On April 5, Elon Musk announced his purchase of a nine percent stake in Twitter. In doing so, he became Twitter’s biggest shareholder. Shortly after the acquisition, Musk announced two weeks later that he was offering to buy Twitter for 43 billion dollars, valuing each individual share at $54.20. Twitter accepted this offer, and Musk will buy Twitter for a total of 44 billion dollars, or 54 dollars and 20 cents a share. Now the richest man in the world, Musk will soon be able to add Twitter to the list of companies he owns.
Musk stated in an interview, “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it. 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.”
Now that Twitter has accepted Musk’s offer, the platform could drastically change. Musk could change the app’s layout, branding, and terms at his discretion, potentially impacting every individual who uses Twitter. This impacts every individual who uses Twitter. They will have to adapt to whatever changes Musk makes without any say as Musk seems to want to move Twitter from being a publicly-owned company to a private one. Many members of the Barstow community use Twitter to connect with others and express their opinions daily.
Musk’s net worth is currently 270 billion dollars, far above the 44 he bought Twitter with. However, many have stated that buying Twitter was not that simple for Musk. Since most of his wealth is tied up in stocks, buying Twitter proved extremely difficult for Musk. He had to sell shares of many of his stocks, especially Tesla. This is why the sale took an immense amount of time to go through.
Now that Musk has bought Twitter, he will have to pay an immense amount in taxes after selling these stocks. Sriram Pattabiram (‘24) gave his opinion on Musk buying Twitter, stating, “You get bored of self-driving cars, natural language processing, brain computer interfaces, and literal rocket science. Eventually you get bored of that and need to buy Twitter.”
The reason Musk gave for buying Twitter was that he believed Twitter had potential, but its censorship rules must be changed. Musk stated he will change many aspects of Twitter, including the payments for the platform will occur at front, verified people will lose their verified mark unless they paid, the company will become private, and the rules regarding censorship will change immensely.
Jack Cuezze (‘24) believes, “It’s clear what he wants to do is revert Twitter’s controversial censorship policies. I think at this point he’s so rich that, because someone hurt his feelings, he’s spending billions of dollars to buy an entire platform.”
When Musk becomes the owner of Twitter, users of the platform can expect many rapid changes. Such changes could affect how the platform is used, and could potentially drive current users away from the platform, or attract new users to it. Twitter users in the Barstow community should remain up to date on changes Musk makes to the platform, as it will change a significant communication platform.
