Elon Musk, the billionaire who has more than 91 million followers on Twitter, made a successful buyout of the Twitter platform with the United States Securities and Exchanges Commission on April 13th. 

After a long battle with the Board of Twitter shareholders, Musk purchased the platform for 44 billion dollars by submitting a limit order with the SEC. This gave a direct purchase from each shareholder of the Twitter company at 54 dollars per share. 

“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.” Elon Musk was quoted stating his reason for the purchase.

His buyout has been the spark for controversy. Many people dislike the idea of the billionaire taking the platform private in fears of having no opinion on company decisions from shareholders. Despite this, Musk has stated he has no intention of adding any sort of “propaganda” for any political ideology or corporation. In a recent tweet he addressed the controversy.

“For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” 

Elon Musk, who leans more right politically, has upset many leftists, Twitter employees, and shareholders as he wishes to get rid of any censorship on Twitter based on politics or other issues. He highlighted a recent problem of unwarranted Twitter account suspension with bringing light to an account tracking the current trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the wife of Jeffery Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking minors to Epstein as well as several celebrities  and politicians. This unwarranted banning not only is incredibly suspicious, but a problem on Twitter. With Musk purchasing the platform, many are hopeful that the platform will once again be free for all who wish to speakout