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Musk Gets By With A Little Help From His Friends: Elon Musk Will Fund His Twitter Deal With Money From Countries That Suppress Free Speech

excelsiorlef

excelsiorlef

Bad Praxis
Member
Oct 25, 2017
73,343
On Thursday, an SEC filing revealed new financiers for Musk's takeover plan, which include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. Both countries impose harsh censorship to quash dissent: A Qatari law states that spreading "false or malicious news" can land you in prison for five years, while in Saudi Arabia, critics of the government have faced arrest and even murder. Saudi Arabia ranks number 166 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom Index, while Qatar ranks number 119, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the financing.

Prince Alwaleed wrote on Twitter that the Kingdom Holding Company, an investment firm he controls, would roll over its current $1.9 billion investment in Twitter to join Musk on "this exciting journey." The move comes after Alwaleed spurned Musk's plan in a tweet last month, saying the Tesla CEO's offer didn't come close to the "intrinsic value" of the company. KHC has been a Twitter stakeholder since 2011.
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www.buzzfeednews.com

Elon Musk Will Fund His Twitter Deal With Money From Countries That Suppress Free Speech

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said he looked forward to joining his “‘new’ friend” Musk on his journey.
www.buzzfeednews.com www.buzzfeednews.com

The world is literally just a long running unfunny gag
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Fat4all

Fat4all

Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot
Member
Oct 25, 2017
93,710
here
could you link to the article please, i saw this on twitter earlier and wanted to read up on it more
 
TheHunter

TheHunter

Bold Bur3n Wrangler
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
25,774
Era is now an official news source.

We have arrived. B-Dubs will you host the talking heads hour?
 
Niosai

Niosai

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,932
I was so confused when I clicked on the link and it relinked back to this thread.

Edit: Fixed almost at the exact moment I typed this out

I feel like the "free speech" thing went out the window when he started talking about charging to use the platform for certain entities.
 
Fat4all

Fat4all

Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot
Member
Oct 25, 2017
93,710
here
Last year, the government arrested seven people for using social media "to spread false news" during its elections. The country also has a history of suppressing free speech. In 2012, a Qatari poet was sentenced to 15 years in jail after reciting a poem critical of the government.
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cool cool cool

very cool
 
III-V

III-V

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,827
Elon is an enemy of democracy and is looking to dismantle whatever is left.
 
Paper Wario

Paper Wario

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,633
FYI he's not new to Twitter:

In December 2011, Al Waleed invested $300 million in Twitter, purchasing secondary shares from insiders. The purchase gave Kingdom Holding a more than 3% share" in the company, which was valued at $8 billion in late summer 2011
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,134
i'm sure his intentions are good. he probably thinks he's doing the right thing

Some doofus in another thread was actually saying this.
 
SABO.

SABO.

Member
Nov 6, 2017
5,872
I guess I don't want to shit on everyone's parade but I'm assuming we all read this piece:

Prince Alwaleed wrote on Twitter that the Kingdom Holding Company, an investment firm he controls, would roll over its current $1.9 billion investment in Twitter to join Musk on "this exciting journey."
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Why weren't we angry about this previously?
 
valuv

valuv

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,608
SABO. said:
I guess I don't want to shit on everyone's parade but I'm assuming we all read this piece:



Why weren't we angry about this previously?
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I have to assume everyone already knew this but only chose to get angry because it's a guy posting memes that suck instead of caring about literal murderers
 
Fat4all

Fat4all

Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot
Member
Oct 25, 2017
93,710
here
vulva said:
you could really use an editor to help with your long thread titles
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i'll do it

IlRJTFx.png
 
RiOrius

RiOrius

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,086
SABO. said:
I guess I don't want to shit on everyone's parade but I'm assuming we all read this piece:



Why weren't we angry about this previously?
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What's worse: someone who's incredibly shitty controlling 5% of Twitter, or someone who's just super shitty controlling 100% of Twitter?

Like, maybe they had some influence before, but once the sale goes through Elon will be in full control.

Plus it does highlight the hypocrisy of saying "I'm not buy Twitter because I'm an evil asshole, I'm doing it because I'm pro-free speech" while jumping in bed with anti-free speech, evil assholes.
 
Jakenbakin

Jakenbakin

"This guy are sick"
Member
Jun 17, 2018
11,906
danm999 said:


Guess he changed his tune on this
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Well that can't be right, surely Libertarian Jesus Daddy would never want to implicate himself to blood money and unjust values like that.



The follow-up on the same tweet thread is fucking hilarious like my man why would you announce your wonderful friendship in a thread calling you out, showing your new friends hypocrisy as well as highlighting your own shitty practices.
 
danm999

danm999

Member
Oct 29, 2017
17,199
Sydney
Jakenbakin said:
Well that can't be right, surely Libertarian Jesus Daddy would never want to implicate himself to blood money and unjust values like that.



The follow-up on the same tweet thread is fucking hilarious like my man why would you announce your wonderful friendship in a thread calling you out, showing your new friends hypocrisy as well as highlighting your own shitty practices.
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Yeah I take it as granted that Musk is full of shit but at least he could do the bare minimum and throw the Saudis out on their ass.

Twitter actually had Saudi employees snooping around in the company's personal data to look for dissidents in the past.

Elon is truly combining the worst parts of old Twitter and new Twitter into a single awful company.
 
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