Free speech advocate Elon Musk has bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, according to a regulatory filing published Monday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The stake makes Musk Twitter’s largest shareholder as Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey holds just 2.25%.
In recent days, Musk — founder, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla, CEO and Chief Engineer at SpaceX, founder of The Boring Company, and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI — criticized the social network for stifling free speech and talked about creating a rival platform.
Ariel Zilber for The New York Post:
An SEC filing revealed on Monday that Musk — the world’s richest person with a fortune of more than $287 billion, according to Forbes — bought some 73.5 million shares of the company, which are worth an estimated $2.89 billion.
News of the acquisition sent shares of Twitter soaring by more than 25% in pre-market trading on Monday.
Musk has been raising questions about the ability to communicate freely on Twitter, tweeting last month about free speech and the social media platform.
Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.
What should be done? https://t.co/aPS9ycji37
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 26, 2022
Am giving serious thought to this
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2022
Tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon have been accused by some conservatives and free speech advocates of banning users with unpopular views.
Then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said last year that his company erred when it censored a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks leading up to the presidential election.
MacDailyNews Take: Twitter is a myopic joke as it is currently run.
Hopefully Musk will be an agent of change for a platform that should, at this point, be considered a public utility that allows for all viewpoints to be openly discussed.
Elon Musk is a doer.
The doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person. – Steve Jobs
Art and music, design and performance, opinion, fiction, provocation, are what we work to enable. That fills us with such a sense of pride as well as a deep sense of responsibility because we know that these freedoms require protection; not just the forms of speech that entertain us, but the ones that challenge us, the ones that unnerve and even displease us. They’re the ones that need protection the most. Unpopular speech, unpopular art, and unpopular ideas; speech that questions the people in power.
It’s no accident that these freedoms are enshrined and protected in the First Amendment. They’re the foundation of so many of our rights. We means we all have a stake, and a role, in defending them. This is a responsibility that Apple takes very seriously… We work to defend these freedoms enabling people around the world to speak up. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, accepting the Newseum’s 2017 Free Expression Award on April 18, 2017
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible… I don’t want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today’s Internet. – Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak for The Atlantic, December 21, 2010
A few more quotes:
• Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. ― Benjamin Franklin
• To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy. ― Aung San Suu Kyi
• Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost. ― Neil Gaiman
• Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. – Potter Stewart
• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. ― United Nations
• If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. ― George Washington
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Imagine if Apple’s CEO were Elon Musk instead of Timmy Mush.
Do the right thing, Elon! Fix Twitter!
Go, Elon, go!
Fire all the woke ding dongs that have infested that company. Move it out of California to somewhere with far less group woke-think. The fruits and nuts in California destroy everything they touch including entire cities and businesses.
Free speech, free speech, free speech!!!
I’m surprised that he hasn’t invested a huge amount in Truth Social, it was #1 at the App Store just a little over a month ago. I wonder how it’s doing now?
No need for Truth Social now if Musk actively moves Twitter from leftist propaganda and censorship to an open town square of free debate.
Elon Musk Could Save Society from Those Looking to Control It
Elon Musk hasn’t even done anything with it yet, but after effectively becoming the largest shareholder of Twitter, a lot of doors that were locked shut suddenly flew open…
Musk took his status as the richest man in the world and used his wealth to purchase up a massive chunk of shares to one of the most influential and yet diseased social media platforms in the west…
The question now is, what will Musk change and how will that change us?
Firstly, we need to focus on something that another famous man once said. The comedian Dave Chappelle commented that he was being mobbed by transgender activists on Twitter after being accused of being “transphobic.” He commented that he didn’t care, because Twitter isn’t a real place, and he’s right.
It doesn’t mean it can’t be.
For years, people were thrown off the platform for merely saying things that Twitter’s rubbed the hard-left sentiments of its hard-left employees the wrong way. It became increasingly clear that Twitter’s terms of service were, like the pirate’s code, more guidelines than actual rules. If someone said something that hurt the ego, the Twitter employee could somehow label the person saying it as dangerous and have them banned…
There are far fewer right-leaning voices on the platform than there were a decade ago and those of us that are still there are limited in terms of what we can say.
Musk can end the tyrannical hold on the conversation, and to be sure, that seems to be his aim.
How or when he’ll start to do this is still up in the air, but judging by Musk’s love of doing things instead of complaining about them, the changes may happen rapidly. When they do, the town square will become more full than it’s ever been, and what’s more, even louder than before.
No longer will the leftists on Twitter have their home-field advantage. They can’t rely on Twitter to silence their opposition for them, and conversations will have to take place on equal ground. Many of those who were kicked off the platform will come flooding back and the left will be forced to engage with more voices who won’t be silenced for speaking the truth now…
I’ve spoken before of a second Rennaisance that would need to occur in our society in order to get it back on track. It would begin when the people decide they’d had enough of the nonsense we see when we get online from activists of every kind. I said something would have to break eventually.
Musk’s purchasing of Twitter may be the first sign of a second Rennaisance. Opening up the town square for free discussion is a big deal, and without the careful curating of the radical left, society will be shown ideas and concepts that they hadn’t previously been allowed to see or openly talk about…
Don’t get me wrong, it won’t be pretty, at least at first. Freedom and chaos are cousins and the tumultuousness of having so many opposing voices added all at once will cause quite an uproar, but eventually, that will level out. From there, the open debate will allow good ideas to float to the top, and with good ideas shining as they should, society may very well find itself changing along with it.
Actual science may shine through, biology respected, jokes allowed to be made freely again, sacred cows demolished left and right, and much, much more.
The future is much brighter.
— Brandon Morse, April 04, 2022
I agree, certainly no need to Truth Social, and as long as they keep their banishments up to date and keep the propaganda off it, it will be great.
Funny though, I’ve never associated free speech with companies, governments yes, but companies, they can do their own business.
$14.26 and wobbly
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DWACW?p=DWACW
Cool! Now move it to Texas….
-wait!!
And the libs say, freedom of speech is kind of a good ideal, but Don Orange needed to be quieted.
The world needed the unapproved jab that proved to be consequential to many and w/o the stated efficaciousness…so, objectors’ opinions needed to go to the back of the room. And….
They are still in denial that our country went through and still is experiencing the guard rails of Proper Thinking (anti-free speech) that preserves nothing, but destroys the human core.
So many words, so little meaning, so much stupidity
So little reality, so few facts, so much lying (as in gender…)
Now that Elon Musk has majority stake ownership of Twitter stock, he can tweet the following without fear of the Libtards that operate that sewer from censoring him and blocking his account.