Elon Musk

Four years ago, Twitter cofounder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey laid out four key focus areas that would propel the company's growth.

But with Musk, "it feels like ... we have to go and re-educate another kind of billionaire, libertarian, man-child that [Twitter] is the real world ... I would hope he can see the difference between you know, being a douche and being dangerous." Each of the major social media platforms have faced pressure from lawmakers, researchers and the public to do more to crack down on abuse, harassment and misinformation, and have taken different approaches with varying degrees of success. It does not mean free speech for the less powerful," said Leslie Miley, a former Twitter engineering manager who started its product safety and security team and left the company in 2015 "I think people don't understand how much we have to lose." She now worries the progress she and other users have pushed for on Twitter will be reversed. that under Musk's leadership, Twitter could "further become a terrain of culture wars. . "[Musk] says he wants to make it a free speech platform. Still, Musk's experience of using Twitter as an ultra-rich, White man, is inherently different than that of most users, and especially those who are women or from other marginalized communities Twitter has tried to protect and who now may be at risk if its moderation policies are rolled back. Musk and others have pointed out that most of Twitter's board has little experience actually using the platform. But obviously in the case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet." Beyond potentially alienating employees who have worked on or support efforts to improve content moderation on the platform, undoing Twitter's progress on "healthy conversations" also risks losing users at a time when the company has been fighting to reverse sluggish growth. Musk has a mixed reputation in the tech industry.

Twitter is reportedly set to accept billionaire Elon Musk's offer to purchase every share of the social media giant for about $43 billion.

Musk says he wants to be more judicious and lenient when it comes to deleting tweets and permanently banning users. The billionaire has been a vocal critic of Twitter's perceived flaws when it comes to free speech. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company. You know, timeouts I think are better than sort of permanent bans. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. 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,” Musk said in a SEC regulatory filing.

The world's richest man succeeded in a bid to acquire the influential social networking service, which he has said he wants to take private.

Tesla's CEO goes from Twitter troll to Twitter boss, and all it took was $44 billion.

When @jimfarley98 boasts about the Ford F-150 Lightning on Twitter, how will that sit with the guy behind the Cybertruck? And how will the guy behind the Cybertruck pay enough attention to that project while running yet another company that has more than 7000 employees? To scrape together that pile of money, Musk leaned heavily on Tesla, a company that has turned a profit in two of the past 19 years. That would be Twitter, a company that has made a profit in two of the past 10 years.

EU officials Cedric O and Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk he will have to comply with the bloc's new Digital Services Act. Musk wants to reform Twitter as a ...

Breton, a former CEO of French IT consulting firm Atos, is seen as a key architect of the European Union's digital reforms. Companies that fall foul of the rules risk facing fines of up to 6% their global annual revenues — just over $300 million for a company like Twitter, based on 2021 sales figures. For his part, Trump says he doesn't plan to return. Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, warned Musk that he will have to comply with the bloc's new digital regulations. But officials stateside have raised concerns over the possibility of Musk reinstating Donald Trump's Twitter account. Cedric O, France's digital minister, said that while there are "some interesting things" Musk wants to push for at Twitter, the EU's new Digital Services Act "will apply regardless of the ideology of its owner."

Tesla's reliance on its Shanghai plant, built with Chinese bank loans, and low-cost local suppliers underpin its profitability. Observers wonder if that ...

Early this year Tesla also opened a showroom in China’s Xinjiang province, where the government is accused of carrying out an assimilation program and operating internment camps for ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups. Tesla began building Model Ys and Model 3s last week, under strict protocols that included having workers temporarily live at the plant and not returning to their homes. It seems to have worked as local companies including BYD and NIO have become fast-growing rivals to Tesla in that market with a range of attractive, compelling new electric models. Previously, global giants including General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford and Toyota were required to partner with local Chinese companies, who typically owned a majority stake in joint-venture factories. While the country previously had no influence over Twitter, “that may have just changed” with Musk’s deal, Forsythe said in a tweet. In 2021 China became Tesla’s highest source of vehicle production and likely its second-biggest source of sales.

