These are, then, difficult times for the Democratic Party and its supporters. Some of them suspended their account on the platform directly (such as Sean King, who considered Musk’s purchase of Twitter nothing but the embodiment of the influence of the white man), and others began a campaign of incitement against the new owner, calling for laws to restrict the influence of billionaires. Even “TheVerge”, which specializes in technology content, published a report entitled “How to cancel your Twitter account.” On the other hand, supporters of former US President Donald Trump seem to be in a state of Euphoria. The platform that their “leader” had once addicted to, and which was his almost only media medium in the face of the “Fake News”, returned – in their opinion – to the bosom of “Maga” (or to restore to America its greatness, as Trump’s slogan says), in the hope that the buyer would agree to Unblock their leader, who is blocked from Twitter.
How was the acquisition?
Earlier this month, Elon Musk bought a 9% stake in Twitter. He then offered to buy the entire company, describing himself as a “supporter of absolute freedom of expression” and expressing a desire to reform what he saw as excessive censorship of content by the site. At the same time, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX began posting controversial tweets, such as saying that he was considering making the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, a homeless shelter, because none of the employees came to the workplace in the first place. While the company’s board of directors initially announced that it was considering his offer, it was rejected, in what was called the “poison pill” scheme that made it difficult for the South African billionaire to obtain a stake that would allow him to control Twitter. But Musk announced, last week, that he had raised $46.5 billion in funding to make the purchase through bank loans. An announcement that tied the hands of the board of directors and forced it to go to the negotiating table, which resulted in the approval, the day before yesterday, of the sale process, making Twitter a private company owned by Musk alone, at a price of 54.20 dollars per share, and a total cost estimated at 44 billion dollars. Consequently, Twitter exited the stock market. “Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the public digital arena where it discusses topics vital to the future of humanity,” Musk said in a statement published on Twitter. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by boosting it with new features, making open source algorithms to increase trust, eliminating bots and authenticating everyone’s accounts,” he added.
Elon Musk has the power to reshape the discourse on a social network used daily by more than 200 million people
The sequence of events above is what officially happened. But those who follow Musk on Twitter, along with 83 million other people, cannot forget an incident that is said to have been the main reason why he bought the platform. Last month, Twitter suspended the account of The Babylon Bee, a conservative Christian satirical news website that publishes satirical articles on topics including religion, politics, current events and public figures. In practice, it is a conservative evangelical Christian version of the popular satirical news website The Onion. As for the reason, a sarcastic article published by the site deals with the “joke” of choosing Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, on the site as “man of the year.” The suspension of this account by the former Twitter administration angered Elon Musk, who is one of the most popular followers of this site, and the platform suspended the accounts of “Trumpist Republic” poles, such as the two Fox journalists, Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin, because of retweeting mentioned article. From here, Musk began planning the acquisition of Twitter, the platform for which he expressed his love in a tweet, five years ago.
Will Trump return?
There are several aspects to answering this question. On April 21, spurred by his “fear” for democracy, former US President Barack Obama appeared at Stanford University, addressing the people, bemoaning the fact that his party’s grip on social media platforms had finally been challenged. He continued his lecture on the dangers of “disinformation” on platforms, calling for the imposition of “more censorship” on freedom of expression on these platforms in order not to “undermine” democratic action. What is noteworthy here is that Obama is now demanding the update of Article 230 of the Communications Act under which communication platforms were protected, the same article that Trump repeated his demand to update whenever he had the opportunity. Today, however, the paradox is that Obama is also demanding it in light of the weakening of his party’s control over the digital world. For his part, Trump said that he would not return to the social networking platform, Twitter, even if his account was returned to it. He added to “Fox” channel that he will activate an official account for him on the emerging “Truth Social” platform, which he owns, in the coming days. On the surface, Trump’s statement makes sense, as why would he want to return to Twitter, when he has his own social media platform? The most useful action, here, is to strengthen his platform and make it ahead of other platforms. But there is a problem, the “Truth Social” platform is almost dead, and the number of subscribers to it has not increased as was imagined, in addition to the delay of programmers in developing a version that works on “Android” devices, in parallel with the repeated cyber attacks (Ddos Attack) on the site. Therefore, the coming days and weeks may witness a shift in Trump’s decision, especially with the approach of the midterm elections in November, when he will need media leverage.
Musk’s plans for Twitter
After receiving the keys to the company, Elon Musk has the power to reshape the discourse on a social network used by more than 200 million people every day. Among those plans he expressly expressed are:
– Removing “community rules for content” in the name of freedom of expression.
Create an edit button so that users can edit their Tweets (for a specified period of time).
Making the Twitter algorithm open source, so that everyone can see the lines of programming that the platform runs through, which pushes towards more transparency and trust by users.
– He will wage war on “bot armies”, which are sometimes called electronic flies, especially those that promote fraudulent cryptocurrencies.
He will try to reduce the platform’s reliance on ads for money, and will try to link it to the cryptocurrency “Dogecoin”, which he said is an excellent payment method.
Elon Musk is a businessman who thrived as a pioneer in the technology field. This is true; But his presence in this rank today would not have been possible without the government contracts he obtained at the most critical moment in his career (NASA, for example). The man also has an army of tweeters on Twitter, defending him to the last breath. As he has become one of the most popular communication platforms after Tik Tok and Facebook, he has a digital media outlet that will allow him to expand the influence of his companies from “SpaceX” to “Tesla” and “Boring” and others.