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Tuesday night, billionaire Elon Musk made a vague comment about how he might start his own social media platform, depending on how his $44 billion legal battle with Twitter turns out.
Musk talked about this possibility in response to a direct question from one of his followers. He is trying to back out of his deal to buy Twitter because he is worried about spam bots.
"Have you ever considered making your own social platform? If the deal with Twitter doesn't go through?" The Twitter account "Tesla Owners Silicon Valley" asked this question.
"X.com," replied Musk.
The CEO of Tesla didn't say anything else about the website or what he meant when he shared the link.
"X.com" was the domain name of a company that Musk started to offer financial services. Eventually, he merged it with PayPal. In 2017, Musk bought the X.com domain name back from PayPal and announced that he had relaunched the site, which is currently empty except for a single X in the top-left corner.
The meeting happened soon after SEC filings showed that Musk had sold Tesla shares worth $6.9 billion over the last few days. Musk said that the deals were made so that he wouldn't have to hold a "fire sale" if he is forced to buy Twitter under the original terms.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022
Yes.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 10, 2022
In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.
“Yes. In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close *and* some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk said.
Musk said he didn't plan to sell any more Tesla stock and would buy more shares of the electric car company if he was able to get out of the deal with Twitter.
Musk's trial with Twitter will start on Oct. 17 in Delaware Chancery Court. This is where the judge will decide the outcome of the case.
Twitter is trying to get a court order to force Musk to buy the company for $44 billion, but Musk's team says the merger agreement should be thrown out because he got bad information about fake accounts among Twitter's users.
In the meantime, Musk's lawyers have sued Twitter back, saying that the company lied to them and broke a contract.
In its complaint filed in July, Twitter noted that Musk had suggested he could form a rival social media platform around late March of this year as he quietly accumulated a 9.1% ownership stake in the company.
“Meanwhile, on March 26, 2022, Musk spoke with two Twitter directors, Jack Dorsey and Egon Durban, about the future of social media and the prospect of Musk’s joining the Twitter board,” the complaint said.
“Soon after, Musk told Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Twitter board chair Bret Taylor that he had in mind three options relative to Twitter: join its board, take the company private, or start a competitor,” the complaint added.
Musk tweeted on March 26 that he was seriously considering making his own social media platform.
Musk is one of only a few people who have more than 100 million followers on Twitter. He uses the platform a lot to share important news about his businesses as well as random thoughts and memes.
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