Elon Musk

Risks for EV company include sale of stock to fund takeover and spill-over political effects.

The mechanics of the shuffle don’t appear contentious since the three-for-17 bonus issue to holders of the voting shares merely reflects the relative valuations at which the two classes have tended to trade in recent years. But Musk, wearing his Tesla hat, is a beneficiary of Chinese largesse in the form of financial incentives to build cars in China. Rich Chinese consumers are also big buyers of Teslas and key kit for the batteries comes from the country. Tensions probably won’t escalate to that degree, but the potential for hassle and expense over time is clear. At best, it is a distraction for them; at worst, it is a real business risk. Another is spill-over political effects, in the US and elsewhere. Its stock slumped 10% in early trading on Tuesday as the market digested the meaning of the boss’s latest adventure.

To complete his $44 billion Twitter deal, Musk's margin loans could top $150 billion — eroding Tesla shares and further enriching Bill Gates.

“The accepted bid puts a $5 billion-a-year advertising business into the hands of someone who has publicly questioned Twitter’s advertising business model,” noted the Journal. Musk will pay for Twitter through a combination of borrowing money and selling assets. What’s more, Tesla has been doing pretty well recently so the basis for shorting the stock is somewhat questionable. As Barron’s wrote, Musk used Twitter last Friday to express his belief that “Gates has sold short $500 million of Tesla shares. For that, you need look no further than how Musk — whose net worth Forbes estimates at $268.2 billion — will come up with the $44 billion in cash. They include stakes in rocket maker SpaceX and tunneling startup Boring Co.”

Internal market commissioner raised concerns that hate speech will increase on the platform.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group, said: “The UK and the EU are going to have tools to deal with this. Musk has said he favours temporary “time-outs” for users who breach Twitter’s policies, instead of outright bans. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.” At first, Twitter’s board seemed opposed, enacting an anti-takeover measure known as a “poison pill” that could have made a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. He is familiar with European rules on automotive, and will quickly adapt to the Digital Services Act.” Changes to its policies, features, and algorithms, big and small, can have disproportionate and sometimes devastating impacts, including offline violence,” she said.

Musk, the C.E.O. of Tesla and the richest man on earth, plans to take the social-media company private, and has said that he wants Twitter to adhere more ...

And I think people are recognizing that Elon Musk has created a lot of value for his companies by being unhinged on Twitter. And I think there are imitators, and I think we’re kind of early in the game. If you are the richest person in the world, and annoying, and you constantly play a computer game, and you get a lot of enjoyment and sense of identity from that game, maybe a little addicted, then at some point you might have some suggestions for improvements in the game.” At one level, this is a more personal account of his desire to buy Twitter. And then there is the more financial, or business, account, which you have just explained. But, at the same time, it almost seems like it’s impossible to disaggregate those two things, unless you think that all of his behavior is some elaborate performance or something, which I don’t think anyone really believes. He might say, “Look, I get so much value out of this direct access to the public.” Owning that direct access to the public—owning that thing that creates so much value for Elon Musk and Tesla—it has to be valuable somehow, whether it’s by increasing the value that it creates for Tesla, or whether it’s by finding a way to monetize the value that it creates for sports stars and celebrities and Donald Trump and lots of other people. It’s not obvious how the company would, but if you’re sitting on top of a thing that can create that much value, surely, if you’re really smart then you can extract some value out of it. And those expectations are probably helped by having a charismatic, noisy founder who makes a lot of jokes online and is sort of a science-fiction character himself, and portrays himself as a science-fiction character, and who appeals to people who like that by making jokes. The value of his company is enhanced by his being a very strange public figure on Twitter, and so he clearly sees a lot of value in tweeting, and probably wants to own that for himself. And the stock-market value of Tesla, which makes Elon Musk the richest person in the world, comes from a lot of extreme optimism about Tesla’s future ability to make more cars and become the dominant player in car-making as cars become more electric. And so the value of these companies in the market is largely derived from expectations around how much money they’ll make in the future, as opposed to how much money they’ve made in the past. It’s not obvious to me how, if he bought Twitter, he would then be better able to get his message out, or better able to tell a story in a way that is good for Tesla and good for his economic interests. So how much do you connect Tesla’s worth to Elon Musk as a person and the way he orients himself toward the world, especially on Twitter? To talk about Musk and what the future holds for his newest acquisition, I spoke by phone with Matt Levine, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who has been comprehensively reporting on and analyzing this story over the past month in his newsletter.

