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What Does It Mean that Elon Musk Owns 9.2% of Twitter Now?

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | April 4, 2022 |

By Dustin Rowles | Social Media | April 4, 2022 |

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Elon Musk has bought 9.2 percent of Twitter’s shares, worth around $3 billion. While that is not enough shares to allow him to do as he pleases with the social platform, he will immediately become a major force and voice on the platform that is otherwise owned largely by investment companies.

What does this mean? I suspect the first thought many of you had was: Is Twitter going to let Donald Trump back on the platform? Because that would be ruinous. He may have hinted at where his head is at on this issue a few weeks ago:

At the time, after 70 percent of his followers voted no, Musk followed up by suggesting that he was looking into creating his own social media platform. He just bought 9 percent of Twitter, instead, and may have paved the way for not only an active role in Twitter policies but potentially a future buyout.

Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” which extended as far as allowing Russian state media to air in Ukraine over his Starlink internet satellites.

The problem with “free speech absolutism” on a social media platform, however, is that it could be flooded, even more so, with misinformation, disinformation, spam, porn, harassment, death threats, and/or insurrection plans. This is what’s happened to some of the right-wing social media upstarts. It would make Twitter unusable, which would crater its value, and while that may not mean a lot to Musk and his $3 billion investment, the other 91 percent of Twitter shareholders might not appreciate it (although, the price of the stock has apparently gone up 25% pre-market in the wake of this news).

Twitter had problems enough before Musk came aboard. If Musk has his say, it’ll basically become Joe Rogan: The Social Media Platform. Ultimately, I don’t know if he’ll have the power to bring back Trump in the short term, but it’s certainly what MAGA Twitter is hoping for this morning.