Tesla founder and mining heir Elon Musk has entered into an agreement to purchase Twitter in a $44 billion deal that will turn the social media network into a privately held company, with potentially large-scale ramifications ahead for the platform.
Yet in the immediate aftermath of the Monday announcement, it’s difficult to say precisely how a Musk-led Twitter will differ from its shareholder-owned iteration. Musk’s statement announcing the go-private deal hinted at several possible changes, including “authenticating all humans,” defeating spam and “enhancing the product with new features,” but details remain to be clarified.
The statement quoted Musk as saying that he values free speech and hopes to “make Twitter better than ever” and maintain the platform’s status as “the digital town square.” Yet, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s director of international freedom of expression, Jillian York, Musk’s commitment to free speech is highly questionable.
