Elon Musk Buys Twitter

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in a filing published on Thursday, April 14th stating that the social media company needs to be transformed privately. The occurred a little over a week after revealing that he bought a 9.1% stake in the company. Musk’s offer values Twitter at about $44 billion. According to CNBC, Musk’s exact words were “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.” Musk wrote this in a letter sent to Twitter Chairman, Bret Taylor, that was disclosed in a securities filing.

After Musk spoke out, Twitter shares went down 1.68% and Tesla’s stock dipped more than 3.6%. According to Musk, the social media platform needs to go private because it can “neither thrive nor serve” free speech in its current state. As a result of this, he was offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash and a 54% premium over the day before he began investing in Twitter. He also stated that his offer was his best and final offer and if it is not accepted, he will have to reconsider his position as a shareholder.

Elon also spoke on a TED talk about the fact that this was not a way for him to make money, but a way to have a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive. Musk believes this is extremely important to the future of civilization. Musk is all about free speech, and that’s how it should be. Some believe that recent media and social media platforms have been making free speech not actually free speech. These certain platforms are filtering only one political side by turning or manipulating the words that come out of a person’s mouth. As Elon musk stated, he wants a FREE speech platform where everyone can speak, not just one political party. Musk has considered making his own platform where everyone can speak freely. After much deliberatio with the main owner of Twitter, which is believed to be a billionaire from Saudi Arabia, Musk’s offer was finally accepted. So now, we will thankfully have a free speech platform to rant on.

I believe having a smart man like Musk will really open the horizon for social media platforms. Having a site where you don’t have to worry about getting your account deactivated or deleted would be a great stress reliever to a lot of people.