Elon Musk Bought Twitter for $44 billion. What does this mean?
Elon musk bought a 9.2% share of Twitter in April of 2022 but denied being on the board. Then on 25th April, Elon musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. Earlier this month we got news Elon musk will buy Twitter for $43 billion, but Twitter declined their offer, but now for just $1 billion more, they have sold it. So let’s see the reasons behind Elon musk buying Twitter.
Even for Elon Musk $44 billion is a large chunk of money, he is given $21 billion in cash. $12.5 billion worth of shares of Tesla will be used to get secure loans from several banks. The rest of the money will come from Twitter’s own assets. As Elon Musk is buying Twitter in a leveraged buyout which means, getting loans against the Twitter assets. So Musk will use Twitter assets as collateral for loans
The reasons behind Elon Musk buying Twitter
Elon Musk said he wants to promote free and open speech on Twitter. Though free speech is not a specific word, everyone has their own understanding of it. But In a TED interview, he said “When someone you don’t like, says something you don’t like”, that’s true free speech.
He also tweeted that
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
In his recent tweet, he said he is going to abide by the laws of the country, and Twitter will follow any laws implied by the country
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
He is planning to open-source the algorithm so that developers can build several APIs out of it. Which is good from a code development perspective. But still, we are unclear on how this will be implemented.
He is also planning to bring an “EDIT” button to the tweet so that people can edit the tweet once they have posted it. This also has some questions, like if someone tweeted months ago and changed his tweet after several months, the comments and retweets will become meaningless. So will the edit button be available for a specific period or something else, this is still unclear. Elon Musk is open to any suggestions on this according to the TED talk. According to me enabling the EDIT button for a limited period of time is a good option.
Elon Musk will try to remove spam users, who troll other people on Twitter. So that fake news can be controlled. Also, he said a permanent ban is not a good idea, maybe timeouts were a better option.
Musk is also not thinking about economics here, he just wants a public platform that can be globally trusted.
He also said if you are a human on Twitter your profile will be verified
These reasons behind Elon buying twitter are good, but there are a lot of problems which currently exist, that cannot be solved that easily.
The Problems
Twitter Stock has started falling down after this news. Though Elon Musk has promised the retail investors to pay $54.20/share. Though this is still unclear.
Machine learning and AI is not that advance yet to identify the wrong message or fake news. It decides on how many people have flagged it or reported it as inappropriate. So there has to be human intervention, Elon needs to have humans monitoring the tweets and take action accordingly.
What will happen to user’s data is unclear, the DM on Twitter is not safe, it is not encrypted, meaning anyone inside the company can read it. What policy change will Musk make to solve this problem, we need to see
Now the public company has become a private company owned by one man Elon Musk, which can seem scary, as Mark Zuckerberg owns, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and we have seen a lot of issues with that to date. We have seen the Cambridge Analytica scandal, also we know our data is not safe with Facebook and Instagram. And the fake news WhatsApp spreads, and more.
Also, we know that Elon musk is the richest person on the planet, and he has massive followers on Twitter 86 million and counting. He mostly gives updates about Tesla, SpaceX and other companies he owns on Twitter. But his tweets related to crypto have made the currency jump up and down.
Like he said people can buy tesla using bitcoin, after which the price of the bitcoin shoots up, but later after knowing about the adverse climate effects due to bitcoin, Elon musk changed this statement and the bitcoin price dips. That’s how powerful Elon musk and his tweets are.
He also raised the market price of Dogecoin by tweeting Doge. There are several of his tweets that create hassle in the market. You can read it here
Conclusion
Elon Musk bought Twitter? because he is going to use Twitter as the biggest marketing tool for his other business. Elon Musk already has so much influence over the financial market, imagine how much more powerful he will get now.
He will try to make money out of it, even if he said the economy is not his concern, because even for him $44 billion is a lot of money. He may not directly earn from Twitter, but he will definitely use this platform to get more business for his other businesses.
I am also worried that this should not be like other Elon Musk promises, like the Tesla roadster, Cybertruck. Self-drive cars by 2020, and more. Elon Musk is a visionary, but what he has said about Twitter should be implemented and made a better social media platform.
Though I like Elon as a visionary and I am positive about Twitter growing in a positive direction. But don’t want to give so much power to one person’s hand. One person having so much power turns out to be always bad for everyone.
But I am sure we are going to see some great implementation in Twitter platforms in the future, though only time will tell, will it be good or bad.
Though I am not going to leave this platform, because it allows me to directly connect with anyone on this platform. You can follow me on Twitter
