Everything
In today’s news of men who have too much money, Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has reached a deal with Twitter and purchased the social media platform for an absolute bargain of US$44 billion. That’s about $61 billion Australian dollarydoos. Which equates to approximately double the entire fortune of Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart.
no idea what Elon is going to do with this thing, but it is pretty alarming that one dude can spend the GDP of Botswana and buy up a central global artery of communications on a random whim
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) April 25, 2022
A quick timeline of events: After becoming the primary shareholder back on April 5 when he bought 9 per cent of the platform, Musk first made the offer to purchase Twitter outright shortly after on April 14. While this initial proposal wasn’t received with the open arms that he may have hoped for, it did set off a domino effect of other parties expressing interest in buying a stake in what has arguably become the most influential of the social media holy trinity (Instagram and Facebook being the others).
Clearly, the board has taken a liking to the 420, 69ing joke cracking South African because over the weekend they finally reached the current deal. Of course, buying a publicly listed company isn’t as simple as “shut up and take my money”, so Musk will still have some federal hoops to jump through in order to finalise the deal. Including, although this isn’t confirmed, potentially giving up a portion of his share in his own company Tesla. Early on, it was reported that Twitter shareholders would request that Musk relinquish 10 per cent of his stake in Tesla should the sale go forth.
Musk has made no secret his increasing disdain over the direction that Twitter has allegedly taken. While he alleges that this equates to censorship, most think it’s simply the platform taking long overdue affirmative action. Banning Donald Trump, taking a more proactive approach to disinformation, trolls and explicit material (while still not great, better than it was) it looked like Twitter was attempting to atone for the years that it had been an absolute wild west of content.
While the 50-year-old has argued his sole reason for buying the company is in order to ensure free speech is truly enacted upon its platform, personally I think it’s because he wants to delete any and all references to Italian Elon. Must be hard when a parody account is funnier, and more liked, then you are.
At times like these, we can only hope for the return of the Italian Elon Musk account. pic.twitter.com/CSc5ZDcmgj
— Richard Chambers (@newschambers) April 25, 2022
