Elon Musk, who made an offer to buy Twitter last April, had a disagreement with Twitter management over bot accounts in the following weeks. While Musk withdrew his offer as a result of this dispute, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk, and then Musk against Twitter. As the court date approached, Musk unexpectedly renewed his bid for Twitter.
Statements and evidence to be used as evidence in the court, the date of which is set as October 17, continues to be collected for days. The biggest and most controversial of these evidences was put forward by Twitter lawyers on September 28. All the conversations Elon Musk had with important names on Twitter were publicly shared. So, what was said in those speeches?
Elon Musk’s messages presented as evidence in favor of Twitter:
The messages in question, which were presented as evidence in favor of Twitter, started as of January 24, 2022. Musk was talking to Alex Stillings, IT executive at SpaceX.
In this conversation, which took place on January 21 and 24, Stillings was suspicious of Elon Musk’s e-mail, seeing some spam e-mails that appeared to be on behalf of Twitter. Later, Elon and Stillings contacted Twitter management to work to secure the account, re-establishing two-factor authentication.
The seeds of the idea to buy Twitter are planted on March 24:
The first signs that Elon Musk might buy the platform in Twitter messages began to appear on March 24. On this date, Musk was contacting Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, who was simultaneously referred to as “TJ”, and the conversation was as follows:
- TJ: Can you buy Twitter and delete it, please!? […] Or could you buy Twitter and make the platform free-speaking? […]
- Musk: Maybe I’ll buy it and change it to properly support free speech.
During this chat, Musk shares “Twitter should be open source” and Lonsdale writes a message on this post. Lonsdale was saying that she was joining Musk and that there should be no censorship. Also “What is happening now is a covert corruption!” says, Musk also liked this message.
The seeds have grown well: Jack Dorsey and Musk speak:
The documents also include excerpts from a conversation between Jack Dorsey and Musk on March 26. In this speech, Dorsey says that a new social media platform is needed, but that it cannot be a company. Moreover, he attributes the reason for his separation to this. Elon Musk asked Dorsey, “So how should this platform be?” begs the question. Here is Jack’s response:
“I believe it should be an open source protocol, funded by an organization that doesn’t own the protocol but just developed it. Something similar to what Signal does. It shouldn’t even be an ad model. Otherwise you will have a surface that governments and advertisers try to control and influence. If there is a centralized entity behind it, it will be hacked. It’s not a messy business, it just needs to be done right so it doesn’t relive what happened to Twitter.”
Elon Musk, after this article, answers Jack’s idea, “Very interesting”. In his next message, Dorsey again tells about the mistakes made on Twitter, because he should never have been incorporated, and that’s why he left the company. After that, Dorsey and Musk plan a meeting.
Elon contacts the Twitter board an hour later:
Just an hour after Musk spoke with Dorsey, he contacts Twitter board member Egon Durban. Elon arranges a meeting with Durban. the result of this conversation can be clearly seen in the two subsequent messages…
Oracle founder Larry Ellison reaches out to Musk: “We need a new Twitter”:
On the night of March 26 to March 27, Larry Ellison told Elon Musk, “Elon, I want to see you in the coming days. I think we need a new Twitter.” uses expressions. After that, Musk and Larry set up a meeting.
Meeting with Durban, Musk was accepted to the board of directors in less than 1 day:
Egon Durban, whom Elon Musk is interviewing about the board of directors, creates a private message group a day later. This group includes Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, Bret Taylor, and Twitter’s ‘Martha’. In his message to the group, Durban states that everyone is happy to have Musk on the board of directors. Interviews are held in the coming days.
What happens in the coming days?
Musk was in talks with Twitter CEO Parag, Martha and Bret Taylor over the coming days, and in this process, he was contacting Sam Bankman-Fried, who previously wanted to buy Twitter. These talks extended until April 3.
On April 4, Musk became the biggest shareholder of Twitter:
While Musk was continuing his talks with the Twitter management, a big surprise came on April 4th. That surprise was Musk’s announcement that he had bought 9.2% of Twitter, submitted through the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. With the announcement, Twitter management contacted Musk. The process of incorporating Musk into the board has been expedited.
