whims. With so much labor available at hand, a person can control entire
governments, major companies, social pipes, news channels, elections,
policies, laws, land use, resource distribution, economic priorities, arts,
science and culture. The billionaires are the new monarchs in pretty much all
sense. I shudder to think of powers vested in a trillionaire.

