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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