Elon Musk & Twitter- A Complicated Relationship

So, one of the world’s richest men, Elon Musk, has just bought out Twitter. He has a net worth of $264 billion while Twitter is worth around $44 billion. So, he became the Malik Riaz of Twitter. For me, it raises two very big questions; why did he buy Twitter? And what could be the long-term implications for Twitter as a social networking website?

So let’s look at a bit of a background behind this very huge buyout. Musk has millions of followers and admirers on Twitter (including me) and he simply loves the micro-blogging site. He expressed his love for Twitter with a tweet he made in 2017 by simply writing “I love Twitter” https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/943901463998169088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw, but the buyout wasn’t easy, there were numerous hurdles he had to face to buy the website. Firstly, he purchased the highest number of shares around 9.2% of it, and was looking to make the publicly traded company private. But no one wanted Elon to buy out Twitter amid fear of free speech being restricted. But Elon was desperate, so much so, that he was even willing to sell some shares of his parent company Tesla to purchase Twitter. He even tweeted that he would make Twitter headquarters in San Francisco to be a homeless shelter and made fun of the board of directors with a funny tweet by making fun of the Twitter Board of directors. Saudi Prince Waleed Bin Talal, one of the richest men in Saudi Arabia and a shareholder in Twitter, strongly opposed the offer sent by Musk by saying that Twitter had the opportunity to go even further than the proposed buyout amount of $44 billion. To which Elon, Elon replied by questioning Waleed’s home country of strict censorship laws and questioning his right to free speech.

After which he threatened to dissolve his Twitter share value to zero through which the rest of Twitter stock will take a significant dip and will cause a significant loss to investors. So why so much desperation to buy Twitter? No. 1 reason: Free speech, Elon Musk believes that Twitter unnecessarily bans people violating the free speech principle. Even Twitter founder Jack Dorsey admitted that the Twitter Algorithm is a little left-leaning and it bans anyone with having right-wing agenda.

His main agenda is simple, even if you don’t like any person, he or she has the right to their opinion and has the right to speak their mind, which is the law of any civilized society. Case in point, former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account is still suspended after he lost the 2020 Presidential Elections.

The second reason is the fake accounts, bot accounts, and fake trends which are in millions on Twitter, he will disable all of them.

The third reason is he will make the Twitter algorithm free to access. Now algorithm means whatever the social media posts will grow, how much will the post be grown all over the social media. Elon has said that he will give access to how the Twitter algorithm would work, and people would be able to view what is being reached and what is being engaged.

The fourth and final reason is the power of Twitter. Now, power here means not monetary gain, but something else, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube are bigger in terms of revenue generation than Twitter, yet still, Elon Musk chose to buy it, that’s because it has the power of trend and power of change. Any significant world event is discussed worldwide on Twitter and it influences to inflict real change worldwide. You can take any small-scale issue and make it a worldwide phenomenon with the power of Twitter trending.  

Elon now has two major powers in his hands; the power to influence, so much so with his single tweet, cryptocurrency prices can go up or down, and right now he may be considered the biggest financial influencer, and second, now he has the power of free speech. How he uses or abuses those that are up for debate.