Tesla owner Elon Musk is officially buying Twitter after several weeks of developments between the Tesla owner and the social media site. It began with Musk acquiring a stake in Twitter, following some issues he’s reportedly had with the moderation of free speech on the platform. Elon Musk was set to join Twitter’s Board of Directors after this stake, but plans for that fell through. Not long afterward, Elon Musk offered to purchase Twitter at the price of $54.20 per share, or crudely $40+ billion dollars.
Elon Musk described this as his best and final offer, and now, Twitter has accepted this offer. It was done so for Musk’s exact share offer, with the full total coming in at $44 billion dollars. In a press release announcing the purchase, Musk stated that he wants “to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
Musk also added that “Free Speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy,” while Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal also praised the Elon Musk-Twitter deal in the press release. According to an SEC filing that took place last Thursday, this deal is funded through roughly $25.5 billion in loans and $21 billion in personal equity. These loans could end up costing Twitter around $1 billion yearly, per some estimates.
It was also stated earlier today that Elon Musk and Twitter would finalize the deal relatively soon, and this caused many on the social media site to discuss potentially leaving Twitter for one reason or another. Others pointed out how there's not another social media site, similar to Twitter that is the same size as it, to actually go to. Obviously, many are split over this decision, as some feel that Musk's take on Free Speech has less to do with the concept itself and more so to do with allowing harmful and hate language to spread, and others certainly find their thought processes aligning with Musk's. Nonetheless, clearly aware of this reaction, Musk also tweeted out today that he hopes his worst critics remain, as that's the whole point of Free Speech.
Elon Musk has made it clear that he wants to make several changes to Twitter, first and foremost with his criticisms of its free speech policies. He has also suggested, over the past few weeks, adding an edit button to Twitter (which is reportedly already in the works at the company), stripping advertisements from Twitter Blue (and lowering the subscription price), and even adding Dogecoin as a viable payment option for the subscription.
Source: The Verge