Tesla owner Elon Musk has officially filed to buy Twitter. He announced that he has made an offer of over 43 billion dollars to take full control of the company. Musk made headlines a few weeks ago when he bought a majority stake in the company which was valued at around 9% of the total stake.

Elon is a very popular figure on Twitter. His profile has a whopping 81 million followers. His fame really has taken off in the past few years as he has moved from a financial and innovative mogul to more of a social media personality in many aspects. His tweets get hundreds of thousands of likes. He often posts memes or creates polls for his followers to vote on. When he first became curious about buying shares in Twitter, he created a poll titled “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”. The poll results were 70 percent said no and around 30 percent said yes.

This has been a heated topic over the last year or more. Ever since Twitter blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story, banned former President Trump and temporarily locked dozens of users’ accounts for debatable reasons, the concern over free speech on the platform has arisen. Whether warranted or not, free speech concerns are definitely a critical issue in America today. Musk claims that he wants Twitter to be a free and open space for all speech. He also feels that Twitter, in its current state, is not adhering to first amendment rights.

Musk stated in his official filing “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”.

Many have debated what the line between free speech and misinformation or hate speech is? Should users be removed if they are promoting potentially harmful or misleading information? Who decides what misinformation is? All of these questions are among the most debated in our country today. Many left-leaning political pundits on Twitter have worried that if Musk gains total control of the platform then a rise of misinformation and harmful material could spread all over Twitter.

Robert Reich, UC Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor under the Clinton administration, tweeted “This morning Musk bid $54.20 a share to buy the rest of Twitter and take it private – nearly 40% higher than Twitter’s stock price in January before Musk started buying. Anyone concerned about another oligarch taking over a news source?” He followed up by stating that “Trump must never be allowed back on Twitter”.

Right-leaning pundits have begun to fully support Elon and his plans for Twitter. Conservative commentator Tom Fitton tweeted “BREAKING: @ElonMusk wants to buy @Twitter- Leftist totalitarians concerned that it could lead to more free speech”.

It is likely that Twitter shareholders and executives will look for a higher bid and take many steps to avoid Elon’s attempt to buy the company. This will likely take days if not weeks to sort out. All that is for certain is that the debate around the topic is only going to grow.

Article by Payton Hannah