Disgusted with Twitter's new CEO?! Musk became the largest shareholder overnight, what is his intention?

Producer / Sina Technology(ID:techsina)

What exactly is Musk trying to do with his massive purchase of Twitter stock? He didn't say it himself, and the outside world didn't know. But at least it's clear that he doesn't like the current Twitter management.

Tesla CEO Musk's regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) shows that he bought 73.487 million shares of Twitter's common stock through his trust in mid-March; he currently holds a 9.2 percent stake in the social media and has become Twitter's largest shareholder. Affected by this news, Twitter's stock price soared by nearly 30% at one point.

By comparison, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey holds 2.25 percent of the shares, just a quarter of Musk's. Dorsey is a close friend of Musk's, and it's unclear whether Dorsey knew about or supported Musk's massive acquisition of Twitter shares.

Regulatory documents also show that Musk's current Twitter stock is worth $3 billion. But this is only a fraction of his personal assets. According to the latest Tesla stock price calculations, his wealth has exceeded $273 billion, far behind the world's richest man Bezos, even if it is a full acquisition of Twitter (market value of $40 billion) is not difficult.

Although this little money is nothing to Musk, he is not a person who invests everywhere. And Twitter isn't a stock with a high return on investment either. Over the past two years, Twitter's stock price has performed sluggishly, accumulating losses of nearly $1.5 billion.

This can't help but make people wonder what Musk wants to do with a large stake in Twitter. He himself has not yet provided an explanation for this. In Musk's style of doing things, he's clearly not content to be a purely financial investor.

At least one thing is for sure, Musk is a heavy Twitter user, which is the social platform he is most obsessed with and the only social platform to devote his energy to. Since Musk publicly denigrated Zuckerberg in 2018, he has withdrawn from Facebook and Instagram platforms, allowing Tesla to abandon social marketing on these two platforms.

Although his personal schedule is very busy, Musk is active on Twitter almost every day. Unlike other business leaders' flat-handed PR tweets (many OF the CEO's social media accounts are actually run by the PR department), his tweets are maverick and personal, and a lot of the unbridled content is obviously written by Musk himself.

Musk has more than 80 million followers on Twitter, and a single tweet can stir thousands of fans and send cryptocurrencies and a stock price soaring. And he also enjoys the influence of this "king of Twitter" very much. It is no exaggeration to say that after the bombing of former US President Trump, he is the most influential non-entertainment Internet celebrity on this global social media platform.

Because of his unscrupulous tweets, Musk has caused big trouble. In August 2018, against the backdrop of Tesla's stock price being shorted and continuing to decline, Musk suddenly announced through a tweet that he would privatize Tesla, and even gave a specific purchase price of $420. Immediately after the tweet was posted, Tesla's stock price soared, causing heavy losses to the bears.

But later investigations revealed that Musk had not negotiated his own privatization funding sources at all, and that he had only met with the Middle East sovereign wealth fund and had not even agreed on it. Moreover, the CEO of a listed company hastily announced a major transaction on the social platform, which does not comply with the regulatory requirements for information disclosure. The SEC therefore launched an investigation into Musk.

Under the subsequent settlement between the SEC and Musk, he was forced to resign as Tesla's chairman and fined $40 million, while accepting tweets involving important information about the company must be pre-trialed by the company's lawyers. However, Musk has at least retained the position of TESLA CEO, and only in the past three years has Tesla's stock price soared several times, and he has become the world's richest man.

Putting aside his personal obsession with Twitter, is there any other intention for Musk to buy So much Twitter stock?

Because Musk has only recently bought a large number of Twitter shares, he has not yet joined the Twitter board. But yesterday there was also news that Twitter will appoint Musk as a director of the company. As Twitter's largest individual shareholder, it was only natural to invite him to join.

So, now that Musk holds a large stake in Twitter, is he hoping to push Twitter adjustment and change with his own will?

