It’s no secret that Elon Musk is one of the most outspoken and active billionaires we have in the media. For the past couple of weeks, there have been rumblings that Musk might join the Twitter board in buying shares of the company. Shannon Bond of NPR reports “Musk, who recently became the social media company’s largest individual investor, told Twitter’s board last week he wanted to go on the entire company but didn’t say how he would pay for it. Now, in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the billionaire Tesla CEO said he’s lined up $46.5 billion to fund his offer of $54.20 a share. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and several other banks have promised to lend $25.5 billion, backed in part by some of Musk’s Tesla shares, according to the filing. Twitter released a statement on Thursday, April 21 saying the board has received Musk’s proposal and “is committed to conducting a careful, comprehensive and deliberate review to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter stockholders.” Twitter’s board already has thrown hurdles in Musk’s path. A day after he announced his offer, the board adopted a defensive measure known as a “poison pill” to fend off Musk and give directors more time to consider what to do.” Musk seemingly isn’t satisfied with just a slice of the pie; he wants the whole thing and has backers to reach his ultimate goal. He got what he asked for with news last week that Musk has now bought the platform for 44 billion. Musk took to Twitter to speak on the news “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spambots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” Most of the fear with the freedom of speech movement Musk wants to restore on Twitter is from political parties and politicians. Musk had this to say “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” Now a huge like this takes time to be fully set in stone, The New York Times reports “The deal is not set to close for another three to six months, Twitter told its employees on Monday. According to Tuesday’s filing, Twitter would have to pay Mr. Musk in certain circumstances if the deal goes awry. That would include if the social media company signed a deal with another suitor whose offer is deemed superior. Mr. Musk, for his part, would have to pay if his financing for the deal falls apart.” Nobody knows Musk’s true plans for the platform besides opening up free speech and getting rid of spam bots. This news has a lot of people with a lot of different emotions but one thing is Musk plans to be a public eye power for years to come.
Isaiah Ireland is a first-year Media & Culture major. II978280@wcupa.edu