Elon Musk buys twitter for $44 billion

The wealthiest man in the world is about to get wealthier.

Elon Musk, owner of the billion dollar corporation Tesla, is officially the new owner of Twitter. After weeks of back and forth between the two organizations, the board of directors at Twitter have officially accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer.

Prior to his ownership of Twitter, Musk’s account was one of the most followed Twitter accounts to exist. He has had a number of controversial tweets in the past including an issue during May of 2020 when Musk tweeted that Tesla’s value was “too high.” After posting this tweet, many investors backed out of deals causing the company to lose $14 billion and stocks to weaken in value. 

In another controversy, Musk granted his “full support” to Kanye West on his presidential campaign through Twitter. After facing backlash from the public and hearing more of West’s policies, Musk retracted his support for the rapper. 

Musk took issue with the way the platform was previously run. Twitter is a social media platform that allows for users to broadcast their opinions and interests over the vast internet for anyone to view. Twitter limited users’ abilities on its platform by blocking and banning many accounts due to their opinions being too vocalized or unsupported by certain groups. Musk believed that these limitations were a violation of American citizens’ rights, so he decided to make a change for the social media platform by purchasing the corporation. 

Musk’s main goal he strives to accomplish through his ownership of Twitter is less censorship on the platform. “it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said in an interview at the TED conference earlier this month.

Having less censorship allows for people to express themselves freely through the public platform, but minimizing the censorship on Twitter could pose a series of other potential problems. Hate speech and profanity will no longer be taken down, so the moral safety of users will no longer be protected through the platform. Problems with political groups or religious groups will be open to occur through the social media platform without censorship. With a decrease in censorship on Twitter, the app has the potential to become a more vulgar social media platform that many people might choose not to partake in for their own protection. 

Along with censorship changes, Musk plans on enhancing the app by creating new features, making an open-source algorithm, getting rid of spam bots, and having human authentication. 

A controversial addition to Twitter is human authentication. This would require more information to be surrendered from Twitter users. Although many people are weary about having so much personal information on the internet, authentication allows for more security to be provided to Twitter accounts. It provides a better way to protect personal information from hackers and ensures the person using the account is correct.

Nearly five months prior to Musk’s purchase, Twitter’s CEO and founder Jack Dorsey resigned and named Parag Agrawal as his replacement. After finding out the news of Musk’s purchase of the company, Dorsey tweeted to state his confidence in the direction in which the platform is headed. 

It is still unknown what is to come for those who work at Twitter. It is certain that Agrawal will keep his placement as CEO until the deal closes, but there is no guarantee he will follow the new ownership. The board of directors is said to dissolve after the deal closes. Layoffs are not planned at this time, but no final decisions have been made.