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Hostile Takeovers and Poison Pills: The Week Elon Musk Came for Twitter

Apr 29, 2022

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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.

Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter have sent ripples through the social media platform. There is a story here about panic, the limited reach of social media, and the increasingly fuzzy nature of the private/ public space … but I think all that is a surface level analysis. For me, the more interesting story is the corporate what lies just underneath.

You see, Musk is the richest man not because he invented anything wonderful and world changing. No, he’s rich because he’s good at making money. He’s a businessman first and foremost. Through that lens, the story of the Twitter acquisition becomes one of shitposts and SEC filings, a bizarre fight between tech titans, a rehashing of old corporate techniques like “poison pills” and “hostile takeovers.”

On this episode of Cyber, we sit down with Motherboard features writer and editor Maxwell Strachan. He’s here to answer all your burning questions about Musk’s attempted Twitter takeover.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Twitter Loses Elon Musk the Board Member, Regains Elon Musk the Shitposter

Twitter and Elon Musk Are Now at War

We Spoke to an Old-School Corporate Raider About Elon Musk and Twitter

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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