WEBVTT

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- The Musk Twitter saga began

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after weeks of Elon Musk teasing

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he would purchase the
social media giant Twitter.

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It was difficult to see if he was serious,

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as we know Musk enjoys
being an internet troll.

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Things got real when Twitter
announced on April 25th

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that it had entered into
a definitive agreement

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to be acquired by Elon Musk

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in a transaction valued
at about $44 billion.

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Once the transaction is complete,

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Twitter would become a
privately held company.

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In a live automotive conference

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hosted by the financial times on May 10th,

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Musk said he would allow
Donald Trump back on Twitter,

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despite the former
president being permanently

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banned two days after the
January 6th, 2021 insurrection

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for encouraging violence with his tweets.

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On May 11th, the Wall
Street Journal reported

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that the Securities
and Exchange Commission

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was investigating Musk's failure

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to disclose his massive
March Twitter share purchase

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in a timely fashion.

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Musk took too long to file
the required public forms

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while he was in the process of buying up

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9.2% of Twitter's stock

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and becoming the company's
largest shareholder.

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Twitter's stock prices
jumped up by about 27%

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when Musk finally did
file his SEC paperwork,

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which means he probably saved himself

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a lot of money by not
announcing the buy up

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as it was happening.

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On May 10th, Musk tweeted

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that his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter

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was temporarily on hold

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because he was waiting for confirmation

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that the amount of spam and
fake accounts on the platform

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actually represented
less than 5% of users.

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On May 17th, Elon tweeted,
"Yesterday, Twitter's CEO

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"publicly refused to show
proof of less than 5%.

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"This deal cannot move
forward until he does."

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The message referred to recent sparring

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with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal

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over the prevalence of automated accounts.

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Eloquent as always, Musk
tweeted the poop emoji

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as a reply to Agrawal's
explanation that it was impossible

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for external observers to
estimate an exact number.

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So now we wait to see,

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is Elon Musk trying to cut a better deal,

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or to back out of the
Twitter acquisition entirely.

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To read more about this ongoing story,

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check out gizmodo.com.