Everything You Need To Know About Elon Musk 'Buying' Twitter

On April 4th, 2022, it was reported that Elon Musk had purchased some stock in Twitter. 73 million shares, or about 2.89 billion dollars worth, to be exact. To put this simply, that means he owns 9.2% of the company’s value. So while he isn’t an owner and can’t directly change Twitter on his own, the rest of Twitter must appease him or risk losing all that value. Basically, Elon is now a dictator of sorts, and he can now hide in the background of every major decision Twitter makes from here on out. Now, he’s been appointed to the board of directors, too, which is unsurprising.

The thing most worth noting about his takeover of Twitter is that he has the highest percentage of shares out of anyone, and by far. In essence, he owns more of the company’s value than the actual owners of the company. We all know Elon Musk has a lot of notoriety on Twitter and seems to be having the time of his life on the platform, but many people still can’t wrap our minds around why Elon did this. Then again, we can’t explain why Elon does anything, like that time he smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast or guest-starred on Rick and Morty as Elon Tusk.

It’s believed Elon Musk purchased the majority of Twitter to change the platform’s stance on censorship. In typical Elon style, he set up a Twitter poll where he asked his followers if Twitter was adhering to freedom of speech principles, and a majority said no; this is believed to be where this scheme was hatched. Often, things that constitute harassment or misinformation can result in a ban from Twitter. Is this actually a bad thing? Yes and no.

Sometimes, you may find your meme being flagged because someone doesn’t understand sarcasm. Other times, someone cyberbullies a child into crippling depression, then gets angry when Twitter staff step in and put an end to it. Everyone’s definition of freedom of speech is different here, and censorship can be both a blessing and a curse. Ideally, it should depend on the severity of the Tweet at hand, and whether it was unintentional or deliberate. Elon’s fans don’t think this distinction is important, and they want Twitter to be a completely uncensored realm of chaos. Surprisingly, most people are rejoicing at this news because of their desire for pure, unfiltered, blatantly insulting freedom of speech. But even they are sorely mistaken about what this buyout of Twitter actually means for the social media platform.

There are a couple other theories as to what this could mean. Lots of people in the Dogecoin fandom, for example, believe Dogecoin will become the new currency of the platform, which is obviously very unlikely. Others are expecting a Doge-themed redesign, and lots of memes have already been made about what could happen. Knowing Elon Musk’s history, it’s possible he’d one day institute a platform-wide prank, since nobody can actually tell him no. But the most believable scenario is not a pleasant one.

Mixing the absurdly rich and social media is not something that has historically worked out. Think of Mark Zuckerberg, for example. Obviously, that setup failed more than just a little. The idea that a huge billionaire would purchase a social media platform and then use it to push their own agenda makes a lot more sense than them purchasing it to benevolently de-censor the internet. Already, people are making jokes about Twitter being overrun with Tesla ads and Elon’s tweets showing up as promoted material everywhere you look; while the dystopia we currently live in isn’t that ridiculous, there’s technically nothing stopping it from happening, which is a troubling thought. But for now, all we can do is post a bunch of memes about Elon Musk while we still can, because our Twitter meme supply may be changing in an unpredictable way in the not-so-distant future.