Twitter's board accepted a $44 billion offer from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to buy the popular social media platform and take it private on Monday.

Agrawal said during Monday's meeting that he would remain CEO until the deal closes, Bloomberg reports, but Musk could appoint a new leader after completing the deal. One of the biggest questions that remains unanswered in the wake of the deal is who Musk will appoint as Twitter's new CEO – Agrawal replaced co-founder Jack Dorsey a mere five months ago. "We don't have all the answers," Agrawal added.

Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. UPDATE: In his first tweet since the news became official, Musk posted an excerpt of the Twitter press release, quoting him as saying: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. "Once completed, the richest person in the world will own arguably the most influential social platform in the world, though from a business and user standpoint Twitter is significantly smaller than companies like Facebook or TikTok," says The Hollywood Reporter's Alex Weprin." In a tweet hours before the deal was approved, Musk tweeted: "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."

The company's decision to sell seems to have been based purely on the financials, with little if any regard for other stakeholders.

Accepting the bid was the path of least resistance, and Ms. Fisch said it was unlikely to be successfully challenged in court or held up by federal regulators. Mr. Musk has said he isn’t buying Twitter to make money (even as he claims that he has plans to “unlock” the company’s potential). That is arguably cause for concern. Since his takeover bid became public earlier this month, Mr. Musk has been talking up his plans to promote Twitter as a bastion of free speech. Public shareholders, like any other owner seeking to maximize profits, have a financial incentive to attract and maintain the broadest number of users. In one sense, it’s easy to sympathize with the eagerness of the Twitter board to get out of this hornet’s nest while enriching shareholders. It’s unclear whether the board members, in what appears to have been a whirlwind weekend of deliberations, even touched on these topics. After all, it’s not as if Twitter, in its current cacophonous state, is some utopia of mild-mannered civic discourse. Having forsworn the profit motive, Mr. Musk might not care whom he offends, either by welcoming extremists or by banning people who denounce him. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, capped what seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial billionaire to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion. In the eyes of some influential business and legal experts, the answer is no. Just last week, he mocked Bill Gates’s beer belly after the Microsoft co-founder was said to have bet against Tesla’s stock price. Mr. Musk is a polarizing figure.

Musk, the C.E.O. of Tesla and the richest man on earth, plans to take the social-media company private, and has said that he wants Twitter to adhere more ...

And I think people are recognizing that Elon Musk has created a lot of value for his companies by being unhinged on Twitter. And I think there are imitators, and I think we’re kind of early in the game. If you are the richest person in the world, and annoying, and you constantly play a computer game, and you get a lot of enjoyment and sense of identity from that game, maybe a little addicted, then at some point you might have some suggestions for improvements in the game.” At one level, this is a more personal account of his desire to buy Twitter. And then there is the more financial, or business, account, which you have just explained. But, at the same time, it almost seems like it’s impossible to disaggregate those two things, unless you think that all of his behavior is some elaborate performance or something, which I don’t think anyone really believes. He might say, “Look, I get so much value out of this direct access to the public.” Owning that direct access to the public—owning that thing that creates so much value for Elon Musk and Tesla—it has to be valuable somehow, whether it’s by increasing the value that it creates for Tesla, or whether it’s by finding a way to monetize the value that it creates for sports stars and celebrities and Donald Trump and lots of other people. It’s not obvious how the company would, but if you’re sitting on top of a thing that can create that much value, surely, if you’re really smart then you can extract some value out of it. And those expectations are probably helped by having a charismatic, noisy founder who makes a lot of jokes online and is sort of a science-fiction character himself, and portrays himself as a science-fiction character, and who appeals to people who like that by making jokes. The value of his company is enhanced by his being a very strange public figure on Twitter, and so he clearly sees a lot of value in tweeting, and probably wants to own that for himself. And the stock-market value of Tesla, which makes Elon Musk the richest person in the world, comes from a lot of extreme optimism about Tesla’s future ability to make more cars and become the dominant player in car-making as cars become more electric. And so the value of these companies in the market is largely derived from expectations around how much money they’ll make in the future, as opposed to how much money they’ve made in the past. It’s not obvious to me how, if he bought Twitter, he would then be better able to get his message out, or better able to tell a story in a way that is good for Tesla and good for his economic interests. So how much do you connect Tesla’s worth to Elon Musk as a person and the way he orients himself toward the world, especially on Twitter? To talk about Musk and what the future holds for his newest acquisition, I spoke by phone with Matt Levine, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who has been comprehensively reporting on and analyzing this story over the past month in his newsletter.

