CEO of Twitter/X, Elon Musk may not be too pleased with how people react to his social media posts. Multi-billionaire technology tycoon Musk told a jury in California on Wednesday that stock market investors read too much into his social media posts.
“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.
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.
“What I think privately is what I say publicly, there’s no difference,” he said.
READ: Gold Card vs. EB-5: Everything you need to know about investment immigration (
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.
“If this was a trial on whether I’ve made stupid tweets, I’d say I’m guilty,” Musk said at one point.
“I was pretty upset with the Twitter board because I thought they had engaged in fraud,” Musk said.
Brian Belgrave, who is leading the class of individual investors suing Musk, told the court on Monday that he sold thousands of Twitter shares in July 2022, believing that Musk was no longer going to buy the platform because of his public posts and comments.
“I got screwed,” Belgrave said. “I got cheated.”
Executives with significant visibility can shape investor expectations and market behavior, often unintentionally, and even informal statements on widely accessible platforms can carry meaningful financial consequences. This emphasizes the importance of careful communication, transparency, and consideration of potential downstream effects when executives discuss corporate actions or transactions.
READ: Nvidia likely to pull back from OpenAI and Anthropic investments (
Investors are seeking unspecified monetary damages from Musk, which they say they are owed given they acted on his allegedly misleading statements, including when he claimed he was “terminating” the deal in July.
Determining intent, assessing potential market impact, and evaluating whether communications were misleading requires careful analysis of context, timing, and investor perceptions. How courts ultimately interpret these factors could influence legal standards for executive communications in the digital age.
The case reflects the growing role of social media as a primary channel for corporate messaging. Companies and leaders may increasingly need to implement guidelines, monitoring, and compliance measures to manage the risks of public communication while maintaining transparency and engagement.