Twitter announced Tuesday it is appointing billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk to its board of directors, expanding the free speech proponent’s influence over the platform.
Danielle Wallace for FOX Business:
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal tweeted the announcement Tuesday, writing that “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”
“Looking forward to working with Parag & Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months!” Musk wrote, responding to Agrawal’s tweet.
Twitter Inc. said in a Tuesday SEC filing that the company entered into an agreement with Musk Monday that he will be appointed to the Board of Directors with a term expiring at its 2024 annual meeting of stockholders. Per the agreement, Musk cannot, either alone or as a member of a group, own more than 14.9% of the company’s common stock while serving as a member of the board and for 90 days after.
The news comes after Musk purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc., according to a Monday filing from the SEC. He now controls nearly 73.5 million shares of the company, worth about $3 billion, making him the largest shareholder. The purchase comes about a week after the billionaire criticized Twitter’s lack of free speech, saying it “fundamentally undermines democracy.”
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, who has himself been vocal in the fight against censorship, reacted to Tuesday’s announcement about Musk joining Twitter’s board.
“Musk reached out to us before he polled his followers about Twitter’s commitment to free speech,” Dillon tweeted. “He wanted to confirm that we had, in fact, been suspended. He even mused on that call that he might need to buy Twitter. Now he’s the largest shareholder and has a seat on the board.”
“If Musk helps restore @Twitter to its free speech roots and moves it away from its left-wing censorship regime, it will be perhaps the most heroic and public-serving action I have seen a billionaire take in my lifetime,” Claremont Institute senior fellow Jeremy Carl posted to Twitter.
Twitter has long come under fire from conservatives and free speech advocates for censoring conservative viewpoints. The tech giant permanently banned former President Donald Trump from the platform in 2021, blocked the New York Post’s story in 2020 on Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop, and locked conservative satire site The Babylon Bee out of its Twitter account in March…
Conservatives celebrated the announcement on Monday, urging for Trump’s return to the platform and lauding it as a turning point for free speech in big tech.
MacDailyNews Take: Destroyed from within, broken Twitter’s reckoning is long overdue.
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. – MacDailyNews, April 4, 2022
Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.
Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 25, 2022
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Go, Elon!
Amen! Amen! Amen!
Brilliant cartoon, sums up the entire issue disenfranchising millions, if not billions, of good citizens world wide…
But who needs Twitter when there is Truth Social 😀
No need for Truth Social now, dumb ass.
No need for Twits texting woke dogma pablum. I’ll take Truth Social any day…
Is that why Donald hasn’t posted anything on his network since Feb 15?
And all the so-called “free speech” advocates (those that believe “free speech for me, but not for thee”) have shown themselves to clearly reside on the D/lib side, are quipping, “but, but…I don’t think it should be this free.”
C’mon lefties…you’ve benefitted (if you call Joe a benefit–ha) from the railroading and obscuration of info by the major media players, liars–like A Shifft, and degradation/shaming of opposition voices and your response (in your beliefs) is mute, or a lame downvote of relevant info that presents the deception the country in the last 4 yrs. Nice…you should be proud! Now, back to the baby pool.
Twitter, and all of its ilk, can go **** themselves. Much too little, much too late. They are scared, and that’s all there is to it. That they are scared in the name of $$$ makes it an absolute non-event. Give me a break. That Elon seems to be quite literally the only person in Silicon Valley with functional brain cells – again, just spare me. None of this had to happen. Twitter succumbed to greed and repute (a driving factor for virtually every web 2.0 company), plain and simple. I admire his cojones, but I still question whether or not it will make a dent.
That’s what Trump said and two institutions have been virtually injected with bleach, Florida’s public education with Ron DeSantis’s Parental Rights law causing a lot of Groomer teachers to walk off the job because they can no longer discuss sex with five year olds and now Elon Musk purchasing a majority stake in Twitter causing some of the entrenched Lefty Twatter Retards in various useless positions to call it quits.
This should tell you how badly both were needed!
So let me get this straight — when Tim Cook brings his personal values into his professional role, that’s just terrible. But when Elon Musk does the same thing it’s heroic?
Just want to make sure my hypocrisy is still working.
Your hypocrisy may still be working but your irony is definitely on the fritz! How dare you use the word straight then talk about Tim Cook.
Tim Cook’s professional role as CEO of Apple is to run Apple, not use Apple to advocate for the end of the institution of marriage between one man and one woman, that has been around since 2350 BC, because of his personal values versus, I’m sorry, what has Elon brought to any of his business endeavors to alter institutions that have been around since the beginning of time so it suited his personal values?
Just want to make sure my cerebral cortex is enlightened.
Equating freedom of speech with some of Cook’s “I know what’s best for you,” is laughable.
For one, Musk is advocating something that is found in a much heralded document that acts as a standard for much of the World. It was instated because the writers knew exactly what speech constriction meant. It was truly existential.
Therefore, advocating for freedom of speech is hardly a pet-personal ideal. Standing behind and expecting others to affirm womanhood b/c one identifies as such, has absolutely no relationship…if one is honest and serious. No matter how hard one tries to imagine, a man will never bleed, have children and will always be genetically different than a woman. That’s a personal value (that’s lulu)…freedom of speech is an adopted value that’s “endowed” & “unalienable.”
Elon’s going to save Twitter from itself:
100% spot on
Tell me you don’t understand the first amendment without telling me you don’t understand the first amendment
Asking myself what this has to do with Mac Daily News.
God forbid you’re exposed to something that makes your libtard brain think huh? Sean I recommend watching CNN full time and you won’t have to worry about being exposed to anything but liberal drivel
First thing he should do is fire the Hindu CEO and have him deported back to where he belongs.
How Christianly of you, asshole.