Tesla chief executive, the world's richest person, wins fight to take over influential social network for $44bn. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The sale caps a dizzying saga for Twitter and Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a prolific user of the social media platform.

"The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. Last week, Musk announced he had lined up the money to take Twitter private. But lack of details about how Musk would finance the deal left many doubting he was serious. Musk began accumulating Twitter shares in January. On April 4, he revealed that he'd become the company's biggest individual shareholder. Twitter's board quickly adopted a so-called "poison pill," which served essentially as a speed bump, a way to slow down Musk from acquiring more shares in the public market, as company leadership weighed the offer. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," he said in the announcement Monday.

Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) announced on April 25 that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by an entity owned by Elon Musk. Musk, the CEO of ...

Following weeks of back and forth, Twitter's board accepted Elon Musk's acquisition offer on April 25. The fate of the company is not clear, but Musk has talked about adding features including authentication of all users.1 The deal follows a highly publicized back-and-forth between Musk and Twitter's board of directors.1 Shortly thereafter, however, he backed out of the planned board seat and stated his intention to buy the company. In March 2022, regulators said that they could subpoena Musk regarding his tweets.5 Musk offered to acquire Twitter for $43 billion on April 14.3 On April 15, Twitter's board adopted a limited duration shareholder rights plan, known as a " poison pill," in an apparent attempt to block Musk's acquisition.4

Musk secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is himself providing an approximately $21 billion equity commitment, according ...

Musk secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is himself providing an approximately $21 billion equity commitment, according to a statement by Twitter. He will take the company private. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Musk said he will take Twitter private amid an effort to restore free speech to the social platform.

The outspoken Tesla CEO, the world's wealthiest person, has said he wants to buy Twitter because he thinks it's not living up to its potential as a platform for ...

Eventually he became CEO and led the company to astronomical success as the world's most valuable automaker and largest seller of electric vehicles. But much of his money is tied up in Tesla stock — he owns about 17 per cent of the electric car company, according to FactSet, which is valued at more than US$1 trillion — and SpaceX, his privately held space company. He also acknowledged that Twitter would have to abide by national laws governing speech in markets around the world. In a recent TED interview, the billionaire said he'd like to see Twitter err on the side of allowing speech instead of moderating it. He says it needs to be transformed as a private company in order to build trust with users and do better at serving what he calls the "societal imperative" of free speech. "Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important."

Twitter's shares rose by about 4 percent in opening trade in New York on speculation the firm could agree a takeover deal with Elon Musk.

Musk has been critical of Twitter's management. I'm deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It is not clear who would run Twitter if Musk's bid succeeds. Musk recently said that he believes that Twitter should be more open and transparent. At the time, Dorsey said: "My trust in Parag as Twitter's chief executive is deep. Musk's targeting of Twitter has moved at remarkable speed.

Before Twitter accepted Musk's $44 billion offer, he has floated numerous ideas for changing the social network. Not all of those proposals have been ...

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The announcement ends a weeks-long saga Musk kicked off when he offered to buy the company at $54.20 per share, his "best and final."

Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it." The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter's stockholders." The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter's closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter. He also said he generally would prefer "time-outs" to permanent bans, which could suggest a path for former President Donald Trump to rejoin the platform under Musk's control. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a privately held company. The SEC declined to comment on Musk's remarks at the time. Despite his being the world's richest person, much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, meaning he would likely have to borrow against his holdings to fund the deal. Musk's interest in Twitter comes from his own frequent use of the platform. The plan would dilute that person's holdings in a strategy commonly employed to prevent unwanted acquisitions. The announcement ends a weekslong saga Musk kicked off when he disclosed a large stake in the company. Twitter would become a private company on completion of the deal, which requires shareholder and regulatory approval. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.

