It’s official: Elon Musk owns Twitter. After a tumultuous acquisition process, the South African CEO purchased the company for $44 billion, closing the deal on Thursday evening. Sources close to the action have alleged that multiple high profile Twitter employees, including CEO Parag Agrawal, have been fired.
It would appear Elon is wasting no time. After all, he’s on record stating his desire to transform the company into a free speech platform – and firing adversarial employees is a necessary first step toward that goal.
But what, realistically, can we expect from a Musk-run Twitter? No one knows for certain, but based on Elon’s past comments, we can wager a few guesses.
First off, it’s quite likely that Twitter becomes friendlier to free speech, which would entail changes to the site’s currently left-biased terms of service. Yet Elon has also stated that “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.” This seems to indicate that the Wild West era of Twitter is not going to return, however less censorious the platform becomes under his ownership.
Regarding bans, Elon said in May that Trump’s account should be reinstated. He voiced his opposition to permanent bans as well – a good sign for those of us on the right.
But will everyone be welcomed back? Such a prospect seems unlikely to me. While Elon Musk does appear to value free speech, and has argued that anything short of violent rhetoric should be allowed, there are other factors to keep in mind.
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