It just took 10 for Elon Musk to become a potential owner of the microblogging site after becoming the biggest Twitter shareholder and critic.
On Thursday, Twitter revealed that the Tesla CEO has offered to acquire the company for around $43 Billion, stating that the “social media platform needs to be transformed as a private company” to gain the users’ trust.
“Elon Musk Wants to Buy Twitter for Over $40 Billion and Take the Company Private: ‘Made an Offer’”, People Tweeted.
“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Elon Musk said during the securities filing. “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.”
During an interview the same day at the TED 2022 conference, Elon Musk said onstage, “having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
Musk further detailed the changes he seeks to bring to social media that he referred to as a “de facto town square,” like, ‘favoring temporary rather than permanent bans’.
In his speech, the Tesla CEO has mostly shared his aims for the company in ‘broad and abstract’ terms.
He even said that he wants to set up the ‘black box’ of AI tech operating Twitter’s feed for more transparency so that users can know why some Tweets go viral, and others get overlooked. “I wouldn’t personally be in there editing tweets,” Musk said, “but you would know if something was done to promote, demote or otherwise affect a tweet.”
For the past few days, Elon Musk has been a vocal criticizer of social media, alleging that it fails to practice freedom of speech. The microblogging site has also enraged Trump’s followers and other right-wing groups who have gotten their accounts suspended for sharing inappropriate, harmful and misinformation. On the other hand, Musk, who alleges to be a “free-speech absolutist” has reportedly blocked several Twitter users who didn’t disagree with him or question his doings.
