Elon M Elon Musk's plan finally came true: on the morning of April 25, EST, Twitter's board of directors unanimously approved and accepted Musk's acquisition and privatization offer. The social networking company, founded in 2007, will sell it wholly owned by Musk, a tech giant and the world's richest man with nine companies, including Tesla, SpaceX and StarChain, for $54.20 per share and a total deal size of about $44 billion.
This was undoubtedly a pre-publicized acquisition: from Musk's "secret report" to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 14 to buy a 9.2% stake in Twitter for $2.89 billion; to the "revamping Twitter" that he continued to set off on Twitter for more than 20 days; and then to the public opinion war that violated U.S. securities trading laws and delayed his stake in Twitter until April 4. Manipulated Twitter's stock price since 2018' rare growth; then Musk and Twitter's board of directors around the board seat of the hypocrisy and mutual temptation, until throwing out the takeover offer, threatening never to accept failure, encountering Twitter board "poison pill plan" sniper, two weeks of eerie silence and secret business, and finally The Twitter board surrendered and accepted everything Musk had set.
It is infinitely closer to the true meaning of a "blitzkrieg" than Russia's military campaign against Ukraine.
What's even more unusual is that this is the only case in the nearly 50-year history of global tech business in which a super-rich individual swallows a listed tech company.Unlike Microsoft's acquisition of the professional social networking site LinkedIn (LinkedIn), Facebook's acquisition of the chat tool WhatsApp, and Google's acquisition of Motorola, it is not that Musk won Twitter, which does not mean that Tesla, SpaceX and StarChain, which he controls, can get something from Twitter, but what Musk can personally get from Twitter. As an individual with independent capacity, $44 billion is what Musk can afford, more expensive than any tech giant in history to buy another tech giant.
And this is the source of the disturbing and dangerous atmosphere: an oligarchic figure, with wealth and the appeal of public opinion, has mastered the world's largest square of speech, and then stands at the top of the crystal column where this square stands, looking down at the densely packed noisy beings and saying: I can bring people more absolute freedom of speech.
"Freedom of speech" is a concept with a fatal temptation for people in all corners of the world. The first reaction of most people who hear these four words is flushed, bloody, or even too lazy to think about the meaning, boundaries and inherent contradictions of "freedom of speech" as a controversial vocabulary in terms of historical origins, political rights, legal definitions and social ethics. Who can oppose free speech?
But who can comfortably enjoy the "freedom of speech" that has been bought off by the world's richest man?What's more, Musk's little knowledge and vagueness about "freedom of speech" is an obvious matter. After plans to buy Twitter were announced in a high profile, Musk gave an exclusive interview to Chris Anderson at the TED conference in Vancouver. Speaking about the relationship between the takeover deal and "free speech," he said, "I think it's really important to have an inclusive free speech scene. Twitter has become a de facto town square, so it is important that people speak freely within the bounds of the law, both realistically and conceptually. ”
Regardless of the cliché that anyone who talks about free speech repeats, the mere question of "speaking freely within the confines of the law" is in natural conflict with Musk's self-proclaimed "absolute liberals of speech." If Musk pursues "absolute freedom of speech" on Twitter in the future, he will have to revise his perception of "speaking freely within the scope of the law"; if Musk acknowledges that the "scope of the law" is necessary, then he is equivalent to saying nothing;
Not to mention that it is Musk himself who often goes beyond the "scope of the law" to make "free speech", and who has paid the price and punishment for it and is dissatisfiedIn 2018, he posted hundreds of messages on Twitter about the privatization of Tesla, prompting the SEC to file a lawsuit against him. He had to accept a review of the company-related information published by Tesla's board of directors before reaching a settlement with the SEC and paying a large settlement fee.
Musk has also yet to demonstrate his respect for and protection of the free speech of others.After the announcement of the deal to buy Twitter, he posted a tweet stating that "I hope even my worst critics will remain on Twitter because that's what free speech really means." However, he himself personally canceled the Tesla sedan order of a California venture capitalist, citing a blog post in which the person claimed that Tesla's new car launch was terrible. So, how do we trust Musk? Perhaps the followers of the "Musk Cult" can wash their masters in this way: the worst critics can stay on Twitter, but Musk can reserve the right to punish them in other ways. Does that make sense?
To be sure, Twitter has not done a good job of protecting people's freedom of expression, sometimes quite badly — for example, in recent years there has been an increasingly strong tendency to reject freedom of speech in countries and people that clearly disagree with mainstream Western ideologies. This is also where it has always been in the dilemma and contradiction of its role as a "square of speech". For 15 years, the world's most important public speech community has been struggling with this contradiction and dilemma, constantly iterating its community policies and speech review mechanisms, but constantly creating new dilemmas and contradictions. However, this is not something that Elon Musk, whose perception of free speech is on par with Donald Trump's, can and is willing to solve. Musk's series of "ambitious" reforms announced after the deal to buy Twitter only made Twitter's prospects even more dubious.
For example, if he claims to "beat the garbage robot", use the "edit" button to allow people to revise their tweets, and better use short videos, videos and audio live broadcasts, then the objects he should learn in this regard are actually China's Weibo, Douyin and Kuaishou. It's already 2022, which is really not something worth writing about. For example, he said that he wanted to open up Twitter's algorithm to increase public trust, but he did not say what to do. He'll even confuse open Twitter's algorithms with twitter's open source, which is more enough to show that he doesn't have time to think deeply about what he's going to do next — and when Musk vows to say it all, in addition to once again exercising "absolute freedom of speech," he also reveals his dislike of social media algorithms based on personal will.