The company's board and the Tesla CEO are said to be hammering out the final details of his $54.20 a share bid.

But Musk’s financing plan and the board’s willingness to entertain “constructive conversation” makes a deal more likely, according to Angelo Zino, an analyst with CFRA Research. And internally, Twitter employees have raised concerns about Musk’s potential effect on the culture. Musk took a more than 9 percent stake in Twitter earlier this year, leading to two wild weeks of back-and-forth with the company. Twitter had seemed poised to reject the Tesla CEO’s unsolicited offer of $54.20 a share for the social media platform. The two sides were discussing such details as a timeline to close a potential deal and any fees that would be paid if such an agreement later fell apart, according to the report. Musk is worth about $259 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, but much of his wealth is tied up in stock.

Tesla chief executive, the world's richest person, wins fight to take over influential social network for $44bn. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The sale caps a dizzying saga for Twitter and Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a prolific user of the social media platform.

"The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon's proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. Last week, Musk announced he had lined up the money to take Twitter private. But lack of details about how Musk would finance the deal left many doubting he was serious. Musk began accumulating Twitter shares in January. On April 4, he revealed that he'd become the company's biggest individual shareholder. Twitter's board quickly adopted a so-called "poison pill," which served essentially as a speed bump, a way to slow down Musk from acquiring more shares in the public market, as company leadership weighed the offer. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," he said in the announcement Monday.

US billionaire Elon Musk strikes a deal to buy the social media platform, ending its run as a public company.

Twitter said the deal was expected to close some time this year and was subject to the approval of Twitter stockholders and regulators. "The President has long talked about his concerns about the power of social media platforms, including Twitter and others, to spread misinformation." "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Mr Musk said in a statement following the purchase. He said it needed to be transformed as a private company in order to build trust with users and do better at serving what he calls the "societal imperative" of free speech. The outspoken Tesla chief executive has said he wanted to buy Twitter because it was not living up to its potential as a platform for "free speech". Elon Musk has clinched a deal to buy Twitter for $US44 billion ($61.4 billion), in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person.

Twitter, more than other social media platforms, fosters real-time discussion about events as they unfold. That could change now that Musk has gained ...

Musk’s description of a platform free from content moderation issues is troubling in light of the algorithmic harms caused by social media platforms. In a series of deleted tweets, Musk made several suggestions about how to change Twitter, including adding an edit button for tweets and granting automatic verification marks to premium users. As a researcher of social media platforms, I find that Musk’s ownership of Twitter and his stated reasons for buying the company raise important issues. Social media analysts talk about the half-life of content on a platform, meaning the time it takes for a piece of content to reach 50% of its total lifetime engagement, usually measured in number of views or popularity based metrics. The much shorter half life illustrates the central role Twitter has come to occupy in driving real-time conversations as events unfold. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, acquired Twitter in a US$44 billion deal on April 25, 2022, 11 days after announcing his bid for the company.

The deal brings arguably the internet's most influential platform under the control of one of the world's richest people.

