Elon Musk Offers to Buy Twitter in Free Speech Takeover (Whaddya Know, It Got Worse)

If there’s one thing Twitter doesn’t need, it’s a new overlord. But trying telling that to Elon Musk, the SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO.

Musk has apparently made a generous offer to take over the social media platform. “According to an SEC filing, Musk has offered to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own for $54.20 per share, valuing the company at $41.4 billion,” CNN reported.

His plan is to take the company private because it needs to be “transformed.”

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in a letter to Twitter. “However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”

He concluded the letter with: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

Uh-huh. OK, Elon. While the richest man in the world claims the purchase is in the interest of free speech, experts are skeptical.

“Musk making this about free speech is the exact opposite of what every other corporate raider would do about monetizing the company’s value,” Dan Ives, tech analyst with Wedbush Securities, told CNN. “It’s historic and bizarre at the same time.”

How else do we know this is a bad idea? Because Joe Rogan supports it. In an Instagram post, Rogan screenshotted the news of Musk’s Twitter takeover and captioned it, “Praise Odin for Elon Musk.” (For those not up on their Norse mythology, Odin is the god of war and death.)

 

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A post shared by Joe Rogan (@joerogan)

No matter what happens, we can say with some assurance that Twitter is headed for a downward spiral. There’s really nothing to see there, except our Funniest Tweets of the Week roundups. Let’s hope Musk figures out how to live on Mars soon, because the world (and social media) would be much better off without him.

Cover Photo: SOPA Images / Contributor (Getty Images)