The Twitter Takeover

On April 4th, 2022, Elon Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter worth about $3 billion making him Twitter’s largest shareholder.

But just about 20 days later, Musk bought the entire social network company for $44 billion. Even for a man worth $264.6 billion, this is a large sum of money.

It is truly interesting to see such an action take place. Something like this has never happened before. No single person has ever bought such a big, influential company like Elon Musk has.

But, why is he purchasing the company? Why would a man who already owns Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company venture off into yet another business exploration?

First of all, Elon Musk is already frequently on Twitter. Whether it be educating others, sharing thoughts, or cracking jokes, he is tweeting quite often. So, clearly he enjoys using the app, but there are obviously other reasons for buying the app. 

He believes that there is a problem with how Twitter is being run. The main problem that Elon Musk noticed was the app not allowing free speech, a right given in the first amendment. 

In his opinion, the censorship of Twitter is beyond the law, which is a problem that he wants to fix.

He is noticing tweets being taken down for no other reason than it not lining up with Twitter’s political beliefs. So, his main change to the app will be the regulation of taking down tweets as he believes that free speech has not yet been met.

He also wants to make Twitter’s algorithm an open source to increase trust with users. “In other industries, such as cryptography, nearly all relevant algorithms are open sourced so that entire communities of coders can collaborate on improving design and security features” (Adler).

Many people like what Elon Musk is doing, but many don’t. There is much speculation surrounding whether this is a good idea, or whether he knows what he is talking about.

The immediate reaction of Musk purchasing Twitter was a drop in its stock.

Many believe that Musk is walking into this ownership blindly and will soon realize that his goals of how to fix Twitter are unreachable. “Musk seems never to have thought or read deeply about the subject” (Vaidhyanathan).

Many others also believe that this money could be put to better things like helping solve world hunger, rather than purchasing this social network company.

But, despite all the speculation, many agree with Musk and his fight for free speech on the social media platform. A poll “found that 62 percent of adults think Musk’s purchase will make Twitter better. Just 13 percent, meanwhile, feel Musk will make the platform worse” (Devine).

Although, this buyout won’t only affect Twitter’s users, it will also affect its employees. “Agrawal told employees that layoffs aren’t planned “at this time” during Monday’s meeting but did not comment on what would happen once Musk takes over the company later this year” (Smith).

A big change of work style could come from this management change. But, also there could be a difference in layoff or hiring rates. It is truly hard to say what will happen at this point of the process as it will still be about six months from the time of the deal until Elon Musk fully takes over.

To say the least, it will be interesting to see how Musk’s management of Twitter pans out. This takeover of Twitter could be bad or beneficial in many different ways.