Sue Jack, Save Freedom: Hold the CEO of Twitter Accountable!

In recent days I’ve been made aware of dozens of conversations by former Twitter users that thousands of people might not only be eligible to sue #BigTweet but expect a bit of a payday in doing so.

Beginning the day following the January 6th activities in Washington, DC, Jack Dorsey got aggressive, hostile, and intentional in the mishandling of his enterprise.

The argument that Twitter—as a private company—can do what they wish with impunity is holding less water as the scope of the malfeasance is coming to light.

By estimates from my own observation and discussion with others, Dorsey intentionally maligned the welfare of his company. In most publicly traded corporations this would be tolerated for no more than a nanosecond.

His actions intentionally injured the return on investment of shareholders and taking such actions violated the basic fiduciary rights investors expect to be upheld. Given that the top 10 owners of the 751 million shares of Twitter’s stock are all financial services and mutual fund companies there are a lot of shareholders that have said expectations.

And last week Jack Dorsey purposely and with malice of forethought made all of them take a bath. He did so without any justification for his actions as it pertained to the welfare of the corporation. His actions caused the company to lose 16 percent of stock value—close to $7 billion in actual dollars—and in essence killed its ability to deliver its number one product: an audience.

So there are plenty of reasons shareholders, the public, and former Twitter users should consider legal recourse.

Let me highlight the four most obvious reasons why (in no particular order.)

Rule 230 and Monopolization: It's been discussed in Washington that the predatory aspect of Twitter’s self “sheriffing” of “misinformation” reached all time levels of interference of free speech in this election cycle. “Platforms” don’t do such things. “230 platforms” are required, in fact, to be as free of such interference as possible. And since the purge of 2021 Twitter has stepped up their aggressive monitoring of speech by even preventing readers from liking, reposting, or commenting on posts they arbitrarily dislike. Doing all of this on their own platform is bad. Acting in concert with their friends across social media to help see competitors then shut down and eliminated moves them into the discussion of whether they are acting as an untouchable monopoly.

Double Standards In Rule Enforcement: As part of the purge last week my Twitter channel was suspended for supposed “threat of violence.” We appealed the ruling. We disagreed with the reading of the post they flagged as such and we sent supporting evidence through their electronic portal. We have yet to hear their response. If it is based on the original post that we believe that it is they flagged us for simply observing that Twitter’s suspension of Trump was in fact an “impaling” of their own future business profitability. To hoist one with their own petard is the literary picture I was using to describe their business decision to deplatform the president. Since the purge, David Marcus, writer for The Federalist, appeared on my show to describe the wide range of true threats of violence that Twitter was still allowing even as the of the writing of this scrib. “Assassinate Trump, Kill Trump,” are all still present. The Iranian Supreme leader’s account has hundreds of posts describing horridly violent treatment that Israelis “deserve.” Uneven enforcement of their own rules for interfering with free speech is a Constitutional claim on equal justice grounds and should be argued as much.

Reckless and Purposeful Fiduciary Liability: I’m not a lawyer, nor am I an investment or financial planning expert but I have worked for more than my share of media companies. From the boardroom to the studio to the website, the primary discussion of media companies is centered on only one thing: audience. Publicly traded media companies have an even bigger reason to focus so intently: shareholders. When Jack Dorsey decided to purge tens of thousands of pages he eliminated his shareholders’ abilities to profit from billions of page views, interactions, and promotion. My rather tiny account had just reached the 150k plateau on Twitter. But that rather small account drove 200,000,000 impressions over November/December of 2020. If President Trump had the same (or likely better) ratio of response that would mean he delivered 117,000,000,000 (billion) impressions over the same time period. Considering we’re a nation of roughly 300 million consumers that level of engagement—from an audience standpoint – is unlike any other messaging ability ever created. Investors like that because when Twitter sells ads it insures that people see them. Add to President Trump’s loss of audience the simultaneous prevention of consumers from being able to access his tweets. Now think about what happens to all of that audience and engagement when (as he inevitably will) he lands at another outlet—or builds one himself. What recourse has the Twitter shareholder been given?

Jack Dorsey intentionally and willfully torpedoed his own company. But it’s not his to do that with anymore. It belongs to millions of people owning those 751 million shares.

In discussing with legal experts all of us who have been impacted negatively would be wise to form the largest class action suit in history.

And if you’re an attorney who is bold enough to step forward to do so, let’s start the conversation, it’s time to save free speech.

And we can start by holding Jack accountable!

Jan 11, 2021,10:49am EST|534 views

Twitter Is The Worst Company On Planet Earth. Here’s How To Bet Against The Stock—and Deactivate Your Account
By: Jim Collins

It is rare a that a public company stretches so far into the realm of abhorrent behavior, but Twitter’s TWTR -5.8% actions last week revulsed me more than Union Carbide’s Bhopal, Boeing’s BA -2.5% repeated failures with the 787 Max, J&J’s JILL +3.1% Tylenol scandal and really any other corporate action I have seen in my lifetime.

Twitter permanently suspends Trump’s account:

For a social media platform to censor a world leader—while still giving a voice to preachers of hate like Louis Farrakhan Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei and even O.J. Simpson—isn’t just wrong from a free speech perspective, it’s actually terrible business.

