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Tag: Elon Musk

  • Twitter sues Indian government over content removal directives

    Twitter sues Indian government over content removal directives

    Twitter has sued the Indian government to challenge some of its takedown orders, a source familiar with the matter revealed, further escalating the tension between the American social giant and India.

    In its lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Karnataka High Court, Twitter alleges that New Delhi has abused its power by ordering it to remove several tweets from its platform.

    The lawsuit follows a rough year and a half for Twitter in India, a key overseas market for the firm, where it has been asked to take down hundreds of accounts and tweets, many of which critics argue were objected because they denounced the Indian government’s policies and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

    Twitter partially complied with the requests but sought to fight back against many challenges. Under India’s new IT rules, which went into effect last year, Twitter has little to no room left to individually challenge the takedown orders.

    The tension between the two was apparent on May 24 last year, when Delhi police, controlled by India’s central government, visited two offices of Twitter — in the national capital state of Delhi and Gurgaon, in the neighboring state of Haryana — to seek more information about Twitter’s rationale to label one of the tweets by ruling partly BJP spokesperson as “manipulated media.”

    Delhi police said it had received a complaint about the classification of the spokesperson’s tweet and visited the offices to serve Twitter India’s head a notice of the inquiry. In a statement, the police said Twitter India’s managing director’s replies on the subject had been “very ambiguous.”

    Twitter at the time described the episode as “intimidation.”

    The company has “concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global Terms of Service, as well as with core elements of the new IT Rules,” it said.

    Twitter India managing director resigned from the firm last year.

    Twitter is not the first tech giant to sue the Indian government. WhatsApp sued New Delhi last year, challenging new regulations that could allow authorities to make people’s private messages “traceable,” and conduct mass surveillance.

    It’s unclear if the new lawsuit will impact Twitter’s proposed acquisition by Elon Musk.

  • Elon Musk gets board approval for $44 billion Twitter deal

    Elon Musk gets board approval for $44 billion Twitter deal

    Twitter’s board of directors unanimously recommended Tuesday that shareholders support Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

    Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, agreed to buy Twitter in April. Still, the business mogul has faced numerous roadblocks in his pursuit of Twitter, but he is now one step closer to closing the deal.

    Twitter board stated in an investor statement included in the SEC filing that it “decided that the merger agreement is advisable and that the merger and the other transactions contemplated by the merger agreement are fair to, prudent, and in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders.”

    The letter did not specify a date for the vote, but Bloomberg reported that it could happen in late July or early August.

    Though the company’s share price has fallen significantly from the $54.20 per share that Musk initially proposed, he signalled his intention to proceed with the transaction in a meeting with Twitter employees last week when he allegedly stated his desire for 1 billion subscribers. Twitter has declined to comment further.

    Given that the group had previously authorised the acquisition, the board’s suggestion came as no surprise, but it is the latest stage in a lengthy process fraught with twists, turns, and uncertainty.

    Musk previously threatened to withdraw from the agreement if Twitter could not provide proof that less than 5 per cent of its accounts were bots. Later, he accused Twitter of “actively fighting and blocking” his request for bot data, but the company appears to have decided to release the data.

    The business mogul told Bloomberg on Tuesday at the Qatar Economic Forum that the bot issue and shareholder approval are two of three issues that must be resolved before the sale can be completed. According to Musk, the third source of concern is whether the debt portion of the transaction will be completed.

    Musk stated that he is willing to revise the terms of the agreement, stating that a cheaper price is not “out of the question.”

    Twitter, on the other hand, has clarified that it does not plan to restructure the current agreement. In April, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey expressed his support for the deal, saying Musk is the “singular solution” he believes in.

  • Tesla sued by former employees for laying off staff illegally

    Tesla sued by former employees for laying off staff illegally

    Former Tesla employees have filed a lawsuit alleging that the company’s decision to lay off about 10 per cent of its workforce violated federal law by failing to provide the required advance notice.

    Two Tesla workers filed the lawsuit late Sunday in Texas, alleging that they were fired from the company’s gigafactory plant in Sparks, Nevada, in June. More than 500 workers were laid off at the Nevada factory, according to the lawsuit.

    According to the lawsuit, the workers claim the company failed to follow federal laws on mass layoffs, which require a 60-day notice period under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. They are requesting class-action status for all former Tesla employees who were laid off without warning in May or June across the United States.

    “Tesla has simply notified the employees that their terminations would be effective immediately,” the complaint said. Tesla, which has not commented on the numbers of layoffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit.

    According to an email received by Reuters, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the wealthiest man, said earlier this month that he had a “super bad feeling” about the financial system and that the corporation would have to cut staff by about 10 per cent. According to online postings and discussions with Reuters, more than 20 people claiming to be Tesla employees said they were laid off, let go, or had their jobs terminated this month.

