Okonkwo Samuel
Billionaire Elon Musk has reached an agreement to acquire Twitter for approximately $44 billion, the company has said.
The outspoken Tesla CEO, the worldโs wealthiest person, has said he wants to buy Twitter because he thinks itโs not living up to its potential as a platform for โfree speech.โ
He says it needs to be transformed into a private company in order to build trust with users and do better at serving what he calls the โsocietal imperativeโ of free speech.
Twitter said it will become a privately held company after the sale is closed.
โTwitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world,โ its CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet. โDeeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important.โ
Musk describes himself as a โfree-speech absolutist,โ although he hasnโt been exactly clear what he means by that. In a recent TED interview, the billionaire said heโd like to see Twitter err on the side of allowing speech instead of moderating it.
He said heโd be โvery reluctantโ to delete tweets and would generally be cautious about permanent bans. He also acknowledged that Twitter would have to abide by national laws governing speech in markets around the world.
Musk himself, though, regularly blocks social media users who have criticized him or his company and has used the platform to bully reporters who have written critical articles about him or his company.
Twitterโs board at first enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could have made a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.
But when Musk outlined the financial commitments heโd lined up to back his offer of $46.5 billion โ and no other bidders emerged โ the board opened negotiations with him.
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