Oh god. According to Bloomberg, it looks like Twitter really is going to be sold to Elon Musk.
The social media company’s 11-member board has been negotiating with Musk after his bid to buy the company for $46.5 billion, equating to $54.20 per share in cash. Two people close to the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, have come forward claiming that negotiations are entering their final stages and that Twitter is set to accept Musk’s offer. According to the New York Times, Twitter shareholders and Musk are now just finalising the timeline for a transaction and the size of any fees paid should the sale fall through. For all intents and purposes, it seems as though it’s a done deal.
In some ways, it’s unsurprising that Musk has decided to buy the company, as he’s always been a big fan of the dumb bird app. Remember that time he was sued after tweeting he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share? Or casually knocked $14 billion off Tesla’s value after tweeting “Tesla stock price is too high imo”? Or when he falsely claimed that a heroic man who rescued children trapped in a cave in Thailand a “pedo guy”? Good times.
So what will happen when Musk takes over? Well, he recently ran a poll asking his followers for their opinion on implementing an edit button and he’s vowed to get rid of spam on the platform. He’s also previously expressed that he wants people to be able to speak more freely on Twitter: in a letter to the company’s board declaring his intention to buy the company, he wrote: “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.” As a ‘free speech absolutist’, it’s likely Musk would permit hate speech on Twitter, which is just what the world needs right now!
It’s troubling to think that a man who is happy to (reportedly) kill monkeys with barbaric brain chips is so close to owning one of the world’s biggest and most influential social media platforms. Thankfully though, it’s still possible that the deal will fall through – Twitter may still be thrashing out terms, investigating the billionaire’s credentials, and seeing how regulators will react to the deal. Here’s hoping it all falls apart and Elon takes his little rocket to Jupiter instead x