Twitter accepts Elon Musk's bid to buy the company.

 

Elon Musk. Wikipedia user Duncan Hull.

Twitter has accepted a multi-billion dollar deal from Elon Musk to buy the company. CNBC. The deal is for $54.20 a share, which would be worth $44 billion. The move would make Twitter a private company again but it would need shareholder and regulator approval. Musk has been interested in purchasing Twitter on free speech grounds. Twitter regularly bans user accounts for opinions. Musk has a history of using twitter and is one of the most popular users there. If the deal goes through Musk has said he will add new features to twitter, including more transparency on algorithms, defeating spambots and allowing all users to be verified. 

🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

My Comment:

From a purely economic standpoint, I don't think this deal is worth it for Musk. There is no way that Twitter is worth $44 billion, indeed, I would be surprised it is worth $1 billion. Twitter never seems to make money and they don't really seem to have a functional way to monetize content compared to other social media. I know they have advertisements and sponsored tweets, but that's about it. 

But I don't think this about money for Elon Musk. I generally think it's more about his image and brand. Musk is a social media creation and much of his brand is dependent on him being able to reach millions of people via Twitter. If Twitter were to ban him (and believe me they were considering it before this drama) he would probably lose millions of dollars. 

With that being said, I do think Musk is a true believer in free speech. Twitter is the public square, receives money from the federal government and often deletes content and bans users on the whims of government officials. Musk wants them to live up to the commitment to free speech and stop banning users over nonsense. 

What, exactly, that entails is still a mystery. People are acting like Musk will simply undo the banhammer that was dropped on millions of accounts but it's not that simple. We might see some of the users banned in the past, including President Donald Trump, back on Twitter but it's also possible that we won't. 

I also don't think that free speech will be totally free on Twitter even with Musk in charge. For example, I doubt you would be able to say the n-word on there, though I have no idea why you would want to. And I think you would still be able to catch a ban for legal but offensive speech. I doubt it will be the kind of free for all you see on Gab, for example, but it will still probably be better than it is now. 

But I do hope that moderation is looser than it is now. I have gotten a ban for something that is undoubtedly protected speech. I called Kyle Rittenhouse a hero before he was acquitted and caught a 24 hour ban. Given that I was right and Rittenhouse acted in self defense, it was infuriating. Hopefully new Twitter will acknowledge that there is more than one side to an issue and allow different views. 

Even if nothing changes but what Musk said in his Twitter post it will be a major improvement for Twitter. Simply understanding how the algorithm functions would make Twitter a lot more useable. And Musk is right, the spambots are out of control on Twitter. I can't tell you how many times I have seen dozens or even hundreds of accounts saying exactly the same thing. And as for verification, I haven't even tried to get a blue checkmark because Twitter is notorious for not handing them out to conservatives. If you are a liberal who works at buzzfeed and you have 25 followers, you will get verified but even some of the biggest stars on the right in this country have not had their accounts verified or even more stupidly, have had their verifications taken away.  

But keep in mind that this isn't quite a done deal just yet. The shareholders and the federal government could end up blocking this deal. I am not worried about the shareholders at all but the Biden White House might want to stop this. Biden owes his fake presidency to social media censorship and I don't even think that's controversial. If the Democrats lose Twitter they lose the White House in 2024, no question. That means they might just do anything, legal or otherwise, to stop this deal from happening....