And he wants to change it
I’m not too worked up about this … yet. If twitter turns into a full-fledged right wing hellhole it’s fine. I don’t have to participate any more than I participate in Gab or Gettr or Truth Social or any of the other right wing platforms. But it’s depressing that a single rich person could have this much power to affect the global discourse
Elon Musk has launched a takeover bid for Twitter, offering to buy it for $54.20 a share, just weeks after he became the social media company’s largest shareholder.
Mr. Musk said this was a “best and final offer,” representing a 54 percent premium over the day before he began investing in the company in late January, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It would value the company at about $43 billion.
In the filing, Mr. Musk said “I don’t have confidence in management” and that he couldn’t make the changes he wanted in the public market.
If the offer is not accepted, Mr. Musk said, he would “need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” according to a letter sent to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chair, on April 13 and enclosed in the filing. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
Morgan Stanley is Mr. Musk’s financial adviser for the bid, according to the filing.
On April 4, a regulatory filing revealed that Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and the world’s richest man, had bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter. The next day, Twitter announced Mr. Musk would join its board, but by the end of the week he rejected the offer.
“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,” Mr. Musk said in the letter to Mr. Taylor sent on April 13.
“However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form,” he wrote. “Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
Yeah, I’m just a teensy bit skeptical that an eccentric asshole billionaire is the right guy to be making those decisions. Let’s just say that “free speech” always sounds good to these people until it threatens their power. Then …