EXPLAINER: The deal is expected to close sometime this year. But before that, shareholders and regulators still have to weigh in.

Twitter hasn’t announced the timing of a shareholder vote, though the company’s annual meeting is set for May 25, which could offer a convenient time to poll shareholders. At this early stage, it’s unclear what will happen to Twitter's current board or management team if the deal is completed, but Musk has made it abundantly clear that he believes the company has been poorly run. Last year, Twitter generated US$5 billion (NZ$7.5 billion) in revenue, with US$2.8 billion (NZ$4.2 billion) from the US and the rest earned overseas, Zino said. “Musk has the track record that he can do the impossible”. The deal is expected to close sometime this year. Musk said other investors could contribute to the financing.

Twitter initially rebuffed Musk's bid, but it will now ask shareholders to vote to approve the US$44 billion deal.

However, he will take on a company with a chequered record of financial performance. It has drawn critics from left and right over its efforts to mediate misinformation on the platform. Musk's targeting of Twitter has moved at remarkable speed. However, its stance shifted after Musk revealed more financial details about his proposed bid. He also leads the aerospace firm SpaceX. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," he said in a statement announcing the deal.

Internal market commissioner raised concerns that hate speech will increase on the platform.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group, said: “The UK and the EU are going to have tools to deal with this. Musk has said he favours temporary “time-outs” for users who breach Twitter’s policies, instead of outright bans. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.” At first, Twitter’s board seemed opposed, enacting an anti-takeover measure known as a “poison pill” that could have made a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. He is familiar with European rules on automotive, and will quickly adapt to the Digital Services Act.” Changes to its policies, features, and algorithms, big and small, can have disproportionate and sometimes devastating impacts, including offline violence,” she said.

After Twitter agreed to a buyout deal from Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, Musk outlined a series of plans for changing the platform.

Even if a name isn’t revealed to other users, collecting information on real identities offers a trove of information for governments to request, and it’s vulnerable to hacks or security flaws. It could refer to people having to pass some kind of captcha-style “am I a human” test to post — although, as with spambot bans, if there were an easy way to do this without affecting good-faith users, Twitter would probably have done it already. Musk has indicated that “spam and scam bots” and “bot armies” are Twitter’s new Public Enemy No. 1. Bots are a long-standing and beloved part of Twitter, and separating a good bot from a bad bot might be harder than Musk thinks. In a TED interview, he indicated that Twitter should “match the laws of the country,” which suggests he could continue practices like region-locking certain content and follow rules like India’s social media regulations. And a strict automation crackdown could block bots that perform interesting and valuable services on Twitter — like Big Tech Alert, which tracks who Silicon Valley’s big players (including Musk) are following and unfollowing, or Editing TheGrayLady, which illuminates how The New York Times tweaks its headlines and copy over time. But virtually every site that claims a “free speech” banner ends up banning something that makes it deeply unpleasant for users, advertisers, or the site owners themselves — so it’s premature to say how far his commitment will go. Musk has a lot more leeway over changing Twitter’s policies around what kinds of content are banned, of course, and when users are suspended. He’s indicated that he would rather err on the side of “time-outs” and leave borderline content online. Online speech is a minefield, and if Musk really intends on a minimally moderated Twitter worldwide, he could expect huge fights in countries that restrict things like hate speech and false information. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

From regularly attacking his perceived enemies to running a company accused of rampant racism and sexism, it's not hard to see why so many people are up in ...

The H.R. executive added that the company was “not perfect” at the time of the incidents, and “is still not perfect,” but has “come a long way.”) But now, he is, and if you’re not familiar with the guy, or just think of him as the dude who sells electric cars and is really into space, you might be wondering why so many people are up in arms. Like the employees of Twitter, who reportedly reacted to yesterday’s news with “shock and dismay,” a lot of people are not enthused about the idea of Elon Musk buying the social media network.

There is every chance that Twitter's board will have extracted an improved offer or terms from Elon Musk as an announcement on a deal is expected later on ...

