NEW YORK: Elon Musk said Thursday he is acquiring Twitter to enable “healthy” debate on a wide range of ideas and counter a trend in which social media splinters into partisan “echo chambers.”
The billionaire entrepreneur pursued the deal “because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk tweeted on the eve of a court-imposed deadline to finalize the $44 billion acquisition.
Dear Twitter Advertisers pic.twitter.com/GMwHmInPAS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2022
Musk has called himself a “free-speech absolutist” and has suggested that he would loosen content moderation on Twitter after taking control. He told the Financial Times in May that he would reinstate former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, which was removed after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. He called that decision “morally wrong and flat-out stupid.”
The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that some large advertisers are concerned that Musk will invite Trump back onto Twitter or change the platform’s content-moderation policies, risking harm to their brands. Car companies are hesitant about running ads on a Musk-run Twitter because they don’t want sensitive data leaked to Tesla, which Musk leads, some ad buyers told the outlet.
The Tesla CEO and world’s richest person offered to buy Twitter in April, then backed out of the deal. After months of legal drama, the purchase is back on and is expected to close by Friday, according to a deadline imposed by a Delaware judge. Neither camp has officially announced that the deal has closed.