    John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield, who were fired on June 10 and June 15, respectively, have filed a lawsuit seeking pay and benefits for the 60-day notice period.

    “It’s pretty shocking that Tesla would just blatantly violate federal labor law by laying off so many workers without providing the required notice,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney representing the workers told Reuters.

    She claims Tesla is only offering a few employees one week of severance, and she is getting ready for an urgent motion with the court to prevent Tesla from attempting to obtain employee releases in exchange for only one week of severance. The lawsuit was dismissed by Musk as “trivial”.

    The electric-car manufacturer, which is now headquartered in Austin, has about 100,000 employees worldwide and has been rapidly hiring in recent months. Many people were caught off guard by the job cuts, which impacted everyone from human resources to software engineers.

    According to reports, The petitioners are seeking monetary damages, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs, for the 60 days following their termination notice.

    Following the filing of a lawsuit by former Tesla employees alleging that the automaker violated US labour laws, Elon Musk has sought to clarify how many workers will lose their jobs.

    Musk said at a Bloomberg event on Tuesday that Tesla would trim its salaried workforce by 10 per cent in the next three months while increasing the number of hourly workers.

    He clarified that the company will reduce salaried headcount by 10 per cent while increasing hourly staffing.

    The tech mogul said was of the view that the layoffs would affect about 3.5 per cent of Tesla’s total workforce, but that the exact number was “not super material.” He added that salaried employees make up about two-thirds of Tesla’s workforce.

  • SpaceX fires employees involved in letter criticising CEO Elon Musk

    SpaceX fires employees involved in letter criticising CEO Elon Musk

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX has fired several employees as a result of a letter criticising the vocal billionaire’s public behaviour, according to a message to employees confirmed by AFP on Friday.

    SpaceX chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell wrote in an email late Thursday that a “small group” of employees sought signatures from their coworkers as a show of support for the letter and participation in a survey.

    The mercurial billionaire uses Twitter on a regular basis to provoke, speak directly to customers and fans, and occasionally offend with unfiltered or crude remarks.

    According to Shotwell’s message, some employees felt “uncomfortable, intimidated, and bullied, and/or angry” because the letter pushed them to sign something that didn’t reflect their beliefs.

    “We have too much important work to do,” she continued, “and we don’t need this kind of overreaching activism”.

    The company “terminated a number of employees involved” after conducting an investigation, Shotwell said, without specifying how many.

    Musk’s public behaviour, as well as recent allegations of sexual harassment against him, were cited in the workers’ letter as “a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us,” according to The Verge.

    “Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX as our CEO and most visible spokesperson – every Tweet Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,” the letter continued.

    Musk, who also runs Tesla, is in the middle of a roller-coaster $44 billion bid to buy Twitter, which has heightened interest in the investor.

  • Elon Musk threatens to terminate Twitter deal once again

    Elon Musk threatens to terminate Twitter deal once again

    Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk warned Twitter in a statement on Monday that if it fails to give him with data on spam and bogus accounts, he may back out of his $44 billion offer to buy the social media company.

    This isn’t the first time Musk has hinted that his takeover of Twitter might not go through. However, the warning, which came in the form of a letter from Musk’s lawyers to Twitter’s chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, signified a significant step forward. It accused Twitter of “materially breaching” its contract commitments.

    Musk’s warnings to rip up the contract have coincided with a drop in many technology equities, including Tesla Inc, the electric vehicle company he runs, as investors worry about an economic downturn and higher interest rates in the face of soaring inflation.

    On Monday, Twitter shares fell 1.5 per cent to $39.57, a significant discount to the planned $52.20 purchase price, as investors wagered Musk will either persuade Twitter to accept a lower deal price or walk away from the deal.

    Musk’s attorneys reaffirmed their request for facts on bot accounts in a letter to Twitter, saying he reserved all rights to cancel the transaction because the business had failed to meet its duties in a “clear material violation”.

    Twitter responded by stating that it intended to enforce the deal’s completion on the agreed-upon conditions. “In order to complete the acquisition in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement, Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively exchange information with Musk,” the firm stated in a statement.

    Musk, a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist, has stated that removing “spam bots” from the platform will be one of his top goals.

    In mid-May, he announced that the Twitter transaction was “temporarily on hold,” stating that he will not forward with the offer unless the firm can prove that spam bots make up less than 5 per cent of its overall users. He has stated that spam bots account for at least 20 per cent of the user base.

    According to independent analysts, 9 per cent to 15 per cent of the millions of Twitter profiles could be bots.

    Musk wrote in his letter that he needs the information to perform his own analysis of Twitter users because he doesn’t trust the company’s “loose testing techniques.” Twitter has stated that it stands by its forecasts and that it is unable to reveal private information on how they are generated.

