Twitter is poised to agree a sale to Elon Musk for around $43 billion in cash, the price the chief executive of Tesla has called his “best and final” offer for the social media company, Reuters reports citing “people familiar with the matter.”
Twitter may announce the $54.20-per-share deal later on Monday once its board has met to recommend the transaction to Twitter shareholders, the sources said.
Musk has said Twitter needs to be taken private to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech.
The deal would come just four days after Musk unveiled a financing package to back the acquisition.
The sale would represent an admission by Twitter that its new chief executive Parag Agrawal, who took the helm in November, is not making enough traction in making the company more profitable…
Musk’s negotiating tactics – making one offer and sticking with it – resembles how another billionaire, Warren Buffett, negotiates acquisitions.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier this month, “Broken long ago, Twitter is a slanted, 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
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Shop The Apple Store at Amazon.
Elon Musk is a one-note, s*&#-posting troll who could not be more boring. He’s desperate for and undeserving of attention. And on the off-chance his offer is actually sincere, I doubt he has the attention span to tackle Twitter’s issues in any meaningful way.
One note? PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Co. Boy that one note plays loud and clear. Musk is a man who accomplishes things.
Musk/s idea of free speech is not what many people think it is. It will become a cesspool.
We get it, you’ll miss anti-conservative bias and censorship by the 6 mentally ill trannies running Twitter’s nazi shadow- and account-banning department in SF.
Your woke leftist echo chamber of failure is going the way of the dodo.
Tough shit.
It’s rather cute you seem to think your free speech rights are being violated by a private company who isn’t beholden to the First Amendment
Such weak pathetic pissy little racists.
Mel, at one point in history liberals embraced the volley of ideas (liberal arts). That time is in the past. The notion, promoted in the last 3-5 yrs, that the authoritarian was on the/your opposing side, is fallacious. “Collusion”, for instance–gleefully acknowledged–turned out to have been completely fabrIcated and broadly embraced (by yourself, in fact).
Humans are prone to create garbage of–all sorts–and we take a chance to surround ourselves with such when–all sorts–are rightfully able to communicate. In no way was does this embrace, or advocate cesspool-ery, but acknowledges embracing free speech comes with risks. I’ll take the risk at the expense of authoritarian mindset that thinks they know how to keep us from the cesspool–by limiting ideas and certain people–verses volleying of ideas.
True to form, liberals generally supported Elon prior to his TWTR $$ proposal. Now, not so much.
For the health of society, Mel, I’d guess you’d side with Hillary? It’s the crowd that loves to limit another’s speech that is rightfully called authoritarian…but, that’s not been the truthful narrative for yrs. Don_The Orangeman–has been the character on which this notion has has been erroneously built. You, Mel have used this falsity for yrs. Let’s discharge the notion; someone’s distasteful personality doesn’t equate to authoritarianism.
Terminally woke, broken Twitter needs to be transformed into a free speech public square, not the leftist censorship cesspool it currently is.
First you go on, and I quote: “First it was: “No need for Truth Social now if Musk actively moves Twitter from leftist propaganda and censorship to an open town square of free debate.”
Then you go on about Truth social, and I quote: “The waitlist is in the multiple millions now. Hopefully, this move opens the floodgates!”
Now it’s back to Twitter.
Take note of the flag flapping people of the free and civilized world, as the question beckons, is it a one or two cesspool country? Details at 11, facts much later on.
Although this seems eminently obvious, I’ll state it for you:
Wishing for Twitter to have free speech, kill censorship and shadow-banning, etc. and for Truth Social to flourish are not mutually exclusive.
Bingo, but right now from what I’m hearing is that there is a cesspool on one side and I have no argument with that, but the others has…. exactly what, truth social (and others apparently tied into the chump)… and wishes for Twitter to have free speech.
So I come back to the original question, at the current time is it a one or two cesspool country? I’ll certainly go to a one cesspool country and wishes for free speech from a private company if that helps. Either way, yes indeed there a cesspool there, but from an outsider’s point of view, it’s permeated everywhere. You should think of invading.
You STILL don’t get it do you First? I’ll try and explain it slowly to you. Twitter can restrict whatever it wants to, whenever it wants to and your rights to free speech aren’t being violated.
You see, Twitter is a private company and not a government agency (despite your conspiracy theories) and is therefor not beholden to the First Amendment.
The real problem is that as a media platform, it controls too much information. Whether left or right, it is a serious issue. Facebook is no different.
You say that but then we read this which most likely applies to twitter too.
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-administrations-admission-theyre-flagging-content-facebook-sparks-furor-1610257
Truth Social went to Rumble servers this weekend and is up and running just fine.
Gotta love Elon. Wish Apple had a CEO that was even half as interesting and fun as Musk!
Just realize this has far less to do with “free speech” than with billionaires deciding they need to own and control all the media in this country.
To all the folks who’ve downvoted my comment, can you explain how Elon Musk’s free speech has been violated by Twitter? Cause I really don’t think this is about banning Trump, since Musk has never shown any concern for anyone other than Elon Musk (not that that’s a bad thing, mind you).
Who needs to worry about government having to abide by “Free Speech and First Amendment” when it can have a private company, at its bidding, do it for them!
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-administrations-admission-theyre-flagging-content-facebook-sparks-furor-1610257