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Musk Takes Over Twitter

Musk Takes over Twitter

Elon Musk, the co-founder and CEO of Tesla proclaimed the world’s richest man with a net worth of $191.2 billion after buying twitter.

Business magnate Elon Musk began buying shares of the social media company Twitter Inc. in January 2022, and eventually became the company’s largest shareholder in April with a 1 percent ownership stake. Elon’s acquisition of Twitter began on April 14.2022, and concluded on  October 27.2022. One day later on Oct. 28 Tesla CEO Elon musk completed the deal to acquire Twitter at his original price of $54.20 a share, which in total came to a cost of roughly $44 billion.

Now you may ask yourselves but why did he buy Twitter?

  • Well it’s quite simple really. Musk’s interest in Twitter originates from the fact that he is clearly addicted to the website. Just like Trump (before he was banned), Musk really tweets a lot. Their shared love of tweeting is perhaps because both men get a notable thrill out of trolling opponents with put downs and generating headlines with provocations.
  • Musk also says that he got involved “to help humanity” improve free speech. “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 this year.

Why did Elon Musk sue Twitter?

  • At that time the global markets tanked. Surging inflation caused the central banks to lift interest rates. Large tech stocks, particularly those in the same business as Twitter, such as Snapchat, fell sharply.
  • Sensing he would now be drastically overpaying for the company, Musk tried to get out of the deal, declaring the agreement worthless. In June, Twitter took the unusual step of suing Musk to complete the deal at the agreed upon price of $44
  • That set the stage for a bewildering legal fight between Musk and Twitter, which was suing someone to force them into buying the company they no longer wanted any part of.
  • Musk had signed the agreement without doing any due diligence and faced an uphill battle at a subsequent trial in a Delaware court.
  • Before being deposed by Twitter’s lawyers, Musk relented. He agreed to buy the company and walked into Twitter;s San Francisco HQ holding a sink. “Let that sink in,” he later joked to a popular meme on Twitter.

What’s happening to Twitter after Musk’s takeover?

  • Instances of racial slurs have soared on Twitter since Elon Musk purchased the influential platform, despite assurances from the platform that it had reduced hateful activity, a digital civil rights group has reported.
  • A racial epithet used to attack POC (people of colour) was found more than 26.000 times, three times the average for 2022. Use of a slur that targets trans people has increased 53%, while instances of an offensive term for homosexual men went up 39% over the yearly average.
  • All told, the researchers looked at nearly 80.000 English-language tweets and retweets from around the world that contained one of the offensive terms they searched for.

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