    “He’s trying to back out of the Twitter transaction, and this is the first shot across the bow,” according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

    The caveats Twitter employed in its forecasts on spam accounts, according to legal experts, give it some protection against prospective lawsuits, whether from Musk over the transaction or shareholders over the integrity of the company’s regulatory representations.

    Even if Twitter’s estimate is incorrect, Musk would have to establish that the San Francisco-based business was attempting to deceive with the intent to deceive – a high legal bar.

    “It’s quite evident that Musk has buyer’s remorse, and he’s doing all he can to get a price reduction, and I believe he’ll succeed,” Dennis Dick, a proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC, said.

    To be sure, Musk may be able to walk away or renegotiate the deal even if the law is on Twitter’s side.

    This is because any litigation is likely to be protracted, and Twitter may decide it makes more sense to agree to a lower price or receive compensation from Musk rather than try to force him to complete the transaction in court.

    Several companies renegotiated or walked away from agreed acquisitions when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020 and delivered a global economic shock.

    In one instance, French retailer LVMH threatened to walk away from a deal with Tiffany & Co. The U.S. jewelry retailer agreed to lower the acquisition price by $425 million to $15.8 billion.

    Musk is contractually forced to pay a $1 billion breakup fee if he cannot complete the sale because the loan financing falls apart or authorities stop it, according to Forbes, a sliver of his $219 billion fortune.

    Last Monday, antitrust officials in the United States opted not to investigate Musk’s acquisition of Twitter any further, indicating that it is unlikely to face regulatory challenges. The deal is still being reviewed by the European Union.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas stated on Monday that he has launched an investigation against Twitter for “possibly fraudulent reporting regarding its bogus bot accounts,” which he described as a possible violation of state law.

    As part of the investigation, Paxton requested that Twitter provide over documents. “I have a responsibility to safeguard Texans if Twitter is misrepresenting how many accounts are fraudulent to increase their revenue,” Paxton said in a statement.

    Twitter’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a spokeswoman, are accurate.

  • Musk sued for stock manipulation during Twitter takeover bid

    Musk sued for stock manipulation during Twitter takeover bid

    The most controversial billionaire Elon Musk has been sued by Twitter Inc shareholders, who claim he manipulated the company’s stock price downward, as the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla Inc mounts a $44 billion buyout offer for the social media platform.

    According to the investors, Musk saved $156 million by failing to disclose that he had acquired more than 5 per cent of Twitter by March 14. They requested class certification and an unknown amount of punitive and compensatory damages.

    They also named Twitter as a defendant, claiming the company owed them an investigation into Musk’s behaviour, though they are not seeking monetary damages from the company.

    As per the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, the investors claimed Musk continued to buy stock after that and eventually disclosed in early April that he owned 9.2 per cent of the company.

    “By delaying his disclosure of his Twitter stake, Musk engaged in market manipulation and purchased Twitter stock at an artificially low price,” the investors, led by Virginia resident William Heresniak, claimed. Requests for comment were not immediately returned by Musk or his lawyer.

    The recent drop in Tesla’s stock has put Musk’s ability to finance his acquisition of Twitter in “major jeopardy,” according to the investors, because he has pledged his shares as collateral to secure the loans he needs to buy the company.

    Tesla’s stock was trading around $713 per share on Thursday afternoon, down from over $1,000 in early April. According to the Wall Street Journal, the timing of Musk’s disclosure of his stake has already triggered an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

    The SEC demands any investor who purchases more than 5% of a company’s stock to disclose their assets within 10 days of crossing the limit.

    The investors also claimed that Musk’s public criticism of the company, such as a May 13 tweet stating that the buyout was “temporarily on hold” until Twitter proved that spam bots accounted for less than 5% of its users, amounted to an attempt to drive the share price even lower.

    Musk pledged an additional $6.25 billion in equity financing to fund his bid for Twitter on Wednesday, indicating that he is still working to close the deal.

    Earlier this month, the tech mogul was sued in Delaware Chancery Court by a Florida pension fund, which sought to halt the transaction on the grounds that some other large Twitter shareholders were supporting the buyout, which is a violation of Delaware law. The lawsuit filed by Heresniak does not seek to halt the takeover.

  • Musk says no Twitter deal without clarity on bot accounts

    Musk says no Twitter deal without clarity on bot accounts

    The tech mogul Elon Musk and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal are arguing about bots, which Musk has made a core issue in his acquisition of the microblogging site.

    On the other hand, Agrawal outlined Twitter’s approach to spam accounts and the obstacles it faces in dealing with them in a series of tweets on May 16.

    Every day, Twitter suspends almost half a million spam accounts, according to Agrawal. He reaffirmed Twitter’s long-held estimate that less than 5 per cent of its daily active users are spam accounts, which Musk mentioned on Friday when declaring that his $44 billion proposal to buy Twitter was temporarily on pause.

