Private discussions of Elon Musk with Parag Agrawal and Jack Dorsey have become public. We also know more about the first trends of the upcoming trial.
Since Elon Musk buried his plan to take over Twitter, the entrepreneur and the company have been struggling in the legal field. This week was a turning point in the case since Elon Musk had to testify under oath, questioned by Twitter lawyers.
Elon Musk and his vision of freedom of expression
In addition, documents containing private messages exchanged by the boss of Tesla and Space X have been made public as part of the preparation for the appearance of Twitter and Elon Musk in court, scheduled for October 17, 2022. Here is what What do these messages tell us?
Elon Musk contacted Parag Agrawal, the current CEO of Twitter, in April. After buying enough stock to own 9% of the company’s equity, and accepting a seat on the board, Musk suggested to Agrawal “ to override permanent user bans “. He had previously tweeted in public that he was for complete freedom of expression, without too much moderation, so that everyone has the right to express their opinions.
Privately to investor Antonio Gracias, Musk wrote: Free speech matters the most when it’s someone you hate spouting what you think is trash “. To which his interlocutor replied: You are quite right. I agree with you 100% “.
Tension rises between Elon Musk and Parag Agrawal
Going back to the conversations with Parag Agrawal, these are quite cordial at first, with both men agreeing on the technical part of what Twitter is all about. “ Treat me like an engineer instead of a CEO “, even offers the boss of the social network to Elon Musk.
“ Frankly, I hate doing management stuff. I don’t think anyone should be anyone’s boss. But I love helping solve technical/product design issues says Musk, who wants to let it be known that he likes to get his hands dirty.
But the relationship between the two men will quickly deteriorate. Just two days later, Elon Musk tweets a message with negative connotations on Twitter. This inevitably triggers a reaction from its correspondent. “ It is my responsibility to tell you that this does not help me improve Twitter in the current context Agrawal wrote to him then. To which Musk replied that he ultimately would not join the board and that he planned to make Twitter private.
A difficult trial for Elon Musk?
At the end of April, Jack Dorsey, who left Twitter at the end of 2021, attempted a reconciliation, in vain. “ At least it’s become clear that you can’t work together concluded Dorsey, who had discussed the subject of Twitter’s privatization with Musk in late March.
Then comes the controversy over fake accounts, which precipitated the abandonment of the plan to take over Twitter by Elon Musk. The latter felt that Twitter was not transparent on the statistics and commented: ” purging fake users will make the numbers terrible “.
A selection of text messages sent by Musk appear to confirm that his interest in the platform was based on its role in public debate and free speech issues, and not on its ability to make the company profitable, says Ann Lipton, professor in Business Law from Tulane University.
“ I don’t see anything that we don’t already know that is legally relevant. There are some pretty damning things in there, but things that had been made public before “, she also commented.
Twitter has apparently taken the lead for now, accusing Elon Musk and his financial adviser Jared Burchill of destroying evidence on Signal as to his reasons for wanting to pull out of the deal. Twitter further demonstrated that Musk’s own teams more or less found estimates similar to those reported by Twitter on the issue of human users versus spam accounts.
Source : NPR
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