So, Twitter has shown little to no sequential growth in its user base of late (details below) but it is still valued like its Big Tech growth-y brethren.

Twitter is not growing, it is shrinking, if measured versus the growth rate of the global economy, and that reduction will accelerate dramatically now that Twitter has offended every Conservative in America with its action to ban President Trump. Only fools in Congress and Big Tech apologists would think that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should apply to Twitter. It is a publisher, not a platform. Full stop.

So, first and foremost, here is how to deactivate your Twitter account. I used this excellent article from the Today show last week to kill my account. It took me more than half an hour, and making it difficult to leave is a classic Big Tech strategy for bolstering user numbers, but eventually I succeeded. It was worth it. I will never use that platform again.

But I do stocks, not activism, and even if a new type of conscious capitalism is my investment strategy for 2021, I still need to make some money. Twitter shares are plunging 7% in pre-market trading Monday, and the market will soon realize that this platform is going to shrink dramatically. Even on a good day,

Twitter is a cesspool of hate speech, lies (including investment advice) and a “trending” algorithm that seems to have a remarkably consistent left-wing bias. I will not be the last person to cancel it.

I have never interacted with an ad on Twitter (or Facebook) and I would never spend a dime with a company that tried to reach me through a private social media channel. I don’t do “cancel culture” but I believe Twitter will become radioactive for advertisers, as half the US is revolted by what they have done, and that’s not good for business.

Twitter’s self-reported user base grew at a whopping 1% sequentially in 3Q20, with 1% growth internationally and 0% in the U.S. The comparisons were much better on a year-on-year basis (+29% overall) but remember that 2020 was an extraordinary year for news flow. But Twitter is not news.

I think that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is a pathological liar as well as a horrible human being, so I don’t believe Twitter’s user numbers at all. The mDAU metric that Twitter now uses reflects, and clearly they will keep changing metrics until they find one that looks decent. This is a classic Big Tech maneuver.

In dollars, though, Twitter generated $936 million (million, not billion, this is a small company) in revenues in the third quarter and produced a very low (for Big Tech) 6% operating margin and 3% net margin. So, after a whopping $1 billion loss in Q2, Twitter recovered to make $28 million in the third quarter. Wow! That’s just...irrelevant.

With negative free cash flow of $74 million in Q3, but $7.6 billion of cash and securities on the balance sheet, Twitter is worth more than zero, but extraordinarily less than the $51.48 per share the market was according TWTR stock Friday. Yes, we have completely forgotten how to value stocks. Twitter is not the only one but it is the easy one.

With earnings power of less than $1 billion (TWTR reported net income of $1.469 billion in 2019 and will be nowhere near that in 2020) I think this is a steady-state stock. No growth, no dividend, and no free cash flow to speak of. That doesn’t deserve even a market multiple, but since it’s tech, let’s give TWTR the insane 25x real earnings power that the S&P 500 is granted.

So, add about $5 billion cash (net of debt,) a real cash earnings power of about $750 annually and use the 800 million shares outstanding as of 9/30 and you get a fair value for Twitter of just below $30 per share. But Twitter’s user base has shrunk dramatically in the past week, I believe, and so $30 is really more of a best-case scenario on earnings power that won’t exist with a smaller user base.

So, let’s say someone thought TWTR’s fair value was in the high-$20s and would pay $20 for TWTR, to imply an attractive return, and use that as our share price target, That implies a decline of more than 50% from current levels.

How long will it take to get there? Not long in my opinion. Plus, when trading options, you have to take into account the overreaction that always occurs with an inflective event. Do I think Twitter shares will trade below $20, at least temporarily at some point between now and the end of March? Hell, yeah.

So, when searching for that perfect option contract, always look for one with a decent amount of contracts outstanding (which implies a more efficiently-priced contract) and a relatively low implied volatility, I see March 19th 2021 TWTR $25 puts quoted at $0.13 this morning, and, man, I gotta get me some of that.

Pre-market quotes are notoriously unreliable for deep-out-of-the-money options contracts, so let the market open and let it trade a little before you buy, That’s what I will do today for my personal account and for my most risk-aware clients.

So, that’s how to make money betting against Twitter. The new conscious capitalism of 2021 entails fighting Big Tech censorship and the monopolistic power that those companies wield. Not only is Jack Dorsey at Twitter a revolting human stain (as proven by this Congressional testimony and takedown by Senator Ted Cruz) his company isn’t that big or growing that fast—and is about to shrink.

I am uncomfortable sometimes with Amazon’s AMZN -1% power, but I won’t be unsubscribing from Prime any time soon, and I don’t have the guts to bet against Jeff Bezos’ stock. But Dorsey is not Bezos and TWTR is no AMZN.

Twitter is a faux-tech outfit with no competitive moat and a customer base filled with—it would seem—idiots. It’s too small to be considered Big Tech, but the media has given it outsized influence.

Only you and I can fight that war and destroy Twitter’s base. So, delete your account, and short the stock. Making money while doing the right thing feels extra good...doesn’t it?

By: Jim Collins
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2021/01/16/forbes-deletes-article-about-twitter-worst-company-planet-earth

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