Regardless of whether Elon Musk ends up buying Twitter and taking the company private, he will have performed a very helpful service by exposing just how much the Left depends on Big Tech to control public narratives and silence dissent.
After turning down a seat on Twitter’s board, Musk made an offer on Thursday to buy 100% of the company’s shares at $52.40 per share. Should Twitter reject the $42 billion cash offer, Musk warned he will “need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk wrote in a letter to the chairman of Twitter’s board.”However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
In other words, Musk is giving Twitter’s board members an ultimatum: They can sell to him, or he will tank the price of Twitter’s stock. He has them cornered, and they know it.
This is why liberals who prefer Twitter’s censorship policy, which heavily favors their political ideology, are having a complete and total meltdown:
I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.
— Max Boot ?? (@MaxBoot) April 14, 2022
Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.
— Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) April 14, 2022
Elon Musk is why to abolish billionaires.
Asking them to chip in their fair share isn’t enough. Regulating them isn’t enough.
When people are allowed to acquire this much concentrated influence, they will inevitably manspread economic power into every other form of power.
— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) April 14, 2022
To the trolls:
I decided directing my tweet solely to Twitter’s CEO was an oversimplification, so I deleted it.
I stand by the underlying sentiment: Elon Musk’s attempted takeover of Twitter is a threat to the free world.
I care about freedom — and, also, factual precision. pic.twitter.com/RnriZ7D4pj
— Matthew Rozsa (@MatthewRozsa) April 14, 2022
The Left knows what’s at stake here. It understands that if Musk reforms Twitter and changes its vague and biased policies, it will lose a lot of the leverage it enjoys. Ideally, it would no longer be able to kick the Babylon Bee off the platform for pointing out that biological sex exists. It wouldn’t be able to squash “COVID-19 misinformation” or prevent a damning news story about President Joe Biden and his son from being shared. On Twitter, at least, the Left’s ability to control the conversation and who gets to participate in it would fall apart.
Musk understands that, too. Though we can’t be sure what his intentions for the platform are or whether he would turn it into something less hostile toward conservative thought, he has at least made it clear that he sees Twitter as a “de facto public town square” that must abide by “free speech principles.” That means things will have to change. Anyone who values free speech and open debate should hope he succeeds.
