Musk Completes Twitter Takeover - Yuvraj Lakhotia (Guest-writer)

October 27 marked the conclusion of Elon Musk’s much-anticipated Twitter takeover. The acquisition began this past April, as Musk, an avid user of the platform, became the company’s largest shareholder. Controlling 9.1% of Twitter shares, he was consequently invited to join the board of directors, which he rejected after initially accepting the position. Instead, he presented a $43 billion buyout, which, with some resistance by the board, was agreed on April 25 for $44 billion.

Musk has expressed his vision to take the company private and transform it into a platform that promotes free speech, open sources its algorithms, and combats robot and spam accounts. The first modification would supposedly remove all filters on the platform, but brings with it the fear of increased misinformation, toxicity, harassment, and hate speech. He pledges to restore permanently-banned users, such as Donald Trump, as well.

In July, Musk nearly terminated the takeover deal, stating that Twitter refused to follow through on a complete crackdown of spambot accounts. On the brink of a full-blown court case, Musk announced that he would continue with the acquisition.

The Musk Era began with the firing of top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal; of course, this not the end of his “house cleaning.” The 50 year-old announced his arrival to 110 million Twitter followers with a tweet declaring that the “bird is freed” and to “let the good times roll.” While Musk brings tons of experience managing multi-billion-dollar tech giants, prominently through Tesla and SpaceX, he also carries a lot of controversy.

Many users’ primary concern is regarding Musk’s plans for moderating hate speech. To answer this, one must decide whether “hate speech is free speech.” As our daily activities increasingly shift online, correctly and sensibly translating laws regarding physical interactions into the online world is vital to ensuring the safety and security of users. Additionally, Musk wishes to transition away from Twitter’s primarily ad-based income and instead promote subscriptions such as Twitter Blue and paid verification—the coveted “white check mark.” Even more revolutionary modifications could already be in the pipeline!

I’m excited to see how this massive change in the social networking site affects upcoming events—the midterm elections are on the way, and politicians will likely be implementing new campaigning strategies on Twitter. How do you think this will impact the election? Do you even use Twitter, or plan to use it? To what degree could the broad changes influence your life?