Finally, Elon Musk bought Twitter, and this is what Elon Musk wants to change
Twitter Inc announced, Monday, the approval of the deal to sell the company to businessman Elon Musk in a deal estimated at $44 billion.
The deal ends a news storm that began less than a month ago when the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX became one of Twitter's largest shareholders, was offered a seat on Twitter's board of directors but turned it down, and then offered to buy the entire company.
Under the terms of the deal, shareholders will receive $54.20 for each Twitter share they own, matching Musk's original offer and representing a 38% premium to the share price the day before Musk disclosed his stake in the company.
The deal comes after Musk revealed last week that he had raised $46.5 billion to fund the acquisition of the company. Twitter's board of directors met on Sunday to evaluate Musk's offer.
"I hope even my worst critic on Twitter will remain, because that's what freedom of speech is," Musk said on Twitter, Monday, before the company announced its approval of the deal.
The deal will put the world's richest man in charge of one of the world's most influential social media platforms. Musk has repeatedly stressed in recent days that his goal is to advance freedom of expression on the platform and work to "unlock" Twitter's extraordinary potential.
After buying Twitter, this is what Elon Musk wants to change
Here's a look at what some of Musk said he wants to change on Twitter, according to Axios.
- Modify button
In a 2019 tweet, Musk noted the social media platform's lack of a "when you really need" edit button.
And at TED2022 in April 2022, he said he wanted Twitter to have an "edit" button, where he believed problems raised by critics could be resolved.
In April 2022, Musk also polled his followers about whether they wanted an edit button, and about 74% of the more than 4.4 million respondents voted yes.
It should be noted that Twitter confirmed after the survey that it was working on an edit button, pointing out that it did not get the idea from the survey.
Long tweets
Musk also suggested allowing long tweets. He commented on a long tweet in April 2022, saying, "The quickest thing I got out of this narrative is that Twitter is way too late for long tweets!"
It is noteworthy that Twitter has a maximum number of characters of 280, after the company had increased this number from 140 characters in 2017.
Spam and authentication bots
Musk once described spam bots as "the single most annoying problem" on Twitter.
He tweeted in April 2022: "If our Twitter bid works, we'll defeat the spam bots or we'll die trying."
- open source algorithm
Musk expressed concern about the bias inherent in Twitter's algorithm, which he said he would solve using an open source algorithm.
He tweeted in late March 2022: “I am concerned about actual bias in the Twitter algorithm having a significant impact on public discourse. How do we know what is really happening?”
He also polled his followers to see if they support an open source algorithm. About 83% of the more than 1.1 million respondents confirmed that they would do so.
