Elon Musk to Buy Twitter Just Weeks After Asking About Free Speech on the Platform
By Movieguide® Staff
Elon Musk is set to buy out Twitter after, moving the company from a publicly traded entity to privately held. The announcement comes after Musk bought a controlling share in the company in early April. Musk cites the First Amendment of the right to free speech as his reasoning.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Musk previously polled the platform’s users, asking if they felt Twitter adhered to free speech principles. The majority of respondents – 70%- voted no.
After news broke Monday, Musk tweeted, “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
According to a release:
The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the Twitter Board of Directors, is expected to close in 2022, subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions.
Mr. Musk has secured $25.5 billion of fully committed debt and margin loan financing and is providing an approximately $21.0 billion equity commitment. There are no financing conditions to the closing of the transaction.
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