SAN FRANSCISCO: A federal jury in California found Friday that tech tycoon Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders, driving down the company&#39;s share price as he was poised to buy it in a $44 billion deal. The verdict in the class action securities lawsuit means the world&#39;s richest person could be ordered to pay billions of dollars, according to damages calculated by jurors. Minutes after the judgment was announced, the entrepreneur&#39;s lawyers informed AFP that their client will appeal the decision, characterizing it as a &quot;setback.&quot; After a three-week trial in a San Francisco federal court &mdash; which included in-person testimony from Musk &mdash; the jury found that two tweets posted in May 2022 by the Tesla and SpaceX CEO contained false statements responsible for a plunge in Twitter&#39;s share price. Investor Giuseppe Pampena had filed the suit on behalf of people who sold Twitter shares between mid-May and early October 2022. Musk acquired the social media platform in late October 2022 and later renamed it X. Jurors agreed that Musk violated a securities rule that bars false and misleading statements that sink a stock price, in this case that of Twitter, the verdict form showed. An attorney for the plaintiffs estimated the damages at about $2.6 billion. Musk, who has a near-constant presence on X, did not immediately react to the verdict. Teflon tycoon?The judgment marks a rare legal defeat for Musk, often dubbed &quot;Teflon Elon&quot; for his ability to emerge unscathed from lawsuits he is expected to lose. His lawyers, in fact, reminded AFP of this track record, noting that a Texas court cleared him just that same day in a separate defamation case. In 2023, a jury in the same San Francisco federal court cleared him within hours of similar charges brought by Tesla shareholders, following his 2018 tweets claiming he had the funding to take the automaker private. The civil complaint in California accused Musk of driving down Twitter&#39;s stock price to gain leverage to renegotiate the purchase price or get out of the deal completely, causing people who sold shares to lose money. Musk tweeted at one point during the process that the acquisition deal was temporarily on hold until Twitter executives could prove the percentage of &quot;bots&quot; &mdash; fake accounts run by software instead of real users &mdash; was as low as the social media platform claimed. The plaintiffs contended that these statements were part of a scheme designed to pressure the board of directors into accepting a price lower than his initial offer &mdash;&nbsp;at a time when Tesla&#39;s share price was falling, meaning Musk would have to sell more of his shares to finance the deal. Musk abandoned his effort to get out of buying Twitter in late 2022 after the company took him to court to uphold the contract. Musk has since merged the social media platform with his artificial intelligence startup xAI and his private space exploration firm SpaceX. Forbes magazine early this month estimated Elon Musk&#39;s net worth at $839 billion, a figure based primarily on his stakes in his portfolio of companies including Tesla and SpaceX.

This combination of pictures created on October 10, 2023, shows (L) SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit at the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, 

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The verdict in the class action securities lawsuit means the world's richest person could be ordered to pay billions of dollars, according to damages calculated by jurors

US jury finds Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders

WASHINGTON: Social media platform X announced Tuesday it would suspend creators from its revenue sharing program for 90 days if they post AI-generated videos of armed conflicts without disclosing they were artificially made, the company said.&nbsp;The policy change, announced by an X executive on the Elon Musk-owned platform, targets what the company described as a threat to information authenticity during wartime, as generative AI tools make it increasingly easy to produce misleading footage.&nbsp;&quot;During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground,&quot; X&#39;s head of product Nikita Bier said, adding that current AI technologies make it &quot;trivial to create content that can mislead people.&quot;

Artificial Intelligence

Social media platform X said it will suspend creators for 90 days from its revenue-sharing program if they post AI-generated armed conflict videos without disclosure. The move aims to protect information authenticity during war time, amid growing misuse of generative AI tools.

X suspends revenue sharing for undisclosed AI war videos

WASHINGTON: Elon Musk clapped back Saturday at the European Union after it hit the tech tycoon&#39;s X social media platform with a major fine, telling his 230 million online followers that the EU should be &quot;abolished.&quot;&nbsp;Following a high-profile probe seen as a test of the EU&#39;s resolve to police Big Tech, the social media platform owned by the world&#39;s richest person was slapped with a &euro;120 million ($140 million) fine on Friday for violating the bloc&#39;s digital rules.&nbsp;The penalty was swiftly criticized by the US administration of Donald Trump, who, as president, aligned with Musk on a contentious effort to slash the federal workforce and cut spending, before the two fell out.&nbsp;Musk himself weighed in after the fine was announced, posting on his X account: &quot;The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people.&quot;&nbsp;When a user reposted Musk&#39;s comment, he responded, &quot;I mean it. Not kidding.&quot;&nbsp;&quot;I love Europe, but not the bureaucratic monster that is the EU,&quot; he added in another post.&nbsp;The fine against X was the first imposed by the European Commission under its Digital Services Act (DSA) on content.&nbsp;The Commission said X breached the DSA&#39;s transparency obligation.&nbsp;The violations include the deceptive design of the platform&#39;s &quot;blue checkmark&quot; for supposedly verified accounts and its failure to provide public data access to researchers, it said.&nbsp;X had also failed to be sufficiently transparent about its advertising, the Commission added.

