Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter for $43 Billion, Take it Private
Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and currently the richest man in the world, has tendered an offer of $43 Billion to buy Twitter and take it private. He currently owns 9.2%.
Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has encouraged the platform to allow a wide range of opinions. President Trump has been banned from the platform.
Musk was about to join the Board of Directors for Twitter last week, realized they were laying a trap, and backed bout.
“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. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.” … “given that I don’t have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market.”
His offer of $54.29 per share is about 54% over the price of shares before he started investing.
In March, Musk polled his followers asking if they thought Twitter allowed free speech. More than 70% of his 2 million followers said no. At that time, he said he would give serious thought to building a new platform.
If the offer is not accepted, then Twitter may have a whole range of issues to deal with. The stock price will crash immediately, falling even more quickly as Musk sells his shares. This will open the company to multiple shareholder suits. It may be that Twitter does not survive such an event.
The liberal media have already begun attacks on Musk. He was immediately called a racist by several outlets, and this will get worse. Look for prominent liberal Twitter customers to threaten to leave, and for lawsuits to magically appear.
But this is a badly needed move in the right direction. Musk believes he can enhance the profitability of the company while making it a platform that is not biased to the political left.
We have seen the damage a biased social media can cause to our political process. Hopefully, this will play out in a positive way.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-offer-buy-twitter-take-it-private
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/14/tech/elon-musk-twitter-offer/index.html
Speech should be free, other than for potentially dangerous words, such as yelling “fire” to purposely cause a panic in a crowded place. No words should be considered “hate speech” unless hate is provable. Stating facts, even unpopular facts, should not be considered hate speech, but it has been in the recent past. A White person using the N-word in a discussion, but not attacking someone with it, should not be considered racist, but we have seen that happen multiple times. My favorite “challenge to a racist word” what when a White government official used the word ‘niggardly’ to describe a budget discussion. That word is of Norwegian origin, and means ‘stingy’, and has nothing to do with race. Instead of looking up the word, his superiors informed him he had to apologize or be terminated.