“He is only offering to buy Twitter because Twitter is the place where Musk is most popular.” During his interview on Thursday, shortly after saying he would want to preserve as much legal speech as possible and would be hesitant to remove users from the platform, Musk said another one of his major priorities would be to limit “the spam and scam bots, and the bot armies that are [on] Twitter”, accounts which, while certainly a nuisance, are nonetheless legal speech. “Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter is a desperate attempt for Musk to garner attention,” David Trainer, CEO of research firm New Constructs, said in an investment note on Thursday. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation.” Musk has repeatedly stressed in recent days that his goal is to bolster free speech on the platform and work to “unlock” Twitter’s “extraordinary potential”. “This is not a way to make money,” Musk said at the TED conference. The “pill,” known as a shareholder rights plan, would have prevented Musk from purchasing more than 15 per cent of Twitter shares on the open market by triggering a provision to allow Twitter to sell more shares, diluting the value of Musk’s holdings. Since then, Musk and the company had engaged in something of a corporate battle over the future of the company, with Musk briefly agreeing to join the board, later announcing an acquisition offer, and Twitter looking to stop Musk’s acquisition with a corporate maneuver known as a “poison pill”, which is meant to block takeover efforts. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth,” Trump said. “The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing,” said Twitter board chair Bret Taylor in a statement. “Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

Before Twitter accepted Musk's $44 billion offer, he has floated numerous ideas for changing the social network. Not all of those proposals have been ...

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The Tesla and Space-X C-E-O wants to make twitter a free speech platform. The board of Twitter confirmed its accepted Elon Musk's takeover bid, saying the offer ...

“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Mr Musk saidin a statement announcing the deal. The board of Twitter confirmed its accepted Elon Musk’s takeover bid, saying the offer has “tremendous potential” that he would unlock.

Elon Musk has agreed to buy Twitter for $61.4b using one of the biggest leveraged buyout deals in history to take the 16-year-old social networking platform ...

Twitter on April 15 adopted a shareholder rights plan – a measure known as a poison pill – to fend off unwanted bidders. The 50-year-old billionaire himself mused at a TED event the day it was announced that even he had doubts about its prospects. The deal was unanimously approved by the company’s board and is expected to be completed later this year. After rejecting an invitation to join the company’s board, he offered to take Twitter private on April 14. Investors will receive $US54.20 for each Twitter share they own, the company said in a statement. The price is 38 per cent more than the stock’s close on April 1, the last business day before Mr Musk disclosed a significant stake in the company, sparking a share rally.

Twitter has agreed to accept a $61 billion takeover bid from billionaire Elon Musk in a deal that's set to shake up the social media platform as we know it.

The transaction will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world's richest person.

To make his takeover a success, the billionaire will need to transfer two things from the world's dominant electric vehicle maker to his new toy: money and ...

But Twitter is a different beast to Tesla or SpaceX. At Tesla, Musk has a clear goal of building the world’s top EV company. Twitter, on the other hand, is a business that has appeared to be declining for years. Next to Tesla, SpaceX and even The Boring Company, Twitter looks like a vanity project at best, and a major distraction at worst. From a purely financial perspective, this looks to be an odd trade-off. Fitting all or even parts of them together in the way Jonas suggests could be hugely successful. These are all businesses operating on the bleeding edge of technology, with global (intergalactic?) ambitions and hugely disruptive models.

The former United States president — who Twitter slapped with a lifetime ban in 2021 — says he will not rejoin if his account is reinstated and will instead ...

"Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Last week, the billionaire said he had lined up financing. "Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Last week, the billionaire said he had lined up financing. "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Mr Musk said in a statement released by Twitter on Monday. Musk, a self-proclaimed "free-speech absolutist," is, and analysts have speculated that he may reinstate accounts of Mr Trump and allies who have fallen afoul of the rules. "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth," Mr Trump said, according to FoxNews.com, adding that Mr Musk was a "good man" who would improve the service. Mr Trump was— and impeached for a second time — following theby his supporters, with the company citing the "risk of further incitement of violence". "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Mr Musk said in a statement released by Twitter on Monday. Musk, a self-proclaimed "free-speech absolutist," is, and analysts have speculated that he may reinstate accounts of Mr Trump and allies who have fallen afoul of the rules. "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth," Mr Trump said, according to FoxNews.com, adding that Mr Musk was a "good man" who would improve the service. Mr Trump was— and impeached for a second time — following theby his supporters, with the company citing the "risk of further incitement of violence".

Musk intends to make Twitter's algorithms open source to increase trust, defeat the spambots, and authenticate all humans using Twitter.

“Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Musk.