Musk should be the one in the world who hates social media algorithms, because algorithms will only distract him from the billions of users on Twitter.It's a common fact that algorithms locked up in black boxes push people content that seems to be of interest to them, but actually deepens their addiction, prejudice, and even hatred. But the motivation for algorithms, in addition to social media operators' desire to induce people to frequently click on the advertising content they are "interested in", also has another side of attracting users to embrace more of the world they have not actively cared about. In a way, the algorithm challenges the "supernodes" active on social media, that is, individual special users with super-large numbers of fans, whose remarks and even inflammatory actions will make the "square" of the social network one day become a dome hall where believers crawl up the stairs to worship.
In recent years, two black boxes on Twitter that can defeat algorithms and produce stronger adsorption and incitement than algorithms have emerged, one is Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, and the other is Elon Musk。 The former has used Twitter more than once to make remarks, stirring up inexplicable hatred of the American public against China, using Twitter as a tool to wield trade sanctions and technology to suppress China, and finally was officially cancelled by Twitter for inciting violent actions by supporters after losing the election. And the latter, after repeatedly publishing news through Twitter to illegally affect Tesla's stock price, manipulating the price of "alternative currencies" such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin to soar and plummet, and carrying out a "limit experiment" to seduce fans and believers in the direction he guided, and then dominating the wealth, joy and even life and death of a group of people, it is finally time to declare that he owns Twitter.
What are the people who rejoice and dance for Musk's "righteous deeds" of "open source algorithms"? When Musk manipulates wealth to take Twitter for himself, "liberates" users from the algorithm's black box, and puts it into his own black box as a supernode, will they still be happy? What are the former presidential fans who are hoping that Musk will buy Twitter and "invite" Trump back? Not to mention that Trump has announced that he will not return to Twitter to speak out, does Musk really want Trump to return? When one supernode on Twitter becomes two supernodes, what does that mean for Musk? What is the point of his "privatization" of Twitter?
Yes, Musk likes to "privatize" everything.He almost never participates in a thing, unless he wants to take it for himself, which from 2008 to 2012, he spent four years, from Tesla's investment to chairman, and finally squeezed out the founder, the whole process of completely taking tesla can be seen in the whole process. If it were not for the fact that in 2010, he had not completely controlled the overall situation of Tesla, and his wealth was not enough to independently support Tesla's operation, he would most likely not agree to Tesla's listing - from Tesla's financial difficulties in 2018, when the capital market was in jeopardy, he continued to issue "privatization" remarks.
Now, he can not seek to make Twitter profitable after taking full control of it, but he must make Twitter private with love. Only in this way can he truly enjoy an atomic bomb of his own "freedom of speech", realize his unfettered freedom, not be responsible for any laws and regulations, and even the freedom to make rules that dominate the operation of the world, and exercise and manipulate the freedom brought about by speech to determine everything in the "social position". After the news of Twitter's board of directors announcing their approval of Musk's acquisition spread, some "liberal" people in the sense of Western values claimed to leave Twitter on Twitter (the scene itself is ironic, not to mention whether they will actually leave or not), and those "conservatives" in the Western sense were immersed in the carnival of incontinence, and although most of their speech was not restricted by Twitter, they still saw this as a victory for Trump-like figures. This in itself reflects the inherent contradictions and dilemmas that Twitter is doomed to be insoluble as a social network, and neither Twitter's existing weak management team nor Musk who has reached out his hands can solve it.
Others who are caught up in inexplicable joy are "cryptocurrency" enthusiasts in China, the United States, and the rest of the world — they wishfully believe that Musk will "decentralize" with Twitter, deconstruct Twitter with DAO, NFT, and so-called Web 3 mechanisms, making Twitter a paradise for cryptocurrencies. Maybe Musk will actually do this, but the result is obvious: the decentralization dominated by "supernodes" brings more powerful centralization, which will remove any node except itself, making itself a true node, and the collection of all power, freedom, and wealth, or even the only beneficiary.
Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and immersed in the world of NFT and Web 3 in recent years, seems to have such "expectations" of Musk. "Twitter should be a protocol-level public good, not a company, but to solve this problem, Elon Musk is the only solution I trust, and I believe in his mission to expand the light of consciousness," he said in the statement. Hopefully, Dorsey will believe what he said. After all, he himself has always run Twitter as a company and returned to the CEO position in the endless court struggle of Twitter's characteristics. Musk's response to Dorsey's remarks was a simple "Yes." Twitter, which has long had the most chaotic board and the fiercest internal struggle, faced Musk's acquisition offer and was taken down in one fell swoop after only formal resistance.
The combination of "Jack Dorsey's insincerity" and "Elon Muskian gibberish" is really a tragic mandala blooming in an increasingly tedious and decaying Silicon Valley.Musk's acquisition of Twitter is a signal that individual oligarchs are trying to dominate the world, and there is nothing worse than that. In China, we shouldn't have bothered too much about such things, after all, we have many more important things. However, when the backstage of Pinwancool received a complaint message about our previous article "Beware of the Spread of the "Musk Cult"", we felt that this was still a little important.
It seems that at the time of Musk's acquisition of Twitter, in addition to a little suspicion that there are agents with Chinese IDENTITY cards who are "clearing" the public opinion under musk's real name, Musk does not seem to welcome his "worst critic" in China's free speech.