Reporter Tang Yitao
Edited by Gao Yulei
"Do you think Twitter follows the principles of free speech?"
On March 25, Elon Musk launched a vote on Twitter for his 80 million followers. Of the 2 million votes, more than 70 percent answered "no."
Image source: Twitter@elonmusk
Musk describes himself as an "absolutist of free speech." He has been criticizing the social media platform's rhetoric policies on Twitter. This became even more apparent after Twitter banned former President Donald Trump last year: "Many people will be very unhappy with the high-tech products on the West Coast because they are already de facto arbiters of free speech."
In the comments section of the vote, Musk also warned: "The result of the vote is very important, [so please] vote with caution." ”
Really important. Twenty days after the tweet was sent, Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash. The deal cost $43.9 billion (about 274 billion yuan), 18 percent higher than Twitter's closing price the day before.
Musk was at one point Twitter's largest shareholder. According to regulatory documents disclosed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk quietly bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter in mid-March. The day after the news was revealed, both Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and current CEO Parag Agrawal confirmed musk would join the board.
However, just 6 days later, Musk said he turned down the position. This may be related to a previous agreement. Under the agreement, Musk will only receive up to 14.9% of Twitter's shares during or after his 2024 term of office after joining the board. In other words, by joining the board, Musk won't be able to take full control of Twitter in the short term.
That seems to be Musk's usual approach. Musk is not the founder of Tesla, and within four years of joining Tesla as a Series A investor, the two founders have left the company. Eventually, Musk became the fourth CEO in Tesla's history.
In a letter to Bret Taylor, Twitter's chairman of the board, Musk wrote: "I invested in Twitter because I believe it has the potential to become a platform for free speech around the world... In its current form, the company will neither thrive nor serve this social need. Twitter needs to transform into a private company. ”
Musk's letter to Twitter Board Chairman Brett Taylor |Education: SEC
In response, Twitter launched the "Poison Pill Program" with the intent to block Musk's hostile takeover. The official name of the poison pill plan is called "equity dilution anti-takeover measures", when a company encounters a hostile takeover, especially when the acquirer's shareholding reaches 10% to 20%, the company's original shareholders can obtain a large number of shares in the company at a lower price, thereby inflating the acquirer's price. In this acquisition, the share trigger share of poison pill plan is 15%.
Over the past 20 years, the Pill Program has been one of the most popular anti-takeover measures, with more than 2,000 companies in the United States adopting the Pill Program. But Twitter is not just dealing with an ordinary rich man, but the world's richest man. In Forbes magazine's real-time list of the world's richest people, Musk ranked first with a net worth of $269.5 billion (about 1,717.3 billion yuan). At TED 2022, Musk also told the audience: "He can afford it (acquiring Twitter)." ”
But whether he can really afford it is indeed a question. Musk's offer of Twitter is a cash buyout, and although he is the world's richest man, most of his assets come from Tesla and SpaceX stocks. Musk sold more than $15 billion (95.6 billion yuan) of Tesla stock last year to pay a tax. That's about 10 percent of his total tesla stake.
Musk's bid has also sparked interest from other companies, such as private equity firm Thomas Bravo, who could engage in a bidding war with Musk. Musk is no longer Twitter's largest shareholder, squeezing it off the list by asset manager Vanguard Group, which currently holds 10.3 percent of Twitter.
Another uncertainty lies in regulation. Alma Angotti, a compliance expert at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), told the British media The Guardian that the SEC may next investigate whether Musk really has enough money to buy Twitter. In fact, Musk is facing a lawsuit initiated by a former Twitter shareholder at this moment. Under relevant U.S. securities laws, when an investor owns more than 5% of a company, it must be disclosed to the public within 10 days. Musk violated the law by holding a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter and disclosing it 10 days late.
Why is Musk doing this?
According to Musk himself, it is for freedom of speech, for a better future for mankind. At TED 2022, Musk replied: "My strong intuition tells me that having a public platform that is the most trusted and widely inclusive is extremely important for the future of civilization." But I don't care about economics at all. ”
In the early days of Tesla and SpaceX, there was no shortage of people who thought he was a liar. The unprecedented success of these two companies has silenced some people, but this does not mean that Musk's statements are all reasonable. On social networks, the more inflammatory the discourse, the more often it can gain the attention of the public, and Musk's 80 million followers have confirmed this to some extent.