Elon Musk criticized the EU after X was fined €120 million for breaching the Digital Services Act, citing misleading verification and lack of transparency. Musk called for abolishing the EU, favoring national sovereignty over bureaucracy.

After fine against X, Musk says EU 'should be abolished'

SAN FRANCISCO: Elon Musk has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to settle a dispute with four former Twitter executives over their dismissal on the day he acquired the social network, now known as X, a court filing said on Wednesday. When the world&#39;s richest man purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, he immediately fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and top legal officers Vijaya Gadde and Sean Edgett, accusing them of gross negligence and willful misconduct. &lsquo;Rushing the acquisition&rsquo;The four executives sued in federal court in San Francisco in March 2024, seeking $128 million. They alleged they were dismissed without cause and that Musk then tried unsuccessfully to fabricate grievances against them. They also accused him of rushing the Twitter acquisition to deprive them of $200 million in stock options due the following day. The settlement amount Musk is not specified in the provisional agreement submitted to a judge. Subject to conditions&nbsp;It remains subject to several conditions. If those conditions are not met, the lawsuit will resume on October 31. The turbulent 2022 acquisition saw nearly two-thirds of Twitter&#39;s workforce laid off and triggered multiple lawsuits from former employees, clients and contractors. In late August, Musk and X agreed to settle a class action and individual lawsuits filed by thousands of employees seeking severance payments. In March, the billionaire transferred ownership of X to his generative artificial intelligence startup, xAI.

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The world’s richest man settles with four former Twitter executives, fired during his 2022 acquisition, for an undisclosed amount. They sued for $128 million, alleging wrongful termination. The agreement is provisional, pending court conditions.

Musk settles with fired Twitter execs for undisclosed sum

BENGALURU: Social media giant X warned on Monday that an Indian court ruling allowing police to issue &quot;arbitrary&quot; content removal orders through a government portal threatens free expression.&nbsp;The state high court in Karnataka &mdash; which includes tech-city Bengaluru &mdash; dismissed a plea last week filed by X against the government portal that it alleged was being used to censor content.&nbsp;The government says its online portal Sahyog &mdash; meaning &quot;cooperate&quot; in Hindi &mdash; helps automate the process of sending government notices to content intermediaries such as X and Facebook.&nbsp;&quot;It aims to create a safe cyber space for the citizens of India by facilitating the removal or disabling of access to any unlawful online information,&quot; it says.&nbsp;But X said the portal &quot;enables officers to order content removal based solely on allegations of &#39;illegality,&#39; without judicial review or due process for the speakers, and threatens platforms with criminal liability for non-compliance.&quot;&nbsp;It will &quot;allow millions of police officers to issue arbitrary takedown orders,&quot; and &quot;infringes Indian citizens&#39; constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression,&quot; X added.&nbsp;The Karnataka high court said last week that X&#39;s plea was &quot;without merit&quot; and that social media was not exempt from regulation.&nbsp;&quot;Unregulated speech, under the guise of liberty, becomes a license for lawlessness,&quot; the order read.&nbsp;The court said that while X followed takedown orders in the United States, it had refused to follow similar orders in India. X said it would appeal the ruling.&nbsp;In 2023, the Karnataka state high court fined X, then called Twitter, $61,000 after dismissing its plea challenging orders to remove comments and accounts critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi&#39;s government.&nbsp;Rights groups say freedom of expression is under broad threat in India, which is now at 151 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index.&nbsp;India has more than 900 million internet users, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.&nbsp;China has more internet users, but India is open to US tech companies.

Elon Musk, X, social media ban, free speech

Asia

The Indian government says its online portal Sahyog — meaning "cooperate" in Hindi — helps automate the process of sending government notices to content intermediaries such as X and Facebook.

Articles tagged with "Twitter"

US jury finds Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders

X suspends revenue sharing for undisclosed AI war videos

After fine against X, Musk says EU 'should be abolished'

Musk settles with fired Twitter execs for undisclosed sum

X says Indian online takedown platform threatens free speech