The world's richest man Elon Musk will be the new sole owner of Twitter after an agreement was reached for a $US44 billion ($61 billion) takeover that would ...

Please click below to help InDaily continue to uncover the facts. A concern that Twitter’s board weighed was that unless it sought to negotiate a deal with Mr Musk, many shareholders could back him in a tender offer, the sources said. Musk’s insistence that his bid for Twitter would be his “best and final” emerged as a hurdle in the deal negotiations, sources said. Many Twitter shareholders reached out to the company after Mr Musk outlined a detailed financing plan for his bid on Thursday and urged it not to let the opportunity for a deal slip away, Reuters reported earlier on Sunday. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said. In a statement announcing the deal, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said he was looking forward to introducing changes on the social media platform to make it “better than ever”.

Musk has pinned his offer for the social media company on the need to protect free speech. At $61 billion, it's an expensive stand to take.

Musk has pinned his offer on the need to protect free speech. Or perhaps one of the platform’s biggest users just wants to own it. This is not the description of a flourishing business. He is a prolific tweeter with nearly 84 million followers, who uses Twitter as a source of publicity for his companies. No matter how chaotic his actions, they believe the billionaire Tesla boss has secret plans too brilliant for the rest of the world to understand. Parsing his $US44 billion ($61.4 billion) deal to take social media platform Twitter private requires a similar level of faith.

There is every chance that Twitter's board will have extracted an improved offer or terms from Elon Musk as an announcement on a deal is expected later on ...

According to the media outlet, both sides met on Sunday to discuss the proposal - and the social network "is more likely than before to seek to negotiate". Musk argues that the social network needs to be taken private in order to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech. He has offered to buy the social network for $43bn (£33.5bn) and placed the right to uphold free speech at the forefront of his argument for a deal, accusing Twitter of failing its users to date.

When Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion 10 days ago, the platform didn't welcome him with open arms. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is in some ways ...

Among them is Ben Thompson, the writer of the popular newsletter Stratechery, who believes that Twitter should go private—even if that means a transformation engineered by Musk, which could mean less moderation and more acrimonious discourse, as well as a larger focus on subscriptions. Twitter’s board had to justify rejecting a generous offer, more than 10% above the company’s current stock price. On April 21, Musk said he has the funding to get this deal done quickly.

Twitter is gearing up to accept Musk's original $43 billion offer. Apparently he wasn't just trolling.

Musk first announced his offer to buy the social media company at around $54.20 per share on April 14. In premarket trading, they reached about $51.50 per share, but at the time of writing, had fallen to around $50.7. Although the deal is unconfirmed, both the Times and Reuters reported that sources tell them a deal could be finalized and made public later today. If Musk makes the purchase, Twitter would no longer be a publicly traded company, but instead, private. Important to point out though, it literally isn’t. The first amendment doesn’t protect anyone’s right to post on Twitter. Though Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, seemingly doesn’t understand that. Any moment now, a deal between between Twitter’s 11-member board and Elon Musk could be announced.

Musk has led his companies to success through a variety of means. There are a few specific rules he rigorously enforces that have worked well for his ...

Musk has also made his belief in the free flow of information clear through other public means. As far as big meetings go, Musk believes that they’re largely a waste of time and that they should be infrequent. The rules, as detailed by Your Tango, often pertain to meetings, productivity and the free flow of information.

Twitter is nearing a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk, two people with knowledge of the situation said, a move that would unite the world's richest man with ...

Turn of events comes days after the billionaire unveiled his $43 billion bid for the social-media company.