According to the media outlet, both sides met on Sunday to discuss the proposal - and the social network "is more likely than before to seek to negotiate". Musk argues that the social network needs to be taken private in order to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech. He has offered to buy the social network for $43bn (£33.5bn) and placed the right to uphold free speech at the forefront of his argument for a deal, accusing Twitter of failing its users to date.

When Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion 10 days ago, the platform didn't welcome him with open arms. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is in some ways ...

Among them is Ben Thompson, the writer of the popular newsletter Stratechery, who believes that Twitter should go private—even if that means a transformation engineered by Musk, which could mean less moderation and more acrimonious discourse, as well as a larger focus on subscriptions. Twitter’s board had to justify rejecting a generous offer, more than 10% above the company’s current stock price. On April 21, Musk said he has the funding to get this deal done quickly.

Twitter is gearing up to accept Musk's original $43 billion offer. Apparently he wasn't just trolling.

Musk first announced his offer to buy the social media company at around $54.20 per share on April 14. In premarket trading, they reached about $51.50 per share, but at the time of writing, had fallen to around $50.7. Although the deal is unconfirmed, both the Times and Reuters reported that sources tell them a deal could be finalized and made public later today. If Musk makes the purchase, Twitter would no longer be a publicly traded company, but instead, private. Important to point out though, it literally isn’t. The first amendment doesn’t protect anyone’s right to post on Twitter. Though Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, seemingly doesn’t understand that. Any moment now, a deal between between Twitter’s 11-member board and Elon Musk could be announced.

Musk has led his companies to success through a variety of means. There are a few specific rules he rigorously enforces that have worked well for his ...

Musk has also made his belief in the free flow of information clear through other public means. As far as big meetings go, Musk believes that they’re largely a waste of time and that they should be infrequent. The rules, as detailed by Your Tango, often pertain to meetings, productivity and the free flow of information.

Twitter is nearing a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk, two people with knowledge of the situation said, a move that would unite the world's richest man with ...

Industrialist Anand Mahindra has shared an image of the "original Tesla vehicle" from India that was fully self-driven and did not require navigation ...

Finally, after a couple of days the animals came back themselves. Although slow, these modes of transportation were immensely cost-effective and also among the only few available in early times.Click for more Another user reminisced the days when bullock carts were in use, and said that they had lost two buffaloes when the animals had gone out grazing. The defining features that Tesla takes pride in are cost-efficiency, being an electric vehicle, and its self-driving features. When bullock carts were widely in use, people would train the animals in following directions and also in identifying the route. BACK to the Future… — anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/csuzuF6m4t April 24, 2022

On Monday, Twitter confirmed the billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX plans to acquire the social media company in a deal valued at $44 billion. Once the ...

Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. How is everyone responding to the idea of Twitter under new ownership? I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness." Reactions to the deal have been mixed. Musk has long criticized the platform for how it moderates content. What does Musk's plan mean for the future of Twitter and its users?

Tesla CEO Elon Musk celebrating the opening of the carmaker's Shanghai plant on Jan. 7, 2020. Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images. As the world sorts out the ...

Early this year Tesla also opened a showroom in China’s Xinjiang province, where the government is accused of carrying out an assimilation program and operating internment camps for ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups. Tesla began building Model Ys and Model 3s last week, under strict protocols that included having workers temporarily live at the plant and not returning to their homes. It seems to have worked as local companies including BYD and NIO have become fast-growing rivals to Tesla in that market with a range of attractive, compelling new electric models. Previously, global giants including General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford and Toyota were required to partner with local Chinese companies, who typically owned a majority stake in joint-venture factories. While the country previously had no influence over Twitter, “that may have just changed” with Musk’s deal, Forsythe said in a tweet. In 2021 China became Tesla’s highest source of vehicle production and likely its second-biggest source of sales.

Twitter initially rebuffed Musk's bid, but it will now ask shareholders to vote to approve the US$44 billion deal.

However, he will take on a company with a chequered record of financial performance. It has drawn critics from left and right over its efforts to mediate misinformation on the platform. Musk's targeting of Twitter has moved at remarkable speed. However, its stance shifted after Musk revealed more financial details about his proposed bid. He also leads the aerospace firm SpaceX. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," he said in a statement announcing the deal.