In the messages made with Musk, Parag and Twitter management, Elon was turning down the board invitation, which he accepted in the first place, on the same day. However, Musk was again accepting to join the board of directors a day after this message.
After Musk’s indecision, it was also seen that Elon and CEO Parag prepared the announcement that Elon was accepted to the board of directors together. Parag first sent the post he had prepared and which we also saw, to Elon, and after receiving Elon’s approval, he shared it in the same way:
Parag and Musk were ‘tech dudes’ in the first place:
Musk and Parag were getting along pretty well in conversations after the April 5 announcement. The two were talking about current problems on Twitter, even telling Parag Elon that he could provide information about Twitter’s codebase.
Musk reveals some of his plans to his brother, and in fact, the secret of all this comes to light:
In the message he sent to his chief brother Kimbal Musk on Twitter, Elon Musk was actually saying a truth that we know today:
“I have an idea for a blockchain-based social media system where you can share both payment and text messages/links like Twitter. You will need to pay a small fee to register your chain message, and the vast majority of bot and spam accounts will disappear. There is no throat to choke, so freedom of speech will be guaranteed.
The second piece of the puzzle is a huge real-time database that keeps a copy of all blockchain messages, messages sent to or sent by you, followers or unfollowers.
The third piece is an application such as Twitter, which accesses the database on the phone via the cloud. This idea might explode.”
Parag and Musk part ways after one day, Musk tells Parag he will buy Twitter (April 9)
Elon Musk, “Is Twitter dying?” After sharing, he receives a private message directly from Parag. Parag tells Elon that such messages affect his work. Musk, on the other hand, is quite harsh against Parag:
“What work did you finish this week? I do not agree with the board of directors. This is a waste of time. We will submit a proposal to make Twitter a private company.”
Parag will have conveyed this message to the Twitter management, and then he starts meeting with Bret Taylor. The two are arranging a meeting, officially determining that Musk will not be on the Twitter board.
April 13: Elon tells Bret Taylor he will bid for Twitter, revealing his second plan.
Elon Musk reaches Bret Taylor again 4 days later and states that he will submit a proposal for Twitter, the proposal will be shared publicly in the morning of the next day. However, Musk writes to Steve Davis, president of the Boring Company he co-founded, about his second plan for Twitter:
“Plan B is a blockchain-based version of Twitter. Here, Tweets will be embedded in comments in on-chain transactions. So you will have to pay like 0.1 Doge to make a comment or repost this comment.”
The morning of April 14: Elon Musk’s proposal goes public, private messages are rampant:
Elon Musk’s Twitter bid goes public on the morning of April 14, and Musk’s private messages are filled from head to toe with congratulatory messages. These messages include “You are the hero Gotham needs!” messages as well.
Elon is starting to reach out to people who will support him for the $44 billion deal:
Elon Musk reaches out to some familiar names to raise the necessary money in the $44 billion deal. One of the most important of these names is Oracle founder Larry Ellison. The conversation between Ellison and Musk takes shape as follows:
- Elon: How would you like to be part of the Twitter deal?
- Ellison: Yes, of course.
- Elon: Exactly how much money can you spare? Don’t pretend there’s a limit, but the number of people involved in the deal has increased a lot, so I have to remove some of the participants.
- Ellison: $1 billion… or whatever you want.
- Elon: Whatever suits you. I’d say $2 billion or more. This deal has huge potential and I would love to see you by my side more than anyone else.
- Ellison: I agree with the magnitude of the potential and I think it would be a lot of fun.
Talks end on June 17. On this date, Musk was discussing bot accounts with Parag and sharing his views and plans on Twitter with the public. On July 9, 2022, Elon would withdraw his Twitter offer, be in court with Twitter, and would come to the agenda with these messages at the end of September… You can access the document containing all of Elon Musk’s Twitter messages from this link.
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