South African entrepreneur based in the US, Elon Musk, is now the world’s richest man and, the new owner of Twitter after he purchased it for $44bn (approximately 41 bn euros).
Musk made the socking bid less than two weeks ago saying Twitter had “tremendous potential” that he would be able to unlock.
The billionaire also called for a series of changes from relaxing its content restrictions to eradicating fake accounts. According to BBC, the firm initially rebuffed Mr Musk’s bid, but it will now ask shareholders to vote to approve the deal.
Forbes magazine named Mr Musk the world’s richest person with an estimated net-worth of $273.6bn mostly due to his shareholding in electric vehicle maker Tesla which he runs. He is also the owner to aerospace firm SpaceX.
Musk said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
He also shared that he would make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the app with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating spam bots, and authenticating all humans.
Twitter currently faces external pressure from politicians and regulators over the content that appears on Its platform. It has drawn critics from all over with its efforts to mediate misinformation on the app.
“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” he wrote just hours before the deal was announced.
There is the debate now as to whether twitter will allow the reinstatement of former president of the US, Donald Trump onto the social media platfrom.
We followed some comments about Elon Musk taking over Twitter online, here’s what people had to say:
‘The introduction should have read, ‘American made billionaire’ giving him African descent is really unnecessary cause our corrupt leaders wouldn’t let him prosper.’
‘He’s buying Twitter at $44bn yet I’m getting it for free in Google play store’
‘Men will literally buy twitter instead of solving world hunger’
‘When you need to kill a cow, you buy it. Good bye Twitter’
‘And they will use that Huge amount of money to develop another social media app that will out compete Twitter in the market…in fact This man is going to spend more money buying the existing competitor apps…..this is what Mark Zuckerberg did when he decided to buy WhatsApp messenger…’
‘Don’t misleading people here Elon Musk is an American’