In a first of its kind takeover, Elon Musk bought Twitter for USD 44 billion in cash, following his unsought bid a few days ago. Musk became the company’s largest shareholder, and the company agreed to the deal at $54.20 a share, a 38 per cent premium over the stock price.
Musk has often expressed his views in favour of freedom of speech and shown contempt for over-moderation of comments on the platform. He has also advocated defeating spambots that send overwhelming amounts of unwanted tweets. Many individuals have responded to the takeover with both support and criticism.
Duke University alum and Finance chair and Campaign chair for Biden and Obama, respectively, Jon Cooper, responded to Elon’s tweet, saying, “Free speech is one thing, Elon. Hate speech and harmful disinformation are quite another.”
Elon is known in the tech community for boldly shooting arrows at enemies every now and then. With Twitter now under his ownership, it raises the question of how the scenario will be fuelled. Just last week, Musk took a hit at Bill Gates when he compared the latter’s picture with a pregnant emoji.
Other questions that pop to the many users of the platform include whether the mischief-causer Trump will hop on back to Twitter.
Musk buying Twitter is one of the largest deals for a company going private. The New York Times reported that Twitter employees had been largely in the dark about the takeover. “Twitter’s share price rose throughout the day on Monday as a deal appeared increasingly likely: After the acquisition was announced, it closed up 5.7 per cent at $51.70 per share.”
Reportedly, Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal expressed to the company that there was uncertainty as to what direction the company would take post the buy over. It will be interesting to see how his role alters as a result of the deal.
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