Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk acquired a 9.3% stake in Twitter.Inc to become the platform’s biggest shareholder. He has been hinting at shaking down the social media industry for over a week.
Here’s how Elon Musk announced the news of him taking over Twitter:
Image ref: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1511011921495011328?cxt=HHwWgMC5gcjVmPgpAAAA
Musk has been creating buzz around free speech on social media for weeks now. On October 22, a tweet was made from Elon Musk’s Twitter account, asking his 80 million followers whether Twitter adheres to the principles of free speech.
To which the majority said no. To this, Musk replied with a poll asking if a new platform should be made.
Here’s the popular thread from Elon Musk’s Twitter account that took the whole world by surprise.
Ref: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507259709224632344?cxt=HHwWsIC-iYiu7uopAAAA
Responding to his poll results, Elon Musk on Twitter mentioned that it is serving as the de facto public town square, failing to respect free speech principles fundamentally. Something should be done to resolve this.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777913042571267?cxt=HHwWhsCosb-B2uwpAAAA
He asked his followers if a new platform was needed to which many people responded that he should buy Twitter.
But the history is not important; what matters is that on April 4, 2022 – Elon Musk became the biggest shareholder of Twitter, and he has some really big plans that could disrupt the social media industry.
How Does New Twitter Look Under Elon Musk?
Some of the first changes that we can expect to see under new management are increased transparency, more freedom of speech, and better content moderation.
Elon Musk on Twitter has always been a vocal critic of censorship on social media platforms. In 2018, he tweeted that “the thought police would be censoring” posts on Facebook and Instagram.
He has also been an outspoken critic of Twitter’s content moderation policies. In 2019, he tweeted that “Twitter is censoring people for no reason.”
And just a few weeks back, he wrote that “social media platforms policies are good if the most extreme ten% on left and right are equally unhappy.”