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Why Elon Musk bought Twitter

Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitteronce considered a remote possibility, has now been accepted.

The billionaire will pay around $44 billion for the company in a deal that is expected to close this year, Twitter said in a press release on Monday.

Musk was so motivated to buy Twitter that he submitted a “last and best offer” for the company.a, announced that he had a plan B if that failed and met privately with several large Twitter shareholders to convince them of his offer.

Musk offered $54.20 a share for Twitter and outlined his plan to secure $46.5 billion to fund his deal. Shares of Twitter soared Monday morning on reports that the company may be close to reaching a deal with Musk.

So, Why did the world’s richest person, who already runs the electric car company Tesla and aerospace company SpaceX, buy the social media company?

Here’s what he said about his plan and how quickly he could turn things around.

Why did Elon Musk want to buy Twitter?

Musk has said he wants to promote free expression on the social network, which he has said he sees as an essential place to share views.

During an interview at TED shortly after announcing his offer, he expanded on some of his plans.

Well, I think it’s very important that there is an inclusive setting for freedom of expression.Musk said. “Twitter has become a kind of de facto public square, so it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they can speak freely within the confines of the law.”

Musk has not said whether he would change the permanent ban on former President Donald Trump, who was expelled from the site after last year’s January 6 insurrection.

Critics of Musk’s plan have raised concerns that it would allow extremist content on the site., which Twitter and other social media companies are fighting to completely eradicate. Musk acknowledged during the TED interview that content moderation is not a clear issue.

He said he thought Twitter should be ‘very cautious about permanent bans’adding that he thought wait times were better.

“Well, I think we’d like to err on the side of, when in doubt, letting the speech exist. Because if it’s a gray area, I’d say the tweet better exist,” she said. “But obviously in a case where there’s maybe a lot of controversy, you’re not necessarily going to promote that tweet. I’m not saying I have all the answers here.”

He reiterated that your social network shopping is not about making money.

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is highly trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important for the future of civilization,” he said.

How quickly could things change on Twitter?

Probably not that fast. The deal still needs to be finalized, a process that could take weeks or months.

Under federal law, Musk will be required to notify regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department of his plans to buy Twitter. If regulators open a review of the deal, it could cause delays in closing the purchase.

Thereafter, Musk has pledged to make Twitter private. When he announced his offer, he said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that “since I made my investment I now realize that the company will not prosper or meet this social imperative in its current form. Twitter must be transformed into a private company.”

Musk has said he would like to keep as many shareholders as the law allows when he takes the company private. And he hasn’t announced plans for what a leadership team or possible board of directors might look like, so there are still plenty of open questions about how much direct influence Musk would wield.

What has Musk said about a possible edit button on Twitter?

The edit button is probably one of the most requested features on Twitter. Picture this: You’ve crafted your perfect, punchy thought in 280 characters or less, type it in, hit “Tweet”. And then you see a typo.

Twitter doesn’t have a way to edit tweets without deleting and resending them. Musk asked his followers if they wanted an edit button in a Twitter poll, and 73.6 percent of more than 4 million voters said yes.

A day later, Twitter’s communications team confirmed in a tweet that the company was already working on the feature.

“No, we didn’t get the idea from a poll,” the team tweeted with a wink.

What has Musk said about making Twitter’s algorithm more open?

Musk has said he wants Twitter’s algorithm to be more transparent, including allowing people to see whether their tweets were promoted or demoted. He said he wants to make the algorithm recommend whether a tweet is promoted or demoted as “open source,” or available for the public to view and improve. He thinks that will help prevent “manipulation behind the scenes”.

Researchers say this plan is much more complicated than Musk’s proposal seems. And Twitter has already been considering it.

A former Twitter employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said the company has considered an “algorithm marketplace” in which users can choose different ways to view their feeds. But efforts to offer more transparency have proven challenging, the person said, because of how tied Twitter’s algorithms are to other parts of the product. Opening it could reveal trade secrets and invite abuse, the person said.

What could happen to your private Twitter messages and data?

It’s unclear if Musk would make any changes to the company’s privacy policy. It hasn’t announced any plans to change things and would likely face significant backlash if user data became less secure. Arguably, owning Twitter would put it in control of more sensitive user data than what its companies Tesla and SpaceX collect.

Musk’s own direct messages, or private messages, have occasionally been made public. Last year, he messaged a teenager who had an account that tracked his private jet. Musk offered him $5,000 to cancel the account. The teenager refused.

(c) 2022, The Washington Post

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