Unlike the traditional image of a CEO who speaks discreetly, Musk has always been known for his eye-catching speeches and unexpected behavior. In 2018, he announced on Twitter that he would take Tesla private for a whopping $420 price. It's a joke that Tesla's stock price in 2018 was only around $70, while 420 means "smoking marijuana" in American slang.
It was an expensive joke, and the SEC charged Musk with securities fraud. He eventually spent $20 million (about 127 million yuan) to settle with the SEC and was forced to resign as chairman of Tesla's board.
Karen Kornbluh, a senior researcher and technologist at the Marshall Foundation in Germany, has been more outspoken about the acquisition of Twitter. She told The Guardian: "He (Musk) has a huge platform that he sustains by doing something unexpected and seemingly crazy. "He often benefits from chaos."
Whether Musk really wants to buy Twitter or not, he always shows his strong influence on Twitter. Before joining Twitter, he was already somehow a "management" of Twitter. In essence, Twitter's value to Musk is similar to that of former U.S. President Donald Trump. For years, the former president continued to post inflammatory words on Twitter until he was banned too far away. He tried to move to other platforms, but never received the same attention on Twitter again.
Compared to social networking companies such as Facebook and Instagram, Twitter is small. But for business leaders, politicians, and anyone else who wants to have a voice, Twitter is a great voice out there. This enormous power is bad when it comes to a company. So what happens when it gets into someone's hands?
What if Musk really controls Twitter?
The nonprofit Muslim Advocate expressed their unease. Sumayyah Waheed, its senior policy adviser, told The Guardian: "Hate speech online is a serious threat to marginalized communities in the country, and it often translates into offline attacks. ”
Conceptual freedom of speech is always much better to achieve than in practice, especially when its criteria of judgment depend only on the judgment of an individual billionaire. The concept of a platform where anyone can post any information is more like describing the dark web than Twitter.
According to Adi Robertson, a reporter for The Verge in the American tech media, Musk's understanding of free speech is at best vague. After studying Musk's remarks and previous efforts by Twitter's leadership to address global speech laws, she concluded that if Musk succeeds in acquiring the social media platform, he may wake up.
Yishan Wong, the former CEO of Reddit, expressed a similar view: "If Elon takes over Twitter, he will enter a world of pain." But he didn't know. ”
Musk has always been an industrial guy, he's never run a social media business. But it just so happens that Mr. Huang, who was the CEO of Reddit, reveals a truth: Every big social media company wants users to stop those stupid bullshit fights so they can spend their time writing more features than ruling on silly little fights.
Musk is a generation that grew up with the internet. For them, the Internet represents freedom, frontiers, technological optimism, and the human spirit. But Huang noted that Musk doesn't understand the internet today, what "freedom of self-argument" means today: "It's not that this principle is no longer valid, but that the actual issues surrounding upholding it are different because the world has changed." ”
Huang later added that in today's world, it is naïve to think that "more free speech is the best means of countering bad speech."
Without consequences (e.g., speaking on the Internet), humans are always behaving badly. The most recent example is the former presidential believers who stormed Congress at Trump's instigation. In exchange, Twitter banned him. "The older generation of Gen X tech giants is right next to you... And from this all the wrong conclusions about social platform management are happening. Huang Yishan said this to Musk on Twitter.
Nine years ago, another billionaire, Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos, bought one of america's most influential newspapers, The Washington Post. Compared to the acquisition of Twitter, both appear to be business leaders in the tech industry intent on stepping into the public discourse space, but they are distinctly different. One is the traditional media with stable positions and values, and the other is a chaotic and ever-changing social opinion platform. The best example of this clash of values is a recent comment by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post with the headline "Let's Pray That Elon Musk Won't Win the Deal."
Image source: Twitter@PostOpinions
Three years before Bezos bought The Washington Post, Musk had just arrived on Twitter. This was his first tweet: "Please ignore the previous tweets, which were sent by someone pretending to be me :) ”
Image source: Twitter@elonmusk
This is the online world, with some truth, a lot of lies, and endless quarrels. Will Musk in 2022 be willing to defend the freedom of speech of those who pretended to be it in 2010? This may be a paradox.