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Elon Musk Offers to Purchase Twitter for $43 Billion in Takeover Bid
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made a formal offer to purchase Twitter for $43 billion. Musk has filed an updated 13D with the SEC and offered $54.20 per share for 100 percent control of the social media platform.
Musk made the announcement of his bid and as Bloomberg reported, Twitter responded by saying its board will review the proposal. A response will take into consideration of “all Twitter stockholders.”
Musk’s proposal reads as follows:
“Bret Taylor
Chairman of the Board,
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.
However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.
As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.
Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.
Elon Musk”
The ongoing situation between Twitter and Elon Musk has reached new heights. Musk, the company’s largest shareholder, was recently in talks to join Twitter’s board of directors. However, the discussions surrounding this possibility ceased last week. Musk has also been very outspoken on the changes he would like to implement on the platform. However, Musk is also nefarious for his memes online. He’s been criticized for egging on his large 80 million followers.
In a statement to Twitter’s board of directors, Musk states his belief that Twitter “will neither thrive nor serve [its free speech] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
Additionally, Musk issued a vague threat if his offer is not accepted. “I would need to reconsider my position as shareholder,” Musk said in his statement.
Currently, Musk’s wealth is estimated at around $260 billion. Twitter’s market valuation is about $37 billion. Musk’s offer is over market value.
We’ll certainly be keeping an eye on how this situation escalates in the coming days and weeks.
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He might actually be able to bring back open discussion and exchange of ideas to twitter.
But, it might also lead to the departure of a lot of fragile children if they lose control of their woke echo chamber.
While I’m not sure I agree, I’d like to understand your position better. I gather that you feel a big part of the the conversation is missing or censored currently. What behaviours or conversations would we observe if Elon Musk was successful in accomplishing what you’d like to see him accomplish?
Can’t say for sure what would happen. It could become even more of a cesspool than it is now.
But, I’d like to see a twitter that returns to encouraging dialog instead of trying to frame and control the dialog. I’d like to see them try to be a town square with open discussion instead of an echo chamber. I’d like a twitter that didn’t actively try to suppress conversation that goes against the approved narrative as “misinformation”. I’d like to see fewer politically based policies and “safety” bans and shadow bans.
One example: we might not see twitter taking it upon themselves to block a major newspaper for posting a factually accurate article only because it might have influenced people to vote against their preferred candidate. Manipulating the discussion in order to influence a major election was simply accepted as kosher within the current order.
Another example: the current CEO has stated his preference to suppress certain ideas (and thereby amplify others) instead of what is true and factual. That’s a terrifying position for the leader of a system that has major influence over discourse.
Briefly, I’d hope to see twitter become a neutral system and to allow open discussion to occur.
Yep, ok, I can definitely agree with that. I think for me the challenge is that neutrality doesn’t appear to be rewarded on Twitter (or any medium that’s monetized for that matter). Anger spreads so much faster than ideas and discourse because it generates clicks and great engagement metrics. And mis/disinformation generates a ton of anger or so it spreads faster than accurate info. So from my stand point, I don’t think Elon Musk or any new management team can address the concerns both of us have. Honestly, the majority of the responsibility is on the user base—people need to be willing to have uncomfortable conversations again, and get back to listening to understand rather than listening to respond and weaponizing facts and labels. That said, if whoever is in charge can figure out how to make it more lucrative to be neutral and civil, then that might create the necessary side effects we’re looking for. But I could be wrong about all of this, curious what you think.
Civility would be great, but shouldn’t be the priority, IMO. In any open and honest discussion of difficult ideas, the debate can become heated. Enforcing civility can also be abused because it is so subjective.
Much like taking it upon themselves to decide what should be amplified and what should be suppressed based on subjective concepts of “safety” instead of legally allowed speech, expecting them to enforce civility without similarly using it to silence inconvenient or disagreeable discussion would be naive.
If Musk is willing to bet his own money on being able to achieve neutrality and profitability, it’ll be an interesting show to watch at the very least.
I’d pay to watch that show for sure.
However, if I’m putting up what you’re putting down, I find it interesting that you see civility and heated-ness as being at different ends of the same spectrum—is that fair? I suspect that we’re on the same page and maybe just defining the terms differently. I think instead I see them as being two different spectrums (spectra?) altogether. For example, a buddy and I often have very heated conversions, and we’re at the point where we’re cool with calling each other a dumbass for our various views, but we don’t ever stop respecting each other. That respect is what I’m getting at with civility, so I totally see room for being heated and civil at the same time, if that makes sense?
But I think I get where you’re coming from on the safety issue. In my line of work, I talk a lot about psychological safety and what drives me up the wall is when people confuse that for comfort, when in fact it ought to be the opposite. The analogy I like to use is that psyche safety is like the spotter at a gym. There’s no point in showing up to a gym to be comfortable and lift the lightest weights. A workout is meant to be suck and be super uncomfortable, but the spotter makes sure that despite how hard it is, you’re not in real danger. Bringing it back to Twitter, I think you’re right in that things are sometimes overly sanitized to the point where the difficult conversations don’t happen when they should because people are asking for safety when they actually mean comfort. I also think in some case people are in legit danger when things are angry enough that folks get doxxed, get death threats, etc so that’s where I feel the civility ratchet can be cranked. But again, I think the majority of that potential for change is with the audience unless the powers that be can crack the monetization of neutrality or at least less angry but intelligent debate. No?
I think we’re mostly in agreement.
I put “safety” in quotes exactly because it’s used as a excuse and as a substitute for comfort. The twitter Safety and Security crew have a well earned reputation for bans and shadow bans and blocking content because it makes some people uncomfortable. The mob on twitter that threaten physical violence and doxing often do so with the claim they are making the world safer or more just.
Open discussion? There is a huge gap between free speech and spreading hate and division. Anything related to hate and violence should automatically get your account banned.
If you are instigating or threatening violence, that’s already illegal. Of course that wouldn’t be covered by free speech. Hate is more subjective. These days it seems to be defined as politically incorrect, offensive to certain groups or against a particular narrative or political view point. Literally anything that is disagreeable can be called hate. Makes it very easy to control that narrative that way.
There’s an even bigger gap between banning for violence and banning for disagreeing.
I think twitter (social media in general) as a platform just isn’t designed to have a lot of open discussion and instead designed for triggering people. But I think free speech is important and him buying it cant make things worse.
The only people that are firmly against it seems to be fragile western children that have been raised and conditioned to think of “freedom” and “rights” to be dirty words.
In what other generation could anyone even have imagined a bunch of spoiled kids demanding to have freedoms restricted. I’d love to see these snowflakes sent to live under a regime that really honours and enforces their ideals.
You seek civility yet you start with a canned buzzword-compliant insult “fragile children” and “their woke echo chamber.” Those few words speak volumes about your ability to engage in civil discourse.
Did I say I seek civility?
If twitter is in fact an echo chamber and fragile children seem to flock there, why is it uncivil to acknowledge that? Does civil discourse require bubble wrapping these fragile children to protect their feelings?
Now, if the conversation veers into threats of physical harm, instigation of violence, doxing or even personal attacks against individuals, that wouldn’t be civil.
Opinions you don’t like doesn’t make it uncivil. But, thanks for demonstrating.