Multi-billionaire technology tycoon Elon Musk told a jury in California on Wednesday that stock market investors read too much into his social media posts.

He was defending himself against claims from investors, who have accused him of trying to manipulate markets with a series of misleading messages in the run-up to his 2022 purchase of Twitter.

Musk said posts he wrote after he had struck a deal to buy the platform were “extremely literal” and not intended to try to reduce the price he would have to pay.

“I was simply speaking my mind,” he said when asked if he had considered the impact of his posts, including one in which he declared his takeover plans on hold.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    21 hours ago

    You’re reading too much into my nazi salutes!

    You’re reading too much into all the promises I made to investors and clients which I then dropped

    You’re reading too much into what I’m saying because every single word coming out of my mouth is a lie

  • collapse_already@lemmy.ml
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    18 hours ago

    I wonder if the opposition has tried to sneak a picture of him doing a literal Nazi salute into their case. Relevance would be his lack of character.

  • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
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    1 day ago

    “Officer, you’re reading too much to the speed I was going. It wasn’t even on my mind, I was simply pushing the gas pedal.”

  • BiteSizedZeitGeist@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    People like him disavow how much influence he has, willfully or not. Musk is the worst at it. He doesn’t realize, or refuses to realize, how much his edgy tweets mean.

    They wall want power but not the responsibility that comes with it.

  • ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com
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    2 days ago

    How dare people read what I write and attribute motivations and intentions to my publically outspoken opinions and positions

  • wuffah@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    buys entire social media platform

    directs developers to boost his posts

    exclusively posts deliberately manipulating and inflammatory content

    “Don’t read so much in to it!” 🤡

  • notwhoyouthink@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Oh wow.

    Watch the claims of Autism come back (I believe he’s hinting at this by claiming he was being ‘extremely literal’), he’s tried the clownish ‘but gaiz, I was joking you shouldn’t take me so seriously’ bs we all remember from ‘edgelords’ online.

    This is like tech bro’s prayer; it’s the Narcissist’s Prayer but with a ‘no one gets me’ smirk.

  • mos@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It’s odd how the article describes the richest person on the planet, who is almost worth a trillion dollars, as a multi billionaire.

    Also what the fuck who needs a trillion dollars.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      I can’t think of a reason anyone should be able to have even a billion dollars. Long before you get to that point, you are just playing numbers games to the detriment of everyone else participating in the economy.

      How a wealth limit could ever be enacted practically is another matter, but I would support trying to solve it.

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    Musk tries so hard to be clever and debonair in his posts and usually comes off looking like a middle-school goof.

  • ameancow@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Elon Musk: “Don’t take tweets so seriously bro”

    Also Elon Musk: Incentivizes blue-check accounts with just enough monetary reward for shares and engagement that literally hundreds of thousands of people in developing countries take on creating and sharing propaganda, rage-bait and inflammatory USA content as full-time careers, leading to our whole country embracing fascism out of fear and confusion and electing a leader who has now killed over a million people not counting the failures of covid.