It Is Not a Done Deal, But Musk Essentially Owns Twitter Already
In business, this is when things get fascinating and exciting for me. And leave it to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who runs Tesla and Space X, as well as a couple of other companies, to bring on some of that excitement front and center.
What else can one expect from a man who can practically own whatever he wants and just decides one day to launch his car into space just because, as he put it, "I can."
This all goes back a bit, when social media suddenly decided it wanted to be the "conversation police" of the world and began censoring all sorts of things that they simply "did not agree with."
Who cares about the truth, right? They were going to decide what is and what isn't the truth, anyone else's considerations be damned.
That is, of course, in direct violation of the free speech we hold so dear, especially in the United States. It is not just a matter of the fact that we hold it dear. It is a constitutional right that cannot be revoked.
Social media gets around this because they own the platforms and are not bound to uphold the constitution in the same way as other organizations would have to, especially considering they are not considered an official "press."
It did Twitter no good when it made the decision to ban former president Donald Trump from their platform and apparently this, coupled with numerous other censoring activities, got Elon Musk riled up.
And I think for good reason. He knows as well as anyone that disavowing free speech rips at the foundational core of any societal good. Even when it is speech that we do not like, it is important that it nonetheless be protected.
If nothing else, freedom of speech allows us all to have an open dialogue regardless of what is being said.
Twitter and other social media platforms have tried to thwart the censorship accusation by labeling speech they censor as "misinformation." But that is, of course, not an absolutely accurate description of what they choose to censor.
Recently Elon Musk took on a 9.2% stake in Twitter and announced that he wanted a seat on the board, which he quickly changed course on.
I suspected right away when he made that decision that Musk wanted more than just a little bit of a say in how the company operates. A hostile takeover was likely the direction he was interested in going, and this is the move he just made when he sent a letter to the board offering $54.20 per share for the company, or roughly $43 billion.
He wants to take the company private, and all that needs to happen is that the board needs to accept the offer and of course the shareholders must approve it.
Musk has said this is not his final offer. So, there may still be more money he is willing to pony up to take Twitter over. And I would bet that it might just be enough for shareholders to be quite pleased with the final tender offer, whatever that may be in the end.
The thing about it is that Elon Musk has an entirely different vision for the company than the current leadership has and so the move, if it happens, would be a significantly transformational one.
Twitter will not look the same, nor function the same.
As someone who has not been a huge fan of the platform for many years I actually think this is a good thing and based on what I have seen of some of Musk's vision, I think the site would actually be much better under his leadership than under the current one.
What is happening right now is only just the beginning. The excitement is only now beginning to ramp up. What happens next is going to be loads of fun to watch and I am quite interested to see how it all turns out in the end.
My strong leaning position is that even if the board and the shareholders reject Elon Musk's offer, the intent by Musk to own the company is quite clear, and when all is said and done, one way or the other, Musk will ultimately own enough of the company that regardless of what the board and the shareholders desire, Musk will have the final say.
On the crypto side, Doge will also be interesting to watch since we all know that Musk is a fan of the coin and wants to incorporate it in some way with the Twitter platform.
More to come...
I hope that he does actually open up free speech and it's not just smoke screens for nonsense. I certainly like him more than the power hungry w⚓️rs in charge of Twitter currently.