Wait, Elon Musk bought Twitter? Now what?
The Tesla CEO wanted the silly little bird app in his control because, he says, he cares about free speech and has plans to change the algorithm.
Welcome to the 72nd issue of The Supplement, a newsletter that fills in the gaps of your other news intake. This is Sierra, one-third of The Supplement team!
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This week, we’re tackling this question: Wait, Elon Musk bought Twitter? Now what?
TL;DR: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has bought Twitter for a whopping US$44 billion. The Tesla CEO wanted the silly little bird app in his control because, he says, he cares about free speech and has plans to change the algorithm. Despite the Twitter board’s attempts to “poison pill” protection, they engaged in negotiations after Musk offered to take the company private with a premium and a deal was reached on April 25. And contrary to rumours that former president Donald Trump would get back on the app, he said he’s happy to stay on the social media app he created.
Here at The Supplement, we are avid users of Twitter, as are most journalists. In fact, our industry is well-known for this silly, dumb bird app having an iron clasp grip on our lives.
Yesterday, the world's richest man/Tesla CEO/Grime’s ex also became the owner of Twitter. And the internet, including Twitter, has a lot to say.
Why would the world’s richest man want to buy the bird app?
For Musk, this is not about the money — it’s about changing the social media platform. In a recent TED interview, he talked about tweaking the algorithm. He also says he wants to combat spam bots, fight trolls and increase trust.
“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,” he said in a news release announcing the deal.
On April 4, the world learned that Musk had taken an almost 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter, worth more than US$3 billion. This holding is more than four times the stake that the site’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, has.
After this, Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal had announced that Musk would join the Twitter board. But the morning that his appointment was to become official, Musk changed his mind because he would have been limited to owning no more than 14.9 per cent of the company.
How does Twitter feel?
Last week, before the deal closed, Twitter had adopted a “poison pill” to protect itself from the second-biggest shareholder's cash buyout offer.
In this case, the poison pill was meant to create a lot of new stock, allowing investors to buy shares at a significant discount to dilute the holdings of new investors (read: Elon Musk) and make it more expensive for him to get shares he needed to take over the company.
It seemed that the company abandoned the poison pill plan when they engaged in negotiations with Musk, who was offering way more money than their stock was worth. On April 25, he bought the app for nearly US$44 billion.
Mashable collected some other Twitter reactions here.
According to reports, some Twitter employees are worried by the deal. A NYT article reports that inside the company employees had largely stopped celebrating the richest man in the world after he declared his intent to buy the app.
Does Musk get the keys to Twitter now?
Not yet! There is a long process ahead, which includes getting past federal regulators who may add delays to the process.
Employees reported major frustrations about the lack of information they received before the deal went through, and even after Musk became their boss. Speaking anonymously to the NYT, they say they were also worried that he would “undo the years of work they had put into cleaning up the toxic corners of the platform,” as well as disrupt their stock compensation and company culture.
There has been no comment from Musk as to whether he would get former president Donald Trump back on Twitter, from which he was banned for inciting violence after the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol. But that’s no problem for Trump, who said he would rather stay on his own Truth Social platform.
So this cartoon from Micheal De Adder is a little less relevant than before:
I’m guessing Twitter was affordable for Musk
Musk is worth about $268 billion at the time of this writing, so $44 billion was about a sixth of his overall net worth.
With that money, he could have provided clean water to First Nations across Canada almost six times.
He could have single-handedly hosted a couple Olympics.
He could have bought the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team — well, 24 of them.
Anyway, here are some more memes before you go:
Here’s someone to follow:
Vjosa Isai is the Canada news assistant at The New York Times. She also often writes the Canada Letter newsletter like this one from the other week about the caribou clash in Quebec. It’s always interesting to see how our neighbo(u)rs down south write Canada-related coverage.
Here’s a story to check out:
According to Hannah Seo, small talk gets an unfairly bad rap. And in her piece for The Walrus, she talks about why the lack of small talk is breaking our brains. “Part of me worries that, by the time everyone is vaccinated, I’ll reenter the world clumsy and stilted.” I think we all worry about that, Hannah!
Bonus: a little something about the presidential election in France this past weekend.