Mr. Musk said he sees no way Twitter management can get the stock to his offer price on its own, given the issues in the business and a persistent inability to correct them. Mr. Musk has indicated that if the current bid fails, he could sell his stake, which totals more than 9%. Mr. Musk already has said he is considering taking his bid directly to shareholders by launching a tender offer. The firm last bought Twitter shares in February and owns about 950,000 overall, which accounts for about 11% of its portfolio. “I’m not sure what that can be at this stage besides finding a higher bid," he said. Twitter had been expected to rebuff the offer, which Mr. Musk made April 14 without saying how he would pay for it, and put in place a so-called poison pill to block him from increasing his stake. Remove some to bookmark this image. The company is attempting to do so again at this year’s annual meeting set for May 25. He also pledged to solve the free-speech issues he sees as plaguing the platform and the country more broadly, whether his bid succeeds or not, they said. “He is the catalyst to deliver strong operating performance at Twitter." Minneapolis-based Thrivent has a roughly 0.4% stake in Twitter worth $160 million and is also a Tesla shareholder. The conversations between the two sides were expected to focus on issues including what Mr. Musk would pay should an agreed deal fall apart before being consummated. Assuming there isn’t a last-minute snag, the deal is expected to be announced after the market closes Monday, if not sooner.

He became the world's richest man by making electric cars through a venture that, despite being unprofitable until 18 months ago, is somehow valued at more than ...

Musk has pledged to stump up $29 billion in cash for the Twitter purchase. Part of the allure is that Musk is considered a visionary. And then there is the time involved. Tesla made $7.6 billion last year after making $1 billion the previous year. He is one of its most prolific and high-profile users, with about 83 million followers. Remember the time he sparked up a joint during a Joe Rogan podcast?

Last week, Twitter offered several media interviews with Kara Hinesley, its head of public policy for Australia and New Zealand. This week, with Elon Musk ...

In other campaign news, Morrison had to slum it with the media on the press plane after his RAAF jet sprung a leak in Townsville’s torrential rain. He spent six years in London working for The Guardian.Connect via Is there such thing as a positive disruption – after all, who doesn’t want to hear how the goal of ensuring “healthy conversations” fits with Musk’s declarations about the importance of free speech? Former Lion Nathan global chief executive Rob Murray, who was brought onto the brewery’s advisory panel in 2019 as advisory chairman. Old timers cannot remember the last time this happened. However, we do acknowledge a lot of people are obsessed with the microblogging social media platform.

He's a space rocket mogul, an electric car salesman, a madcap inventor, and a celebrity entrepreneur. Oh, and he's the world's richest person.

Mr Musk also agrees to step down as chairman of Tesla's board. With the purchase of Twitter, he has direct control over a platform populated by millions of users and global leaders. - 2018: Mr Musk's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. On climate issues, Mr Musk has argued for a carbon tax to better reflect the cost of fossil fuels to the environment, and publicly criticised then president Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. This is the side that courts controversy and enjoys the adulation of his numerous followers, who appear to like his edgy, irreverent persona and are inspired by his bold visions for the future. Mr Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans while declaring himself a "moderate" and a "socialist". - 2021: Top economists accuse Mr Musk of market manipulation by using his Twitter presence to pump up the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - April 2022: Mr Musk Becomes Twitter's largest shareholder and then makes a successful offer to buy the social network - 2008: Becomes CEO and product architect of Tesla after staging a boardroom coup that ousts Martin Eberhard, who co-founded the company in 2003 with Marc Tarpenning - 1995: Receives Bachelor in Physics and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania And the move comes as the world is keenly aware of the potential for data mining, election hacking, and other campaigns of disinformation and influence. Elon Musk has done, or become, all these things in the space of a decade.

Billionaire's buyout of social media company reignites debate about leaving the platform but is it too soon to act – and where could you go?

The easiest way to do that is through the “Settings and privacy” tab in the menu of the Twitter app. It really comes down to why you used Twitter in the first place. It’s partially why Musk might have been motivated to buy Twitter rather than starting his own social media site, like others, including Trump, have attempted. If you’ve stuck with what many people call “the hell site” for this long, it’s questionable whether Musk taking it over will be some sort of final straw. The Guardian asked Twitter what data was retained once a user permanently deletes their account. Musk has suggested he is a “free speech absolutist”.

Musk's tweets badgering Twitter's board raised important corporate governance questions about a board's purpose and whether its members should own shares in ...