He's a space rocket mogul, an electric car salesman, a madcap inventor, and a celebrity entrepreneur. Oh, and he's the world's richest person.

Mr Musk also agrees to step down as chairman of Tesla's board. With the purchase of Twitter, he has direct control over a platform populated by millions of users and global leaders. - 2018: Mr Musk's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. On climate issues, Mr Musk has argued for a carbon tax to better reflect the cost of fossil fuels to the environment, and publicly criticised then president Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. This is the side that courts controversy and enjoys the adulation of his numerous followers, who appear to like his edgy, irreverent persona and are inspired by his bold visions for the future. Mr Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans while declaring himself a "moderate" and a "socialist". - 2021: Top economists accuse Mr Musk of market manipulation by using his Twitter presence to pump up the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - April 2022: Mr Musk Becomes Twitter's largest shareholder and then makes a successful offer to buy the social network - 2008: Becomes CEO and product architect of Tesla after staging a boardroom coup that ousts Martin Eberhard, who co-founded the company in 2003 with Marc Tarpenning - 1995: Receives Bachelor in Physics and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania And the move comes as the world is keenly aware of the potential for data mining, election hacking, and other campaigns of disinformation and influence. Elon Musk has done, or become, all these things in the space of a decade.

The billionaire's purchase of humanity's 'digital town square' is a culmination of his controversial past on the platform.

Musk again ran into SEC troubles when in 2021 he tweeted a poll about whether to sell his stock and proceeded to do just that. He tweeted (then deleted) a meme comparing the Canada prime minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler over Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Musk, unsurprisingly, has not abided by those conditions, flippantly wiping $14bn off Tesla’s value in 2020 with a tweet stating that “Tesla stock price is too high”. In August 2018, he posted that he had funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share – a joking reference to marijuana. He has also been a vocal critic of Twitter, calling for changes including rolling back content moderation and prioritizing a “societal imperative” of free speech. But Musk’s tweets are not all fun and games.

Billionaire's buyout of social media company reignites debate about leaving the platform but is it too soon to act – and where could you go?

The easiest way to do that is through the “Settings and privacy” tab in the menu of the Twitter app. It really comes down to why you used Twitter in the first place. It’s partially why Musk might have been motivated to buy Twitter rather than starting his own social media site, like others, including Trump, have attempted. If you’ve stuck with what many people call “the hell site” for this long, it’s questionable whether Musk taking it over will be some sort of final straw. The Guardian asked Twitter what data was retained once a user permanently deletes their account. Musk has suggested he is a “free speech absolutist”.

After weeks of speculation, Elon Musk will buy social media platform Twitter for $44 billion, PBS NewsHour spoke to three experts in the fields of social ...

And I think we’re going to see that more and more around the world and that’s going to create constraints on his ability to change the rules internationally, too. And so I think that as he kind of relaxes the rules, let’s say, the kind of harm that people see here may be less evident than what people see in other countries where it’s already hard to get the platform to enforce its rules. So, that globally could be even worse, and just over time, I think people will just find it less and less valuable as a place to go if it doesn’t have those kinds of constraints set for it.” We know that Facebook has dramatically under-invested in human moderation in languages other than English. So, if you live outside the U.S. and English is not your first language, your speech on the platform is much more likely to be moderated by robots essentially, than by humans, and robots are not very good at detecting things like satire or nuance or humor, which means that that leads to over-removal of legitimate content by people outside the U.S., and then under-removal of harmful content that does violate terms of service. And if they do, I think people will start to really kind of become frustrated with Twitter. They’ll see it as I think many people saw it five, six years ago, which was a place for Nazis and white supremacists, and others who really just want to use and weaponize the platform for propaganda.” But I think another kind of possibility would be for him to essentially move in a direction of [understanding] that free speech is not just about the speaker, but it’s also about audiences. But he should adopt essentially a human rights approach and say, “This platform is about expanding everybody’s access to information, everybody’s right to freedom of expression, and I want this platform to be the best that it can be in doing that.” David Kaye: “One, is he has talked about transparency and I think there is a lot of value to opening up Twitter — and all of the platforms — to greater disclosure about how they make their rules and how they enforce them. If Elon comes in and changes the way the rules are adopted and the way they’re enforced I think it can just undermine people’s interest in using the platform. But I also think that he’ll figure out pretty quickly that Twitter has rules in order to expand freedom of expression and he’ll probably come to appreciate them the more he’s there and sort of working on making it a better platform.” But to me, this isn’t about Elon Musk. It’s about the fact that we just should not live in a world where one person making the decision to purchase one website or app can have such a profound impact on millions of people’s speech and safety. Roy Gutterman: “There are plenty of other businesses and entities that have single owners or private owners or answer to shareholders.

