Elon Musk Owns Twitter Now, But Will He Live up to His Words?

On Monday (April 25), Elon Musk has officially gotten his offer accepted by Twitter. Weeks of public discussions had been going on between the social media and the world's wealthiest man, and now everything is about to finalize.

Fazzaco learned that Elon Musk is buying Twitter at $54.2 a share, and the total offer is $44 billion. Twitter will become a privately owned enterprise upon the completion of the acquisition.

Before that takes place, Twitter, as it is now, will remain the status as a public company, just like Tesla. So, the shareholders' interests are still protected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Previously, Fazzaco has covered a story on the ongoing disputes between the regulator and Elon Musk. But as Musk is on his way to own Twitter and make it private, Twitter will no longer be under the umbrella of SEC, but subject to its owners. So, should we be concerned about Elon Musk successfully buying it? How will Elon Musk live up to his words by unlocking more potential of Twitter?

The Beginning

In March 2022, as an influential and heavy user of Twitter with over 80 million followers, Elon Musk posted a poll asking people that "Freedom of expression is essential for democracy to work. Do you believe that Twitter strictly adheres to this principle?"

Then, he left a comment on his own post, warning people that "the consequences of the outcome of this poll will be very important. Please vote carefully." At the end, the poll received more than two million votes, over 70% of which went with "No", believing that Twitter failed to adhere to the freedom of speech principle.

Twitter, a digital town square

Twitter as a company, occupies an unprecedented position in the internet world, whether it comes to the Covid pandemic, US-China trade war, or the more recent Russia-Ukraine conflict and even the unexpected slap Will Smith showed to the world at the Academy Awards. At this point, Twitter is the go-to public square where assorted conversations take place on essential, or petty matters, or as how Elon Musk put it in his latest tweet, a "digital town square".

"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," said Mr. Musk. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential - I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."

It appears that who owns Twitter is not the problem to worry about, but it is whether the new owner of the social media, Elon Musk, is able to make people think what is the best way to manage a public platform like this.

Would it be better for Twitter to remain public?

Apparently, Twitter is still hunting for an appropriate way to make profits. The existing ownership structure of the company and how its employees are encouraged are all headed towards profit-making, and that would inevitably end up bad (just look at Facebook).

Now after Twitter is bought, it will become a private place owned by a few, and there will be pressure passing down from them, whether ideologically, economically or in any other aspect, and that, too, might end up just as bad.

Therefore, it looks like the future is bleak either way. But if Twitter wishes to remain its role as the digital town square, it should be truly owned by the digital community and managed in accordance with community rules.

Wikipedia makes a great example, not perfect though, it perhaps proves a viable way to manage Twitter.

A Web3 solution?

As a concept emerged during the development course of internet, Web3 is mainly relevant to decentralization, cryptocurrency and non-fungible token, which are all blockchain-based. So, maybe the Web3 community is able to devise a management solution for Twitter by coming up with some better ideas. As a member of Web3 community himself, maybe Elon Musk would let us know his own proposal, which would definitely make the acquisition more meaningful.