Elon Musk's Twitter Buyout at $44 Billion. And What It Means for Truth Social.
- Sean Goh
- Apr 26, 2022
- 2 min read
It's been creeping on the attention of many that big tech social media companies are starting to clamp down on what kind of content would be deemed appropriate. Over the years, this practice has started to get a little debatable in regards to the peoples' freedom of speech. One particular person who has taken a big leap of action aside from Donald Trump is none other than Elon Musk.
Content filtering started to gain more traction since Zuckerberg's hearing where he ensured congress that he had a team of people monitoring what get's put out so certain content that shouldn't not be on the site wouldn't be on the site, among other concerns. Since then, many companies followed and some intensified the filtering process. Twitter, however, got the best of it along with YouTube where certain topics (mainly those that veered more republican and the Don himself) got taken down and people started questioning their right to free speech.
Elon Musk, feeling frustrated with all that's going on, being arguably the most influential person on Twitter wanted to change that. He started out by buying a 9.2% stake of the social network, which would place him as majority shareholder of the company which was supposed to give him more control over the company. He was later invited to join the board of directors which he later declined due to the fact that it would put him in a less-than-ideal position. This event then lead him to put a bid for a full buyout of the company which was accepted just yesterday at roughly $44 Billion at $54.20 per share.
Musk's main intention (known to us) for doing so is to ensure that every user gets their right to free speech and so will he. It's unclear if Donald Trump will be let back onto the social network but one thing's for sure is this puts Trump's "Truth Social" network on rough ground. Having the same concept as Musk's upcoming plans for Twitter, Truth Social was to be the network that would be the defining force that would challenge big tech's narrative of what free speech is. However, now that Musk is on board to steer Twitter from being "(re)public enemy #1" to social media paradise, Truth Social may not go beyond what it already is with its current lack of preparedness and pitfalls.
What are your thoughts?
