Elon Musk has formalized a hostile offer to buy 100% of the shares of Twitter for $54.20 each. He wants to take control of the company no matter what, and is willing to pay an extra 40% per share of the value they had before the purchase of 9.2% of the company was announced a few weeks ago.
“I have invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to be the platform for freedom of expression around the world, and I believe that this must be a social imperative for democracy to work,” the businessman told the Chairman of the Twitter Board. . “But since making my investment, I have realized that the company will never pursue or fulfill this social imperative by operating as it does today.”
Is a hostile offersince Musk’s vision and objectives are radically different from those that the board has had until now.
Freedom or more moderation?
For Twitter, as for the rest of US digital platforms, one of the great challenges is to moderate more content, and do it faster. We have been able to observe it in the face of the Russian invasion, since they have not been slow to block the Kremlin’s propaganda media and even numerous sympathetic or skeptical accounts with the information that comes from Western media for disinforming. Also during the COVID-19 pandemic, where anti-vaccine discourse was promoted on the Internet, posing a risk to public health.
But for Musk the problem of social networks, and Twitter, which is the only one he uses, is just the opposite: censoring, moderating, or hiding content that is not illegal and that, therefore, violates freedom of expression, a fundamental right set forth in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The popular millionaire believes that it is harmful for a company to decide what can be said and what cannot be said or what is true and what is not. It is a debate of special importance after the case of Joe Rogan and his skeptical comments about some mandates and possible effects of vaccines.
Musk only had the hostile path left
We must bear in mind that Twitter is a company, and as such it has the right to decide what content it wants to allow and what not under its own criteria. You can censor everything that it believes is most beneficial to your interests or that of your users. Up to this point there is no problem, but Twitter’s reach is global and almost unique: it is the place where the news arrives first and where a large part of the public opinion discourse is concentrated. Therefore, Musk therefore understands that he is a pillar of society, and that as such he must protect himself.
He defines himself as an “absolutist of freedom of expression”, and several media outlets define him as a “radical”. The truth is that all these epithets are absurd: either there is freedom of expression or there is not.. There is no concept of much or little freedom of expression, and it only exists when it is the judge who decides whether what is said violates the law or not. Freedom of expression is not freedom to say what you want without any kind of limit, and it never has been. The difference lies in whether the limit is justified only by the law, promulgated to protect the rights of citizens, or also the criteria of a company according to its ideas or interests.
“My offer is final, and if it is not accepted I will reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential, and I’m going to unleash it.”
Elon Musk to Bret Taylor, Chairman of the Twitter Board
Twitter I have answered claiming that “the Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action to take in the interest of the Company and all Twitter shareholders”
This sharp sentence is a clear attack on Twitter’s management and its employees, who do not share Musk’s vision. They believe that you have to moderate more, he that you have to moderate less and innovate faster. Due to this difference, the company offered him a seat on the board in exchange for not buying more than 15% of the shares. It was a poison dart for Musk’s true ambitions: if he had accepted that chair, he would be prohibited from speaking ill of Twitter, which is his favorite hobby on Twitter lately, and he would be left without the option of a hostile takeover of the company based on bills. . Musk declined the offer, and now intends to impose his idea by force. Or free her, depending on how you look at it.
Freedom of expression or personal ambition?
It would be naive to buy Musk’s speech as he sells it; After all, he is an entrepreneur, and despite the fact that his companies have objectives such as promoting the use of renewable energies or turning human beings into a “multiplanetary species”, the purpose of these or any other is to make money. Nobody sets up or buys a company to lose it.
Twitter has always been a platform that has not been valued according to its importance in society. Everything happens on Twitter, but nobody knows how to make it profitable. The company has been accused of innovating little and late, and the constant changes of direction between managers who do not use the platform have not been very beneficial.
For Musk, instead, Twitter is very important. Without that speaker, his power would wane; much of his fortune and fame have been achieved thanks to his tweets. What would become of Musk if Twitter closed his account? He cannot consent to that, he has to protect himself. He moves the value of the shares and publicizes his own projects and ideas better than anyone else; he agitates the masses, creates debates when he wants and causes controversy that is especially annoying for his critics because Elon Musk breaks all the schemes.
He is an annoying agitator, but he is also an entrepreneur capable of achieving what was thought impossible: he reuses rockets and increases the production and sales of his electric cars while the competition settles for production lines because they lack a chip made in China. That is why he polarizes opinion so much, he is an agitator who, unlike the others, make progress really.
His controversial figure is sustained through Twitter as part of his success as a communicator. It was also for former President Donald Trump, who knew how to take advantage of the platform to directly transmit the appropriate message to his supporters; a direct and agitating message.
Using the terms “liberate” and “free speech,” Musk justifies before the public opinion his taking of Twitter the force. Throughout history, all men eager for power have justified their seizure before the people through legislative changes, promises or defense of some idea such as freedom.
What to expect if the acquisition goes through
If the acquisition succeeds, more than likely due to the amount of the offer and the difficult justification for any other part of a counter offer, it would mean a radical change for the platform. It would become an unlisted company, so Musk could say what he wanted of it, and use it however he sees fit.
Perhaps the Trump account will be restored, and propaganda outlets like RT will no longer be censored unless a judge rules.
Social networks need to moderate content not because of what can be said on them, but because of the algorithms that are used. The freedom of expression was never an issue on the internet until algorithms were put in place to increase engagement and usage time on social media. As soon as Facebook and Twitter began to order the “feeds” to make them more attractive polarization problems, conspiracy theories and what they call “disinformation problem” began to emerge. It is a dilemma that they themselves have generated in search of higher advertising revenue.
If Musk takes control, and advocates for a complete restoration of free speech, he will have to reduce the prominence of algorithms substantially so that users are not constantly shown the content they like the most or the one that annoys them the most. the beliefs that they have, which is what the algorithms favor so that you are hooked on the social network: reinforce your ideas or show you opposite things so that you get angry and react. A constant chain of applause or insults that only benefits the advertiser.
US media warn of worker discontent of Twitter in the face of this possible hostile takeover. They believe that their fight is fair, that of moderation and creating an environment that is as healthy as possible. However, users seem to be divided into two clearly identifiable groups: those who defend freedom of expression as the highest imperative and those who advocate the censorship of content they believe to be harmful.
Whatever the problem with Twitter, depending on who you ask, one thing is clear: if Musk takes control of the company, there will be drastic changes and innovations for the first time in its history. The businessman has already stated that in addition to defending freedom of expression, the company’s business cannot depend mainly on advertising. He wants to turn the company towards the Substack model or build on the latest ideas of its founder Jack Dorsey and decentralize power from him and open up his protocol to encourage free and open speech.
For better or worse, but Twitter is going to change.