The social media company has announced a deal that would see the billionaire acquire Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, or approximately $44 billion.

“Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, said “Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world,” adding he’s “deeply proud” of their teams and is inspired “by the work that has never been more important,” in response to a tweet that announced the multibillion-dollar deal. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a post Monday afternoon.

Tesla shareholders are worried the distracted CEO, who already runs two companies, will have to dump stock to finance his shiny new toy.

So the questions that spooked investors appear to be asking themselves is: When will Musk start dumping Tesla shares to raise the cash to buy Twitter? And how many shares will he flood the market with? He did not comment to Forbes. But, in a tweet on Tuesday, he seemed to place the blame for the dropping stock prices elsewhere: “The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all.” Prior to pursuing Twitter, Musk had already pledged more than half his 21% Tesla stake as collateral for other loans. As part of the $46.5 billion financing package Musk revealed Monday, he will pledge $62.5 billion worth of his Tesla stock to secure a $12.5 billion margin loan. In the aftermath of Elon Musk winning approval from Twitter’s board to buy the social media company for $44 billion, Tesla shareholders are running for the hills. Musk is still the world’s richest person by a mile–currently worth an estimated $239.2 billion, some $74 billion more than No. 2., Jeff Bezos, according to Forbes’ real-time tracker.

The social network's user data and more will soon be at the whims of the world's richest man. Who's worried?

Like other tech giants, Twitter has spent years building out systems for reporting things like the number of government information requests it receives or legal demands to remove content. Elon Musk Secured an agreement on Monday to buy Twitter for about $44 billion and take the company private. As rival ultra-billionaire Jeff Bezos highlighted in a Monday tweet thread, one of Musk's other companies, Tesla, has major business interests in China. Twitter, meanwhile, remains a thorn in Beijing's side.

Now that Elon Musk has paid $44 billion for Twitter and plans to privatize it, would people pay to be on Twitter? Experts weigh in.

"But given the amount of money Musk is paying to acquire the company, it wouldn’t be prudent to do anything that would create a mass exodus of users. Flipping a switch to a pureplay subscription model could do just that." "So, whether Elon Musk can kickstart Twitter’s subscription service or not will depend on offering substantially more value to justify a premium price point." "I expect this to become Twitter’s dominant form of revenue as they embrace a multi-year transition away from the ad business as a primary focus for revenue." "It will continue to be a risky bet for Musk betting 20% of his net worth on Twitter." "What will the price point be?

Elon Musk must pay a $1B termination fee if he doesn't go through with his $44B acquisition of the social network, as will Twitter under specific ...

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While Musk taking Twitter private may have seemed all but inevitable after he secured the funding, I don't know as if anyone could have predicted this would ...