It's also safe to note that Musk dislikes The new Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, who took office last December, and has publicly mocked and questioned Agawal on Twitter several times.

Dorsey, The last CEO of Twitter, is a close friend that Musk admires. In 2020, Musk also publicly supported Dorsey. At that time, because Twitter's stock price and performance continued to be sluggish, institutional investors were dissatisfied with Dorse as the CEO of both Twitter and Square listed companies, and continued to pressure Dorse to resign and let Twitter go.

In December, Dorsey finally resigned as Twitter's CEO and announced his retirement from the board, completely fading out of Twitter operations and focusing on Square's CEO role. Twitter's former CTO Agarwal took over as CEO.

But Musk seems very unhappy with the new Indian-born CEO. He publicly mocked the new CEO on Twitter, even using old historical photos of Stalin and Yezov, P put on the heads of Agaval and Doshi, and alluded to Twitter's drive away Dorsey.

Maybe Musk doesn't like Agarwal because of the latter's left-leaning stance and dissatisfaction with Twitter's content moderation standards. Agarwal has tweeted that Twitter's role is not bound by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Over the past two years, Twitter has taken a clear stand to ban the accounts of former U.S. President Donald Trump and remove disinformation that questioned election fraud and covid-19 and vaccines.

Legally speaking, Agarwal was right. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is governed by public government power, not private media and Internet platforms. Moreover, Section 230 of the Federal Communications Law also guarantees the control of Internet platforms over the content and users of their own platforms.

But Musk is a libertarian who believes in an "open market of opinion" and opposes any measure to restrict free speech. At the end of March, Musk sent a series of tweets questioning Twitter's free speech standards, demanding that Twitter publish its own algorithms and even publicly responding to fan suggestions that he would consider forming a new social media platform.

Intriguingly, when Musk asked Twitter to publish his algorithm, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Dorsey also publicly forwarded support, "The choice of which algorithm to use should be made public to everyone."

But it should be emphasized that the regulatory filing shows that Musk bought the shares before March 14, before publicly questioning the free speech standards that criticize Twitter. That is, he has bought nearly 10% of Twitter's shares before publicly questioning the opacity of Twitter's algorithm on the platform.

In addition, Musk has also strongly criticized Twitter's investment in the NFT field this year. In January, Twitter announced that it would provide an NFT profile picture under the leadership of its new CEO. Musk publicly stated at the time that "Twitter's move is both upsetting and a waste of engineering resources."

If he dislikes Twitter's new management so much, why would Musk buy so many Twitter shares? This is even more imaginative.

Musk is known to be a highly controlling business leader. Strictly speaking, he is not the founder of Tesla, but as an investor, he entered the Tesla Series A financing and took the position of Tesla chairman. Later, Musk continued to chase Tesla and control enough voting rights. Five years after Tesla was founded, Musk eventually ousted the two co-founders and took on the CEO position himself. Of course, no one can question tesla's current brilliance, which is entirely a credit to Musk.

If Musk continues to increase his stake in Twitter stock and has enough voting power, he can certainly force Twitter to move in the direction he wants to see, such as making his algorithm public or even adjusting the criteria for censorship. Of course, removing Agarwal's CEO position may be musk's hope.

The news of Musk's acquisition of Twitter stock has made many conservatives in the United States have a lot of wild ideas. Trump loyalist Michael Flynn came out and called on Musk to push Twitter back to those who "support America First and Trump."

After all, Twitter is only worth $40 billion, and Musk is now worth more than $270 billion, and it's not too difficult to buy Twitter. Moreover, he does not need to take out a wholesale acquisition to control enough voting power.

WedBush analyst Dan Ives believes Musk's stake may just be the beginning of a broad dialogue with Twitter's board and management, which may eventually lead him to actively participate in Twitter and even play a more proactive shareholder role.

After the announcement of the shareholding, Musk tweeted: "Oh Hi Lol" seems to be in a pretty good mood.

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