Elon—The New Musk-itter
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, the maverick and eccentric tech entrepreneur who has been showered with sobriquets like controversial, crazy genius, visionary, disruptor, is finally taking over the most influential social media platform, Twitter.
This deal was in the making for quite some time. Twitter resisted it wholeheartedly, but Elon Musk offered a price that Twitter could not decline. Twitter’s current market value is $39 billion.
Elon offered $5 billion more than the current market price -a whopping $44 billion to purchase it. This is not a very big amount for Elon. He is the world’s richest man, with a fortune worth $279 billion.
Most of this money is in the form of shares and stocks in his company. Presently, around 40% of Twitter is owned by mutual funds, another 37% by institutional investors and a little over 12% are individual investors.
After the takeover, all the shares will be owned by Elon Musk himself. There will be no shareholders.
Twitter adopted a poison pill strategy to avoid this deal from going through. This involved selling Twitter shares to its existing shareholders at a discount to prevent Elon Musk from buying them from the market.
There were other contenders to buy Twitter, but finally, it was Elon Musk who prevailed and bought it. Pending some legal and regulatory formalities, Elon Musk will be the owner of Twitter by the end of this year.
Twitter is not the most widespread social medial platform. It is one-tenth the size of Facebook. What makes it attractive is that Twitter is the platform of choice for influencers, policymakers and world leaders.
Twitter is the digital town hall of the world. After the purchase, it will be Elon’s personal town hall. Twitter helped Elon Musk build his brand and his image of a maverick entrepreneur.
He covets this attribute and wants complete control of it for himself. He is so obsessed with it that he does not mind paying $5 billion more than the prevailing market value for it. This takeover though has consequences for everybody.
Elon Musk wants to overhaul Twitter. This does not come as a surprise and is very much in keeping with his penchant for disruption.
He has reinvented the car market by introducing his electric car Tesla, has already sent a rocket to space and wants to colonize Mars. He has similar plans for Twitter as well.
For starters, Twitter will cease to be a listed company. It will no longer be listed in stock exchanges. Twitter shares will not be available for buying to the common man who use it the most. It will be private, Elon Musk’s Twitter.
He wants to change Twitter fundamentally, and not everyone is thrilled about the changes he might bring. Its CEO, Parag Agarwal, is one such person who is not very optimistic about it.
Parag Agarwal is not an admirer of Elon Musk and the sentiment is mutual. Of the many changes that Musk wants to bring about in Twitter is a new management team. This means that Parag, who joined Twitter as CEO in November of last year, maybe the first person Musk fires after taking over.
Musk wants lesser regulation for Twitter. Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist, which means you can say whatever you want, to whomever you want and whenever you want-no holds barred.
This is excellent news for hate speech mongers and fake news spreaders. It will be an open season for them. Musk also plans to make the Twitter algorithm public as this has been a long-standing demand. At present, nobody knows how content spreads on Twitter, and how the individual timeline shapes up.
It will reveal how hate speech is flagged, and how specific tweets are amplified. He will also introduce an edit button to Twitter. People will finally be able to correct if they have tweeted something wrong. There will be no ads on Twitter.
Presently, 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from them. This was a significant source of shareholder profit. But now that Twitter is personal property of Musk, there would be no more shareholder pressure for more profits. Musk is thinking of a subscription model for generating revenue like Netflix. People have to pay a monthly subscription fee to be on Twitter.
Musk is planning to remove all bots from Twitter. A study claims that 15% of accounts on Twitter are automated bots. Bots are a major problem on Twitter. Not any more. Only accounts operated by humans will stay online. There will not be any more fake accounts.
These days social media shapes public opinion everywhere in the world. A survey of the owners of media giants shows that the entire media landscape is owned by a few billionaires like Mark Zukerberg, who owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp and Jeff Bezos, who owns Washington Post. This can have unwarranted consequences.
Musk could use Twitter to influence public opinion about his products or to frame policies that suit his business interest. He could remove tweets critical of his cars or amplify tweets about his space ventures.
He can do anything he wants to with Twitter as it is now his private fiefdom. No shareholders or board members to whom he would be accountable. This would make him very powerful as this platform is used by heads of states to reach out to people, activists use it to rally the public and journalists use it to keep people informed and to express opinions.
Twitter is a very powerful platform to shape global opinion and very soon that power will be wielded by one man, Elon Musk. A little scratching of the surface reveals another dreadful aspect of this deal. Musk manufactures his Tesla cars in China, and he wants to be in the good books of China to get favourable concessions for his manufacturing unit.
China could arm-twist Musk to use Twitter to shape global opinion in its own favour when it indulges in unethical acts like taking over Taiwan. With Musk taking it over, China may allow Twitter again in its country, but the price would be free speech as it will be able to control what people say and think.
At present, this is mere conjecture, but when such powerful platforms are involved, all possibilities must be explored. The very purpose for which Musk is purchasing Twitter will be defeated. Twitter is entering uncharted territory. The world cannot afford to let its guard down.
Governments must keep a close eye on Twitter because free speech is not guaranteed by maverick billionaires who act like demigods but by our constitution. Governments must work to ensure that Elon Musk’s Twitter does not violate our fundamental right of free speech. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
