Elon Musk is determined to buy out Twitter. What changes will he make?
/img/iea/PrO31gEy6q/f6690bf1-9fc1-4350-aa5d-cb729687421e.jpg)
Elon Musk looks set to unlock the great potential of Twitter, as he had termed it in his offer letter, and will pursue its buyout.
Earlier this week, we had reported the details of the 'poison-pill' plan that the Board of Directors at Twitter had activated to prevent a hostile takeover of the social media company. Even though Musk accused the directors of not being aligned with shareholders' interests, it seemed unlikely that he would drag the matter to court. Instead, the move forced Musk to reveal his intentions about the company.
Putting money where the mouth is
After giving veiled threats of divesting from the company, if his offer was rejected, Musk had to now provide details of how planned to acquire the company, at least to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In there lay, the details of how planned to finance the deal which includes $21 billion of Musk's own money and $25.5 billion of debt financing from Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions. This has now forced the Twitter board to begin a "comprehensive and careful" review of the bid.
Bloomberg estimates that Musk has around $3 billion in cash after he spent over $2.6 billion of his liquid assets to buy up a 9.1 percent stake in Twitter. To raise the remaining amount that he will contribute, Musk will likely need to sell stock either from Tesla or SpaceX or bring another partner in and share equity with him.
Either way, once this is out of the way, Musk will ring in changes on the platform itself, where he has been bubbling with a lot of ideas.
What changes will be made?
Reducing content moderation is one of the top priority areas for Musk and he looks to allow people to talk more freely on the platform. Musk has outlined his idea in this tweet.
A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2022
Apart from this, reducing the bot scams on the platform while authenticating humans is also something Musk is keen about as seen in his last night's tweet.
And authenticate all real humans
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2022
Also, Musk will move to install the publicly popular Edit button, even as the intricacies of how it works exactly still need to be ironed out.
Do you want an edit button?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2022
Musk wants to open source the platform's algorithm as was confirmed by this in a response to this tweet.
Will Twitter be the same after all this?