An 11-day long fight between the world’s richest person and one of the most beloved social media platforms has come to a close: Elon Musk is buying Twitter.
The deal’s terms haven’t changed — Musk will pay $44 billion, that’ll be $54.20/share — to acquire the site. Twitter originally didn’t take Musk’s deal seriously. In fact, the Board even imposed a “poison pill” to prevent Musk from acquiring more than 15% of the company.
In response, Musk reportedly planned to tender an offer in the market, but that all changed once he secured $46.5 billion in financing. That financing put the writing, Elon’s once-thought-to-be impossible takeover, on the wall.
What happens next is a little more unclear: Twitter has accepted the term of the deal, but it was unclear how the financing scheme or go-private deal would be structured. Musk indicated in a TED Talk that he would like to bring as many investors into the privately-traded Twitter as possible.
What is certain is more uncertainty (and change, for that matter): Musk has made known his ambitions to “solve free-speech issues” which are plaguing the platform (and the world.) Musk has underscored his desire to reduce the amount of content moderation as part of his takeover plan. After the announcement was made that Musk would acquire the company, he tweeted: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
However, the term “free speech” has become attached to a tenuous discourse about the kinds of conversations which are acceptable or safe for people to have online. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation has indicated, there are legitimate concerns about Musk’s Twitter ending anonymous/pseudonymous accounts and reducing control over privacy. The NAACP has indicated its support for Musk’s free speech stance, whilst also underscoring its worries about “Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech.”
Rest assured, there will likely be lots of turbulence and turnover at Twitter in the coming weeks. The current leadership is unlikely to remain once the deal closes “in [the] next six months” and though leadership has stressed that there were “no layoffs ‘at this time'”, employees will likely be packing their bag. A healthy portion of that turnover might be ideological in nature, which is a reason why Twitter “locked down all product upgrades” according to Bloomberg.
Some change might be healthy for Twitter, which has lagged the broader market since it IPOed. Even today, investors seemed to be in disbelief that such a deal might happen: the stock sat below its buyout price heading into afterhours. $TWTR stock sat at $51.86 in afterhours, a 4.5% discount to Musk’s sticker price.