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Twitter Agrees to Sale of Company to Elon Musk, Go Private

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Twitter bird logoElon Musk communicates with his fanboys on Twitter. He commits what the SEC considers crimes on Twitter. He may even be manipulating the price of cryptocurrencies to benefit his own pocket on Twitter. Musk denounces pronouns, mocking transgender people on Twitter. Twitter has become the place where Elon Musk goes to (ahem, allegedly) commit fraud and harass trans people. It’s no wonder the egotistical billionaire would decide that, while $44 billion could save countless lives of homeless people and feed the hungry, it’s better to buy his favorite toy so he could free it up for… well, everything he likes to do on Twitter.

It wasn’t long after Twitter banned The Babylon Bee, a “satire” website for the far-right, that Musk started making his moves to buy Twitter. Perhaps the two are unrelated, but Twitter banned The Babylon Bee for transphobic hate speech. Perhaps it was the straw that broke the egoist’s back, or maybe the timing is purely coincidental. Maybe it was just because he was tired of a kid calling out his private plane flights. Not long afterwards, Elon Musk bought up the largest share of Twitter’s stock of any shareholder. He then offered to buy Twitter and seemed to threaten to sell all of his stock at once, a move that would tank Twitter’s stock price, if they didn’t agree to the purchase.

Twitter will be sold to Elon Musk for $44 billion, an amount that could save lives but will instead stoke a single man’s ego. What will become of the website that’s a favorite for professionals, journalists, and LGBTQIA+ people, now afraid they will be harassed off the platform?

Details of the Deal

Elon Musk is paying $54.20—yes, he put 420 in there—per share to buy Twitter. The deal comes out to $44 billion. If Musk drops out, he’ll owe Twitter $1 billion, and the same for Twitter if they drop out. This comes after Musk allegedly held Twitter’s stock price hostage, claiming he’d dump his more than 9% share of the company, tanking the stock, if they didn’t agree to a buyout. For Elon, it’s a personal venture. He will be paying $21 billion of his own money, with $25.5 billion secured in financing. This won’t make Twitter part of Tesla or his other ventures, but a private company owned exclusively by Elon Musk.

Elon Musk has faced SEC fines in the past for his tweets. He’s been accused of stock manipulation through his tweets, as well as inflating and dumping the price of cryptocurrencies using his massive following. Twitter has likely already made him money. Now he can secure his place on the platform. Before, there’s a chance he could have been banned for potentially manipulating stock or cryptocurrency prices, or his borderline transphobic comments. It’s still possible that shareholders won’t agree to the buyout, as Twitter stock has been higher than $54.20 per share in the past, and could rise above it again. If shareholders agree to the buyout, they’ll never get to take advantage of that. Elon Musk could also back out because, since announcing the deal, Tesla Motors stock has plummeted, costing the company over $126 billion in value. Investors just don’t trust Musk’s volatility.

What This Could Mean for Twitter

With Elon Musk as the sole owner of Twitter, the website could change dramatically. Musk would be the de-facto decision maker. He’s announced plans that, while may sound great, he has little understanding of.

Musk has announced he wants an edit button, which is something every Twitter user has wanted for some time, and the company is already working on. He also wants long-form tweets, though this misses the point of Twitter. Still, easily displaying multi-tweet threads would be a nice change. Under Musk, Twitter will make “the algorithm” public too. This ignores that an algorithm alone cannot explain the bias in a system, but along with Twitter data, it could prove useful. Twitter employees have already mocked Musk with an empty GitHub page for “The Algorithm,” though the company has since taken the page offline. Musk has stated Twitter under him will have user authentication and other anti-bot initiatives, which could drive down misinformation and harassment on the platform… if not for his other idea.

Elon Musk wants to remove much of the moderation that makes Twitter even remotely safe.

The Moderation Problem

Most of Musk’s complaints about Twitter come down to the fact that he considers himself a “free speech absolutist.” He didn’t stand up for free speech when a journalist spoke negatively of him and canceled their Tesla order. Musk wasn’t being a “free speech absolutist” when a kid compiled public data, tracking his many private plane flights and Musk tried to shut the account down. Musk said, “I don’t love the idea of being shot by a nutcase.”

However, that’s the kind of trouble Musk’s moderation-free version of Twitter would create for marginalized communities. Gamergate saw the harassment of women in the tech and gaming industry reach heights requiring female developers to leave their homes. Doxxing, harassment, violent threats, and calls for dehumanizing laws are all potential outcomes of Musk’s lack of moderation. Musk himself has said borderline transphobic things on Twitter, which could signal he’ll invite or encourage harassment. Right now, Twitter’s rules at least slightly discourage hate speech and harassment, but under Musk, those could be fair game.

Musk doesn’t want to be shot by a nutcase, but he’s fine putting other people in the crosshairs.

Misinformation Got Deadly

During the pandemic, we saw misinformation go from harmless essential oil sniffing to endangering others. Anti-mask and anti-vaccine misinformation, as well as conspiracy theories, spread across websites faster than anyone could take them down. It took too long for websites to control this misinformation, and most still allow people to share it, only labeling it as “misleading.” This had devastating consequences. Now nearly 1 million Americans have died from COVID-19, with, at some estimates, half the population getting the virus. We still don’t know much about “long COVID” or other, less life-altering long-term effects of COVID infection, especially among young children. Misinformation about COVID, 5G cellular networks, and vaccines have cost people their lives, and the progress we’ve made in stopping it could be undone. What’s worse, much of this disinformation seeks to dehumanize groups of people, such as the LGBTQIA+ community and Jewish people, which could lead to violence, as it has in the past.

The Parler Effect

There are other issues outside of harassment too. With hate speech running rampant on the platform, people will leave. No one wants to stay on a platform where they could be doxxed or threatened daily. That would mean a drop-off in population on Twitter of women, LGBTQIA+ people—especially transgender people, and racial minorities in the United States and Europe. Twitter could become a place for white, cisgender, straight men who hate or look down on everyone who isn’t one of those groups. You know, like Parler, Gab, Truth Social, or any other right-leaning social network.

These are the kinds of websites where coups are planned. Where violence is planned. Where misinformation spreads and hate leads to real-world violence. Twitter could become the “free speech” paradise not of Elon’s dreams, but of white supremacy.

Hate speech isn’t free speech. It seeks to silence free speech. When you allow hate speech and violent speech, you pick and choose who can speak. If someone is allowed to threaten someone with violence when they try to talk, they’re not going to talk. Allowing those threats doesn’t protect free speech, it makes free discourse impossible.

Trump

There’s another side effect: Trump could be back. Trump, along with other banned far-right personalities who published hate speech on Twitter could all be unbanned. While Trump claims he would only stay on Truth Social, his unpopular social network, he would likely break that promise as well and return to Twitter. Of course he would. The only thing Trump loves more than hearing himself speak is knowing other people have to listen to it as well.

A Page of Hate

An angry Twitter bird shouts profanity, covering up what a diverse group of birds is trying to say.

Musk’s plans for Twitter show he doesn’t understand what he’ll have to do to keep Twitter safe, open, free, and popular. He doesn’t understand “the algorithm” or how tweet suggestions work. He clearly doesn’t understand the data-heavy machine learning that goes into it, or why open-sourcing the code wouldn’t help anyone and could expose potential vulnerabilities before Twitter can catch and patch them. Musk just doesn’t understand what he’s getting into. But he has the money to not care about any of that. The public square of Twitter might die under Musk. Hopefully whatever crops up in its place understands the importance of moderation, privacy, and safety a bit more than Twitter, Facebook, or any other social network before it has.

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