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With a net worth of more than $300 billion, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he could essentially acquire Twitter immediately and also plans to change the user experience on the social networking platform.
During a TED Talk held at the TED Conference in Vancouver on Thursday, Musk told host Chris Anderson that if his offer to buy Twitter was successful, he would consider changing the way the platform handles controversial content by not promoting some tweets and adding a tweet editing function. I saw the editing history of that tweet. The Tesla CEO added that, under his leadership, Twitter should be "reluctant to delete everything" and ban accounts permanently, but that he would try to encourage freedom of speech in accordance with the country's laws.
"One of my top priorities is to get rid of spam and Phishing and the army of robots on Twitter," Musk said. "They make this foundation worse. If I had a Dogecoin every time I saw a cryptocurrency scam, I would have 100 billion Dogecoins."
According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, Musk offered to buy Twitter shares — not including the 9 percent of the stock he owns — for $54.20 per share, more than 38 percent of the company's closing price on April 1. So far, Twitter's stock is worth $45.08, up more than 30 percent from the past 30 days.
The reaction to Tesla's possible acquisition of the popular social networking platform has included mixed views. Many hailed the move as a step toward free speech, while others criticized Musk's immature actions on Twitter over his vast fortune.
"It's hard to think that there's any freedom in the world's richest man to make an unfriendly takeover offer and make one of the biggest social media platforms go private," jackson Palmer, co-founder of Dogecoin, said in a statement.
The price of Dogecoin (DOGE) has been largely unaffected by Musk's acquisition of Twitter shares and his offer to buy the company. On April 4, Musk was the company's largest shareholder, but by Thursday Musk had been overtaken by Vanguard Group, which accounted for more than 10 percent of Twitter's stock.
