Elon Musk strikes $44B deal to buy Twitter
Twitter will go private after it agreed Monday to be bought by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a $44 billion deal that pays shareholders $54.20 per share, a 38% premium on the company’s April 1 stock price.
Musk promised a more lenient touch to policing content on the platform where he promotes his interests, attacks critics and opines on social and economic issues to more than 83 million followers.
The billionaire entrepreneur famously dubbed Bay State Sen. Elizabeth Warren ‘Senator Karen’ in a tweet late last year when she blasted him on the platform over taxes and accused him of “freeloading off everyone else.”
“You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,” Musk said at the time.
As the deal was announced Monday, Musk said, “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.”
“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. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” he continued.
The deal was cemented roughly two weeks after the billionaire first revealed a 9% stake in the platform. Twitter said the transaction was unanimously approved by its board of directors and is expected to close in 2022.
Shares of Twitter Inc. rose 6% Monday, closing at $51.70 per share.
In recent weeks, Musk has voiced a number of proposed changes for the company, from relaxing its content restrictions — such as the rules that suspended former President Donald Trump’s account — to shifting away from its advertising-based revenue model.
Asked during a recent TED talk if there are any limits to his notion of “free speech,” Musk said Twitter or any forum is “obviously bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the U.S., and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules.”
Beyond that, though, he said he’d be “very reluctant” to delete things and cautious about permanently banning users who violate the company’s rules.
After the deal was announced, the NAACP released a statement that urged Musk not to allow Trump back onto the platform.
“Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech have NO PLACE on Twitter,” the civil rights organization said in a statement. “Do not allow 45 to return to the platform. Do not allow Twitter to become a petri dish for hate speech, or falsehoods that subvert our democracy.”
— Herald wire services contributed
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