Billionaire co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of electric vehicle maker, Tesla,
Elon Musk, hated Twitter free speech principles so much he had to purchase a 9.2 percent stake in the company worth approximately $3bn, to take control.
As the shock of the acquisition begins to settle down after Musk purchased exactly 73,486,938 Twitter shares to make him the single largest shareholder in the social media company, past tweets by the world’s richest man have revealed he was so angry with the free speech policies of the platform that he bought over the platform.
Musk who now has four times the number of shares the company’s founder, Jack Dorsey, had always been critical of Twitter’s free speech principles and on several occasions, had called for censorship to be stripped back and even shared a tweet discussing this view.
“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” he had once written.
“What should be done?” He added, with a poll which had majority of respondents giving him support, with some asking him to do something about it.
In another tweet shortly before buying the shares, Musk had insinuated that he could take over the platform with his followers not knowing he had already purchased his stake in the company at that point.
Experts have quickly drawn up the conclusion that his purchase of the Twitter shares was made with the aim of bringing about some significant changes at Twitter.
With Musk’s purchase of the shares, and the company stock shooting up by 25 percent within 24 hours of the announcement, investors are looking forward to sweeping, positive changes in the near future.
Musk is yet to tweet about his purchase of Twitter shares but his 80 million followers may not have to wait for long.