Elon Musk – the richest man in the world and a relentless advocate for free speech – has submitted a $41.4 billion offer to purchase social media platform Twitter.
“Twitter has extraordinary potential,” Musk said. “I will unlock it.”
The take-it-or-leave-it proposal – which he filed Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – would pay out $54.20 per share, which is a 38 percent premium over where the company was trading just before Musk’s initial investment in Twitter was announced earlier this month.
“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 said in a statement accompanying the filing. “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.”
According to Musk, the $41.4 billion offering represents “my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
“I am not playing the back-and-forth game,” Musk added. “I have moved straight to the end.”
“It’s a worst case scenario for the easily triggered snowflake employees at Twitter,” the authors at Zero Hedge noted, adding that Musk “hasn’t stopped trolling” the far left echo chamber.
Not surprisingly, liberal elites have rushed to rebuke Musk.
“Core communications systems like Twitter shouldn’t be left to the whims of billionaires and profit-driven monopolies in the first place,” noted Victor Pickard in a column for The Nation. “Until we radically democratize such platforms and treat them as the essential public infrastructures they are – shared resources that shouldn’t be governed by market forces alone – Musk, Trump, or some other petulant billionaire can come along and make them their playthings.”
Think about what Pickard is saying, people: Government must control speech.
As I noted earlier this month in assessing Musk’s bid, Twitter has devolved into “pure Orwell,” a “shadow of the free thinking forum it used to be.”
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First, the platform engaged in shadow banning. Then it started flagging accounts and modifying messages. And in the days leading up to the 2020 election, it began actively suppressing certain news stories – even suspending or blocking accounts which shared them.
Such overt electioneering ran counter to promises previously made by its former chief executive officer, Jack Dorsey.
“We believe a key driver of a thriving public square is the fundamental human right of freedom of opinion and expression,” Dorsey testified before the U.S. Congress in 2018, adding that “Twitter will always default to open and free exchange.”
Dorsey also pledged Twitter would uphold its commitment to “impartiality.”
Has it done that? Hell no … Twitter has completely defaulted to the new woke orthodoxy (and to the cancellation of anyone who is unwilling to go along with it). It has also ramped up the selective enforcement of its “rules.”
I’ve refrained from actively engaging on Twitter in recent months after the platform suspended FITSNews’ account back in February. You can read all about that drama here. Or watch it here.
Basically, I withdrew in protest of the site’s “alarming bias” and its ”hypocrisy in the enforcement of its so-called rules.”
In rebuking the social media giant, I vowed to continue operating a platform which consistently upholds the principles of “freedom of opinion and expression.”
As long as I am its editor, FITSNews will always extend its open microphone to anyone with an intelligent take on any issue – whether the perspective conforms with what I believe, runs counter to what I believe or even violently rebukes what I believe.
“I am not here to convince you that what I believe is right,” I wrote. “I am here to host a conversation in which all of us strive toward right together.”
I sincerely believe that is the sort of conversation Musk envisions for Twitter …
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
(Via: FITSNews)
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and seven children. Oh, and unlike some leaders in the S.C. General Assembly, he knows how to tie a Windsor knot.
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