As Twitter Goes Down Again, Report Highlights How Fragile Its Infra Has Become

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/02/__trashed/

by mhoad • 3 years ago

11 6 3 years ago

So before Musk took over, Twitter was paying $100m in interest over its debts. After Elon took over, they're now paying $1.2b annually in interest and had to do 3 layoffs.

I'm just curious, how did Elon acquire Twitter using loans guaranteed by his Tesla shares, and then he was able to unload his loans on Twitter, the company?

chollida1• 3 years ago

I'm just curious, how did Elon acquire Twitter using loans guaranteed by his Tesla shares, and then he was able to unload his loans on Twitter, the company?

Well that's easy. And is very typical for all private equity transactions.

I take out a loan to buy a company. Once I own the company I can do what ever I want with it. The loans were taken out to buy the company and therefor get assigned to the company.

That just makes sense as the company is the reason for the loans in the first place.

senttoschool2• 3 years ago

So basically everyone got screwed except the shareholders, who made out with an overpriced sale to Elon.

The actual company got pretty f'ed because it got a loan to buy itself out. Then it had to lay off most of its workers because it got a loan to buy itself out.

ksherlock• 3 years ago

Think about a secured loan to buy a house, ie a mortgage.

rsynnott• 3 years ago

Very standard for leveraged buyouts. It rarely works out well, and there's some argument that it should be banned, but it's not unusual.

joegahona• 3 years ago

Is there a generally agreed upon definition for "outage" in engineering circles? Because the linked article cites "yet another major global outage at Twitter," but the article it links to says this:

People's timelines are acting wonky on mobile and desktop.

As Twitter Goes Down Again, Report Highlights How Fragile Its Infra Has Become

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