Tech
Elon Musk abandons his takeover of Twitter for 44 billion: the social network strikes back
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Eva Deschamps / July 12, 2022
Twitter says Elon Musk’s abandonment of his plan to buy the platform for $44 billion is invalid and unjustified and claims to have fulfilled all obligations under the agreement reached in April.
The social network therefore requires the multi-billionaire, which accuses Twitter of not meeting the terms of the agreement including not transmitting all the information on false accounts, to keep its commitment, according to a letter addressed to Elon Musk and his representatives and published on the website of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Twitter has repeatedly said in recent weeks that the number of fake accounts on its platform was less than 5%. The multi-billionaire and his team believe that the network is lying, and that this affects the viability of its business, and therefore the value of the company.
For weeks, experts have been wondering if Elon Musk was trying to withdraw his offer or renegotiate the price downwards. By ending his commitment to buy Twitter, the businessman exposes himself to significant legal action.
Both parties agreed to pay a severance package of up to $1 billion under certain circumstances. On April 25, he seemed to have succeeded in his bet, despite Twitter’s attempts to push him away. He signed a definitive agreement with the group’s board of directors to buy the social network for $54.20 per share, or $44 billion in total. Since then, Twitter’s stock has lost more than a quarter of its value. Tesla’s stock has also plummeted by nearly 25% over that period.
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Steph Deschamps / January 13, 2023
Apple is considering giving its Mac computers a touchscreen, Bloomberg news agency reported Wednesday.
This would be a major turning point for the company, as co-founder Steve Jobs once said that the technology was “ergonomically terrible”.
Bloomberg has learned from a good source that engineers at the American company are actively working on the project, a sign that touchscreen Macs are being seriously considered. However, this has not yet been confirmed. Apple has refrained from commenting.
Apple has been saying for more than a decade that a touchscreen is not suitable for laptops and that an iPad is a better option for those who want to have this technology. An opinion that Apple’s competitors don’t necessarily share, as many of them have launched touchscreen computers.
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Steph Deschamps / December 27, 2022
Nearly a hundred Internet terminals of the Starlink network are active in Iran, said Monday the boss of SpaceX Elon Musk.
The American billionaire had promised in September to deploy the Starlink satellite network in Iran at a time when Iranian authorities are increasingly restricting access to the Internet.
Soon 100 active Starlinks in Iran,” Musk tweeted Monday.
Starlink has a network of more than 2,000 small satellites in low orbit above the earth, which can provide internet access. Ground terminals are then connected to routers that generate wifi and thus internet access.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, SpaceX has delivered thousands of terminals to provide internet access. Some 25,000 terminals have been deployed in the country to date.
Protests have been shaking Iran since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, after she was arrested in Tehran by police. Since then, hundreds have been killed, thousands arrested and two 23-year-old men hanged.
Iranian authorities have since restricted access to Instagram and WhatsApp — until this fall the only social networks still available — and to VPNs, which Iranians use to access banned sites.
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Steph Deschamps / December 22, 2022
Musk announced Tuesday on Twitter his intention to leave the head of the social network once he has “found someone crazy enough” to replace him, explaining that he will then focus on the “software and server teams.
The owner of the microblogging platform was reacting to the result of the poll that he himself had initiated on Monday on Twitter, asking whether he should step down as head of the company or not, with 57% of the 17 million voters having answered in the affirmative.
If he had initially stated that he would comply with the result of his poll, Mr. Musk had sent in recent hours rather contradictory signals, seeming at first to believe that the result had been distorted by the vote of bots.
Less than eight weeks after its takeover of the social network for $44 billion, Twitter does not see the storm subsiding. The company is on the verge of a financial collapse having lost a number of advertisers in the face of the risk that the billionaire’s desire to reduce content moderation represents for brands.
Earlier in the day, Elon Musk had retweeted the result of an opinion survey conducted by the HarrisX institute, among its own sample of users of the platform, and which gave 61% of respondents in favor of his retention as CEO.
“Interestingly, this seems to suggest that we have a slight problem of bots on Twitter,” said the owner of the platform in response to the tweet of the institute presenting the results.
A comment that came after Elon Musk approved another tweet suggesting that his survey had been victimized by bots. He also said that any new poll would now be reserved for paying Twitter users.
In the past, the businessman had already relied on polls to support debatable decisions, such as the reactivation of the account of former U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as other users who were suspended.
The result of its latest poll initially led to a rise in the share of Tesla, whose investors are increasingly critical of the attention given to Twitter since the acquisition, to the detriment of the car manufacturer, they believe.
Several U.S. media had assured that Elon Musk was looking for a replacement, citing anonymous sources, an information that the owner of Twitter had then rejected by a simple mocking emoticon on the social network.
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