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Oct. 29, 2018 / 10:55 AM GMT
By Alyssa Newcomb
When you’re a billionaire, you can apparently afford to tweet whatever you want.
Tesla’s Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said his infamous tweet about taking the company private at $420 a share — a reference to marijuana that he hoped would make his girlfriend laugh — was “worth it.”
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That tweet, which was sent in August, cost Musk and Tesla $20 million apiece as part of a fraud settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and led to him resigning as chairman of Tesla’s board of directors for the next three years.
In a Friday night Twitter spree, Musk sounded off about how “likes are rare and criticism is brutal” on his go-to social media platform. But when asked about the likes-to-followers ratio on the 420 tweet, Musk said it was “worth it.”
With 88,000 likes, and a $20 million fine, that works out to about $227 per like.
The fine is pocket change for Musk, who has a net worth of $21.9 billion. Musk is also being sued in a separate matter for calling one of the British divers who helped rescue a group of Thai boys trapped in a cave a “pedo guy.”
The remark was apparently prompted after the diver, Vern Unsworth, criticized Musk’s rescue plan as a publicity stunt that “had absolutely no chance of working.”
Musk deleted the tweet and apologized, but then doubled down on his claim, commenting on how it was strange he hadn’t yet been sued. Unsworth filed a defamation suit against Musk last month.
While his tweets may get him into trouble, Musk has reason to feel on top of the world.
Last week, Tesla reported a surprise third quarter profit of $312 million, sending shares up more than 12 percent. Musk called it an “incredibly historic quarter.”
Earlier this month, Tesla also announced a new, cheaper version of its Model 3 sedan.
On Friday night, Musk did something completely out of character. He logged off Twitter.
“Signing off Twitter for a few days….” he wrote.