Elon Musk caused a lot of talk yesterday during the day, after he said he was offering to buy Twitter at 100%. And today, the millionaire responded to the concerns of Internet users, trolling in passing mark zuckerberg.
Elon Musk and his takeover proposal
Elon Musk just performed a takeover bid for Twitteran offer that values the company at $43.4 billionwhile promising to “release” the full potential of the platform by privatizing it. Elon Musk’s offer, which therefore amounts to $54.20 per sharecomes just days after he refused to join the company’s board, when he had become the majority shareholder.
The entrepreneur announced his offer today (April 14, 2022) in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In a letter to the company’s board, attached to the document, Musk said he invested in the platform, of which he is an avid user, because he believed in its potential to become “the platform for freedom of expression worldwide”. Elon Musk, however, clarified that he realized that the company could not “neither prosper nor serve this societal imperative in its current form”. He writes thus in conclusion: “Twitter must be transformed into a private company”. And today, the billionaire wanted to address the concerns of Twitter users, and the rest of the world.
Elon Musk trolling Mark Zuckerberg
Asked about the scenea conference in Vancouver regarding the concern that the richest man in the world has such a powerful communication platform as Twitter, Elon Musk replied that Mark Zuckerberg was actually much worse than him. As you know, Mark Zuckerberg currently owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Elon Musk has therefore accused Mark Zuckerberg of exercising too much control over public debates, calling him “Zuckerberg XIV“, which constitutes a mocking reference to Louis XIVnicknamed the Sun King.
Elon Muskafter his mockery of Zuckerberg, then told the Vancouver audience that he was not profit-driven, and that he wanted above all else make Twitter’s algorithm public, and owning the business to protect free speech and democracy. The billionaire also wished to highlight the fact that he was not yet platform ownerbut that if he were in the future, it would not be, for him, “a way to make money”. The billionaire then said more about what he really wanted to do with the Twitter platform, and about “remove censorship” :
I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I think I do. we must be very reluctant to delete things. And be very careful with permanent bans. Time outs, I think, are better than permanent bans. (…) My intuition tells me that it is important for the future of civilization to have from a public platform which inspires maximum confidence and which is widely open to all.
In November 2014, Zuckerberg invited Musk to dinner at his home in Palo Altoalong with two top researchers from Facebook’s new AI lab and two other Facebook executives. The dinner was organized because Zuckerberg was concerned about Musk’s repeated warnings about artificial intelligence, which Zuckerberg judged too much “alarmists”reports the New York Times. It is highly likely that the split between the two billionaires took place after ideological differences, linked in part, at least, to this theme.