    That estimate, according to Agrawal, is based on ‘many human reviews of thousands of users’ picked at random, but it’s impossible to know which accounts are counted on any given day.

    While Twitter feels its estimations are realistic, the measures were not independently validated, and the actual number of bogus or spam accounts could be greater.

    Believe it or not, Musk responded to Agrawal’s first 13 tweets with a ‘faeces emoji’.

    Musk then asked a more thought-provoking inquiry about how can advertisers know what they’re getting for their money as this is essential Twitter’s financial health.

    Tesla’s CEO has been vocal about bots and spam accounts on Twitter, describing bitcoin spam and bots as the most aggravating issue on the network.

    Read more: Musk postpones Twitter acquisition after discovering number of fake accounts

    Anyone who has seen the answers to Musk’s tweets knows that they are full of such con artists, many of whom try to profit from Musk’s fame.

    However, other analysts believe that the world’s richest man is leveraging the bot issue to lower the price at which he would purchase the platform, whether as an unusual bargaining ploy or out of necessity.

  • Musk postpones Twitter acquisition after discovering number of fake accounts

    Musk postpones Twitter acquisition after discovering number of fake accounts

    Elon Musk has put his $44 billion (£35 billion) proposal to buy Twitter on hold, citing concerns over the number of bogus or spam accounts on the platform.

    He stated that he was awaiting facts “to support [the] calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed comprise less than 5 per cent of users”.

    Mr Musk has been super vocal about the need to eliminate spam accounts. Analysts believed that he may be attempting to reduce the price or perhaps run away from the acquisition.

    In pre-market trade, Twitter’s stock dropped as much as 25 per cent in response to Mr Musk’s remark. Later, he stated that he remains “dedicated to acquisition”.

    If either Twitter or Mr Musk decides to leave, they must pay the other party a $1 billion termination fee.

    Fake accounts accounted for less than 5 per cent of Twitter’s daily active users in the first three months of this year, according to a report released more than two weeks ago.

    However, the corporation admitted that it used significant judgment in calculating the number of spam accounts, thus “our estimation of fraudulent or scam accounts may not precisely represent the real number of such accounts”.

    Read more: Elon Musk may takeover Twitter for $46.5 billion within this week

    “The actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated. We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts,” it said.

  • Musk, Twitter sued by Florida pension fund to prevent acquisition

    Musk, Twitter sued by Florida pension fund to prevent acquisition

    Elon Musk and Twitter are back in the spotlight after a Florida pension fund filed a lawsuit on Friday to restrict the Tesla CEO’s $44 billion takeover of the microblogging site.

    The Orlando Police Pension Fund filed a complaint in Delaware Chancery Court, claiming that under Delaware law, Musk cannot entirely take over the company until at least 2025 unless two-thirds of the company’s shares are owned by Musk.

    Musk became an “interesting investor” when he acquired over 9 per cent of the Twitter share, according to the complaint, forcing the delay.

    According to CNN, the whole Twitter board of directors is a defendant in the case, including CEO Parag Agrawal. The current application aims to push the merger’s completion date back to at least 2025.

    The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating SpaceX’s creator for antitrust violations, which might postpone the deal’s completion.

    Musk’s initial purchase of the 9 per cent interest is being investigated by the FTC, which is questioning whether he fulfilled an antitrust filing obligation when the stocks were first purchased in April.

    Read more: Elon Musk plans to fire Twitter employees to save money

    The Republican Party strongly supports the Twitter agreement, hoping that conservatives banned from the site, such as former President Donald J Trump, will be allowed to return. Neither Twitter nor Musk has responded to the recent news.

  • Elon Musk buys Twitter, Donald Trump has no plans to join the platform again

    Former United States (US) President, Donald Trump has announced that he has no intention to rejoin Twitter following the agreement with Elon Musk to buy the social media platform.

    While talking to Fox News on Monday, Trump revealed that he is satisfied with his own platform, Truth Social which was launched earlier this year.

    He said, “I am not going on Twitter. I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump was quoted telling the network. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.”

    Trump’s account was suspended after he incited violence on January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack through the social media platform. He had about 89 million followers on Twitter at that time.

    Trump has sued Twitter, Facebook, and Google’s YouTube against censoring his posts while posts by conservative commentators are widely shared on social media.

    In an interview, he said that he welcomed Elon Musk’s decision to buy Twitter, but he want to focus on his own platform. He did not see Twitter as his competitor.

    He said, “Truth Social will be a voice for me,” he said. “And that’s something nobody else can get.”

    Elon Musk is the world’s richest person and advocates free speech on all platforms. He had said before that he wanted to purchase Twitter and privatize it to allow free speech on the platform. He proposed some changes to the platform, including relaxing restrictions on content. Yesterday, he closed the purchase agreement for $44billion with the company.