Slow Ventures, a Boston and San Francisco-based venture capital firm, hired Megan Lightcap, Clay Robbins, and Yoni Rechtman as investors. Its fifth seed fund raised $195 million and is focused on seed and pre-seed companies. Its second opportunity fund raised $130 million and is focused on later staged companies. A Bloomberg investigation in 2019 revealed that Musk personally set out to take down a Tesla whistleblower, who had stated to the press that inefficiencies at the company’s Nevada battery plant was costing Tesla around $150 million. Tesla’s PR department allegedly spread rumors that the whistleblower was homicidal and had planned shooting at a Tesla factory, and Musk questioned on Twitter whether the Business Insider reporter was an inside trading source for Tesla short-sellers and stated that an ex-Tesla employee went on record stating that she had bribed him. Musk also plans to take aim at the plethora of bots and crypto scammers roaming the platform, and he has suggested putting less emphasis on ads in the company’s revenue model. Social media, just as it has brought people and new voices to the table, has also become a daunting—and in many cases, a downright dangerous—haven of the internet. It’s a decision that sparked widespread controversy and became a symbol to a much larger, decades-old question: Where exactly should a company draw the line? A host of investors seem to believe that a Musk-era will usher in a new age of free speech on Twitter. You also have the camp of Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and current board member, who says that taking Twitter back from Wall Street “is the correct first step” after the social media network’s era running under an advertising model. But is Musk the one to fix it? The network made a landmark decision to ban former President Donald Trump from its platform last year after the company determined that his tweets had violated their policies and incited violence during the Capitol riots on Jan. 6. “Certainly being a public company has not been the right ownership model to make the big fundamental changes which are badly needed.”

Elon Musk is months away from completing his purchase of Twitter, and he is most likely even further away possibly changing one of the world's most ...

"I'm skeptical" about Trump's denial of a Twitter return, he said. The idea is to prevent someone from editing a tweet to change its fundamental content after it has already gone viral for hours or even days. A shareholder said Monday that Musk's track record at Tesla and transparency about his plans for changes at Twitter made him a suitable owner. Goshen said European regulators could force Musk and Twitter to add data-sharing protections but wouldn't be able to scuttle the deal itself. "It's such a valuable form of communicating the particular kind of story he wants to tell and the way he wants to tell it." "In today’s world, a small handful of private tech companies — including Twitter — play a profound and unique role in enabling our right to express ourselves online," Romero said in a statement.

Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter has yet to be approved by shareholders but investors in his car-maker Tesla are already concerned.

Mr Musk later won a defamation suit brought by the diver, saying he never intended "pedo" to be interpreted as "paedophile". Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has also asked whether Mr Musk's deal to buy Twitter will give China "a bit of leverage" over the platform, as Tesla has a big plant in Shanghai. The drop in Tesla shares would equate to a $21bn drop in the value of Mr Musk's stake in the car-maker - the same as the $21bn in cash he has promised to put towards the Twitter deal.

Musk has long touted Twitter's potential as an open and inclusive 'town square' for public discourse – but the reality is social media platforms were never ...

Yet Musk himself has a history of trying to stifle his critics’ points of view. In the case of a private business, which Twitter now is, the final say will largely default to Musk. But once Twitter becomes a private company, how transparent it is about operations will largely be up to Musk’s sole discretion. Twitter claims developments in its content moderation approach have been to “ serve the public conversation” and address disinformation and misinformation. He says the critical challenge then “is exactly when, how, and why to intervene”. But is it in the public interest?

The richest person in the world is buying Twitter. Why's that a big deal? Josie Adams explains the basics for IRL. Let's start at the very beginning.

To those of us who don’t use Twitter, and have no interest in the impulse purchases of a billionaire, it may not be a big deal. Musk’s long history of Twitter use implies he understands the platform: shitposting; using it for what looks like market manipulation; fighting with his girlfriend Grimes. Running the show could be a different story. He recognised Twitter is “obviously bound by the laws of the country it operates in.” At a TED conference earlier this year, he described Twitter as “the de facto town square”. He seems to believe taking Twitter from publicly-funded to privately held, and harnessing the power of posting, is his moral duty. He wanted it really, really badly: Musk’s Twitter takeover has been described by outlets as both “ hostile” and “aggressive”. He started out buying 9% of its shares, making him its highest shareholder. For those of you lucky enough to have never visited the Twitter platform, it’s basically a giant noticeboard of Facebook statuses.

Elon Musk has said he wants to promote free and open speech on the service, which he has said he sees as an essential place for sharing viewpoints.

Here’s what he’s said about his plan and how fast he could change things. Musk offered $54.20 per share for Twitter and outlined his plan to secure $46.5 billion to finance his deal.