Academic researchers on effective corporate governance in the 1970s argued that outside directors should avoid owning many shares in the companies they oversee to maintain objectivity. We found the median stake was less than 0.01%, and all but a handful of directors held less than 1% of the company’s stock. Musk’s arguments harked back to takeover bids from the 1980s in which activist investors – or “corporate raiders” – would argue that executives’ interests did not align with those of shareholders. And the social dynamics involved in the board also make it difficult for directors to speak up and oppose other directors. In a separate study involving face-to-face interviews with directors, we were consistently told that directors take their board service seriously and operate with their companies’ best interests in mind. Musk, who on April 25, 2022, sealed a deal to buy Twitter for US$44 billion, criticized board members for owning almost no shares of the company they oversee.

From The Simpsons to Iron Man, everyone's favourite billionaire has been making pop culture cameos to poke fun at how nice and smart he is.

Because nothing in a script will be funnier than the time he tried to demonstrate how strong the glass on the Tesla Cybertruck was by having a guy smash right through it in front of a crowd. Or the time he made a April fool’s joke about Tesla going bankrupt and share prices tanked. But perhaps the most fawning example is his Simpsons episode: season 26’s The Musk Who Fell to Earth, which is truly all his, because how else to explain why this episode exists? Musk is truly the people’s billionaire, in that he has billions of dollars and he’s not a Russian oligarch no one had ever heard of before February. “I’ve got an idea for an electric jet,” he tells Tony Stark in his 10-second scene in Iron Man 2, billionaire playboy to billionaire playboy. (On that note, check out the dedicated Wikipedia page for Donald Trump’s cameos.)

Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. UPDATE: In his first tweet since the news became official, Musk posted an excerpt of the Twitter press release, quoting him as saying: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. "Once completed, the richest person in the world will own arguably the most influential social platform in the world, though from a business and user standpoint Twitter is significantly smaller than companies like Facebook or TikTok," says The Hollywood Reporter's Alex Weprin." In a tweet hours before the deal was approved, Musk tweeted: "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."

After weeks of speculation, Elon Musk will buy social media platform Twitter for $44 billion, PBS NewsHour spoke to three experts in the fields of social ...

And I think we’re going to see that more and more around the world and that’s going to create constraints on his ability to change the rules internationally, too. And so I think that as he kind of relaxes the rules, let’s say, the kind of harm that people see here may be less evident than what people see in other countries where it’s already hard to get the platform to enforce its rules. So, that globally could be even worse, and just over time, I think people will just find it less and less valuable as a place to go if it doesn’t have those kinds of constraints set for it.” We know that Facebook has dramatically under-invested in human moderation in languages other than English. So, if you live outside the U.S. and English is not your first language, your speech on the platform is much more likely to be moderated by robots essentially, than by humans, and robots are not very good at detecting things like satire or nuance or humor, which means that that leads to over-removal of legitimate content by people outside the U.S., and then under-removal of harmful content that does violate terms of service. And if they do, I think people will start to really kind of become frustrated with Twitter. They’ll see it as I think many people saw it five, six years ago, which was a place for Nazis and white supremacists, and others who really just want to use and weaponize the platform for propaganda.” But I think another kind of possibility would be for him to essentially move in a direction of [understanding] that free speech is not just about the speaker, but it’s also about audiences. But he should adopt essentially a human rights approach and say, “This platform is about expanding everybody’s access to information, everybody’s right to freedom of expression, and I want this platform to be the best that it can be in doing that.” David Kaye: “One, is he has talked about transparency and I think there is a lot of value to opening up Twitter — and all of the platforms — to greater disclosure about how they make their rules and how they enforce them. If Elon comes in and changes the way the rules are adopted and the way they’re enforced I think it can just undermine people’s interest in using the platform. But I also think that he’ll figure out pretty quickly that Twitter has rules in order to expand freedom of expression and he’ll probably come to appreciate them the more he’s there and sort of working on making it a better platform.” But to me, this isn’t about Elon Musk. It’s about the fact that we just should not live in a world where one person making the decision to purchase one website or app can have such a profound impact on millions of people’s speech and safety. Roy Gutterman: “There are plenty of other businesses and entities that have single owners or private owners or answer to shareholders.