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Musk vs. the company he’s buying
Elon Musk doesn’t own Twitter yet, but he’s already making his presence felt there. Musk took aim at Twitter employees and others this week in a round of tweets that raised new concerns about the company’s future under his freewheeling approach to content moderation. (He also said — with tongue presumably in cheek — that he would buy Coca-Cola next, “to put the cocaine back in.”)

Musk criticized a longtime Twitter executive who has shaped its content policies. He tweeted that a past moderation decision by Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and safety expert, was “obviously incredibly inappropriate.” He later posted a meme mocking Gadde. Almost immediately, some people began tweeting abusive, racist and sexist attacks at her.

“Let’s make Twitter maximum fun!” Musk also tweeted. But the company’s current and former leaders did not appear to share that sentiment. Here is how some of them reacted to his criticisms:

“Bullying is not leadership,” tweeted Dick Costolo, who was Twitter’s C.E.O. from 2010 to 2015. He also responded to the meme Musk posted, writing: “what’s going on? You’re making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats.”
Twitter’s C.E.O., Parag Agrawal, offered a muted defense of his staff. He tweeted that he was “proud” of employees who were working to improve Twitter “despite the noise.” In private, Twitter employees grumbled that he wasn’t outspoken enough in defending them.
Jack Dorsey was silent. He stepped down as Twitter’s C.E.O. last year but remains a member of the board.

Could Musk back out of the deal? Some investors are still betting on it, with Twitter’s stock trading below Musk’s offer price, signaling skepticism about the deal. And Tesla’s stock has fallen by around a fifth since Musk first revealed his stake in Twitter, reflecting worries that a distracted C.E.O. could be bad for the electric carmaker, as well as concerns about his use of Tesla shares as collateral for bank loans. Musk’s free-speech policies may also cause trouble with European regulators and Chinese censors. And there are questions about the financial viability of the deal: Twitter would take on some $13 billion in debt as part of Musk’s buyout, versus about $5 billion on its balance sheet now, and its earnings are modest relative to that much bigger interest bill. (The company reports its first-quarter earnings later this morning.)

Musk is stuck with another Twitter-related challenge. Even if he owns Twitter, his use of it will be constrained by a 2018 agreement with the S.E.C. Yesterday, a federal judge in New York denied Musk’s request to end the settlement, which requires him to run his social media posts about Tesla by a company lawyer and bars him from discussing the S.E.C. case. Musk has said that he accepted the agreement only because the litigation would have put too much financial pressure on Tesla. He has also argued that the agreement impeded his free speech rights and was being used by the S.E.C. to harass him. “None of the arguments hold water,” the court concluded.

https://www.nytimes.com/section/business/dealbook?