Elon Musk now owns Twitter, completes $44bn Twitter takeover
Table of Contents
- Elon Musk now owns Twitter, completes $44bn Twitter takeover
- A significant shift in content moderation
- Trump and other accounts have been unbanned.
- An owner with an inconsistent and contentious track record on the platform
After months of attempting to back out of his purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk now officially owns the highly powerful site. The question now is, what will he do with it?
Musk’s purchase, which was concluded Thursday night, according to a source familiar with the case, has the potential to disrupt not only Twitter (TWTR) staff, but also the hundreds of millions of individuals who use the network on a regular basis. It may also have an impact on the upcoming US midterm elections if Musk follows through on his pledge to restore the accounts of users who had previously been banned from the platform, most notably former US President Donald Trump, and to limit the company’s content controls.
Musk frequently stated in the weeks following his agreement to buy the firm in April, and prior to his first decision to pull out of the deal, that his goal was to strengthen “free expression” on the platform and strive to “unlock” Twitter’s “amazing potential.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he would reconsider Twitter’s approach to content moderation and permanent bans, potentially affecting civil debate and the political environment. He also mentioned his goal to clear the site of bots, even though he later made the number of bots a primary rationale for abandoning the deal.
During Tesla’s (TSLA) earnings call last week, Musk acknowledged that, while the $44 billion deal meant “overpaying” for Twitter, “the long-term potential for Twitter, in my opinion, is an order of magnitude greater than its current value,” adding that he believes Twitter has “languished for a long time, but has an incredible potential.”
Musk’s intentions for increasing Twitter’s worth may include reducing its employees, as he has already intimated. Previous reports stated that he intended to lay off 75% of his employees, but he is said to have told Twitter employees last week that this is not the case. Anxiety levels are high in either case. Musk sacked CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy chief Vijaya Gadde immediately.
Musk has floated a variety of other possible platform changes in private and public statements over the last six months, from enabling end-to-end encryption for Twitter’s direct messaging feature to suggesting this week that Twitter become part of a “everything” app called X, possibly in the style of popular Chinese app WeChat.
There have also been more outlandish notions. In one text discussion with his brother Kimbal Musk, released last week in court records, the two appeared to debate the potential of charging users small amounts of the cryptocurrency DogeCoin for each tweet they publish.
Now that Musk has closed the transaction, some of those theoretical modifications may become a reality soon. Users should be aware of the following:
A significant shift in content moderation
For years, former CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey stressed Twitter’s efforts to promote “healthy dialogues,” banning many accounts that promoted abuse and spam, adding labels for inaccurate or misleading material, and prohibiting the misgendering of transgender persons.
According to safety experts, under Musk’s ownership, Twitter might reverse moves taken to make the network more appealing to its most vulnerable users, who are typically women, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of colour.
Musk has stated that Twitter will have more lax content control measures under his leadership. “If in doubt, let the speech exist,” Musk remarked during an April on-stage interview. “If there’s a grey area, I’d advise leave the tweet alone.” But, clearly, if there’s a lot of controversy, you wouldn’t necessarily want to promote that tweet.”
Despite his vows to eliminate content regulation, Musk sought to reassure advertisers on Thursday that he does not intend to convert the site into a “free-for-all hellscape.” The comments come in response to inquiries about whether advertisers would leave the site for fear of their paid messages being mixed in with potentially undesirable content.
“Our platform must be warm and friendly to all, where you may choose your preferred experience according on your choices,” he wrote in an open letter posted on Twitter. Allowing all lawful communication may not be so simple – content rules differ around the world, and the new Digital Services Act in Europe enforces strict moderation criteria.
Musk has also stated his desire to open source Twitter’s algorithm and make it more clear to users when, for example, a tweet is elevated or downgraded in their feed. (Twitter leaders have already voiced support for moving in that way, and the firm frequently makes it plain when it is demoting specific tweets or types of content.)
Trump and other accounts have been unbanned.
The most noticeable early shift, though, may be who is and is not permitted on a Musk-owned Twitter.
Musk has stated that he believes Twitter should be “reluctant to erase things” and “very cautious with permanent bans.” This could mean that a slew of problematic far-right leaders and conspiracy theorists, among others, will soon return to the platform.
Musk, for his part, has concentrated on reintroducing one of Twitter’s most notable former users: Donald Trump.
“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said in May. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … But my opinion, and Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear, shares this opinion, is that we should not have perma-bans.”
Dorsey tweeted following Musk’s May remarks that he does “agree” there shouldn’t be permanent bans on Twitter users. “There are exceptions … but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work,” he said.
Trump has stated that he will not return to Twitter and will instead focus on his own social media network, Truth Social.
However, if Trump accepts Musk’s offer to return to Twitter, he might regain a sizable following that he hasn’t had since being banned from the platform in January 2021, just as the battle for the 2024 US Presidential election heats up. Trump has only 4 million followers on Truth Social, whereas he has over 88 million followers on Twitter.
An owner with an inconsistent and contentious track record on the platform
Another significant shift is who may be making these critical decisions.
In the tech world, Musk has a mixed reputation. He is, without a question, one of the most ambitious and successful innovators and entrepreneurs of our time. But he has also courted criticism, frequently from his own Twitter account, which has over 100 million followers.
Musk has used Twitter to make false claims about the Covid-19 pandemic, to falsely accuse a man who assisted in the rescue of children from a cave in Thailand of being a sexual predator, to mock people who use gender pronouns on the platform, and to make countless jokes involving the numbers 420 and 69. He has also tweeted a (now-deleted) photo equating Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler, as well as comparing Agrawal to Joseph Stalin.
Musk previously attempted to get a Twitter account dedicated to following the travels of his private jet deactivated by offering to pay off the college freshman who ran the account (the account owner declined).
Musk was severely chastised for statements he made on Twitter about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the same day he sent his letter to Twitter hoping to restart the contract. He proposed making Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed from Ukraine in 2014, “formally part of Russia.” Most of his followers voted “no,” and Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk responded in a tweet: “F— off is my very diplomatic reply to you.” In a subsequent tweet, an apparently frustrated Musk appeared to blame the results of his poll on a “bot attack.”
Until now, Twitter has been held to some degree accountable for its policy decisions by advertisers, shareholders, and its board of directors. However, those safeguards are unlikely to exist under Musk’s leadership.
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