January 2022: Elon Musk starts buying shares in Twitter.

April 4, 2022: Elon Musk announced that he had acquired a 9.1% stake for $2.64 billion.

April 25, 2022: Twitter’s most controversial user bought the platform for $44 billion, making it one of the most significant acquisitions in tech history.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Let’s take a closer look at Musk’s buyout timeline and plans for his newly acquired social media platform.

Elon Musk’s story with Twitter

It’s safe to say that the decision to acquire the company wasn’t made overnight, and to understand the move, we need to look at Musk’s long and exciting history with Twitter.

The 50-year-old tech entrepreneur has been an active member of the social media platform since 2009 and has over 84 million followers on his account, which he’s quite active on. Musk has never shied away from expressing his feelings through the platform, with a Tweet from him in 2017, where he said, “I love Twitter,” to which someone replied, “Are you going to buy it?”. This viral tweet has since been doing the rounds around the internet after Musk expressed interest in buying the company.

Much like the rest of the internet, Musk uses Twitter to rant about his everyday life and share absurd ideas and funny anecdotes from his life. However, he has also never hesitated to offer his opinions on Twitter’s content moderation, restrictions on free speech, and an overwhelming increase in bot and spam accounts.

Some of those tweets were received in good spirits, but the billionaire’s controversial remarks have often landed him in legal trouble that has cost him as much as $40 million. However, no lawsuits seem to have kept him off the platform.

Free Speech Advocate

Musk has been vocal about freedom of expression on Twitter since 2020. For example him tweeted“Given that Twitter serves as a de facto public marketplace, failure to uphold the principles of free speech fundamentally undermines democracy,” last month, March 25, 2022.

Even just before news of the buyout broke, Elon hadn’t given up his opinion, tweet“I hope even my worst critics stay on Twitter because that means freedom of expression.”

The buyout timeline

While the acquisition might seem like a sudden, spontaneous decision on Musk’s part, it took months. So let’s take a closer look at the timeline of events.

January 2022 – On January 31, 2022, Elon Musk slowly began acquiring shares in the company. By March he had amassed a 5% stake in the company. He had to disclose his interest in the company to the public and specifically to the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, he missed the schedule by ten days. By not disclosing this, he amassed more shares at a lower price. However, this move would later cost him in the form of a shareholder lawsuit.

March 2022 – At this point, Musk’s criticism of Twitter intensified on Twitter itself. The tweets we mentioned earlier about upholding freedom of expression and Twitter’s need to be an open source originated around this time. Around this time, Musk also tweeted about the need for a new social media platform given the restrictions on free speech on Twitter.

Though the public was unaware of the acquisition plans at the time, many Twitter users took to the platform to suggest that Tesla’s CEO buy the social media platform instead.

April 2022 – News of Musk’s stake in the company is released, and Twitter confirms that he has bought 9.2% of the company for $2.64 billion. At this point he is listed as a passive investor. However, Musk took to Twitter the same day and created polls asking public opinion about changes to the platform, particularly the addition of an “edit” button.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal warned netizens to vote with caution as “the consequences of this poll will be important”. On April 4, the day the news was announced to the public, Twitter invited Musk to join the board. Musk is signaling that he will sign an agreement under which he will own no more than 14.9% of the company’s shares.

On April 10, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal shared a note that said Musk declined to join the company’s bid to join the board.

On April 14, Tesla’s CEO announced his cash offer to buy 100% of the company at $54.2 per share, valuing the company at $43.4 billion. That announcement forced Twitter to introduce a poison pill rule designed to make it harder for Musk to acquire shares.

April 24, Twitter discusses acquisition with Musk. He presents his financial records to the board, and they seriously consider his offer.

And finally, technology history was made on April 25, 2022 when Elon Musk sealed the deal and bought the company for $44 billion.

What’s next for Twitter?

Now that Musk has taken over Twitter, let’s look at his plans for the social media platform.

New rules about freedom of speech

As the SpaceX CEO is a big advocate for free speech, the first thing he promises to do is change the platform, relaxing free speech regulations.

“Freedom of expression is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital marketplace where important issues affecting the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in his statement announcing the acquisition.

He also said that in order to gain the public’s trust, they must remain “politically neutral,” which “means angering the far right and the far left alike.”

Edit button

Even before the acquisition, Musk was messing around by offering an edit button on Twitter by running a poll on his Twitter profile.

While Meta, Instagram, and most other social media platforms all have edit buttons you can use to make corrections to your posts, once you post something on Twitter, it’s final.

However, this announcement drew a mixed reaction from the public and experts, as people suspect actors and other famous people will be able to edit their tweets and statements to change the truth in the future. Twitter CEO Agrawal also warned people not to vote carefully on the poll as the result would have serious consequences.

Open the algorithm

Elon Musk said there should be more openness about how content is propagated and distributed on the platform and wants to share the algorithm on GitHub, a computer code-sharing site for coders and programmers.

While some praised this decision to make operations more transparent, others oppose this decision. They fear that sharing this information with the public would not do much good as there is still not much clarity about the algorithm, even for the engineers. Additionally, they believe that this would make the platform vulnerable to hackers with malicious intent.

Eliminate bots

“If our Twitter offering is successful, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!” Musk tweeted before the acquisition.

There are many bots on the web – spam accounts designed to interact with content on the web. Musk suggested cracking down and blocking bots promoting cryptocurrency and other spam on the platform.

However, it must be noted that Tesla and Musk have their own share of bots that will attack anyone who has anything negative to say about Tesla or its CEO. Musk has yet to comment on what he intends to do about these bots and whether he intends to remove them along with the cryptocurrency bot accounts.

Make Twitter a subscription-based model

One of the biggest challenges for Twitter was attracting advertisers since they made 90% of their revenue without causing online wars and brawls.

The most significant change in the Twitter acquisition is privatization, and the pressure to increase revenue through advertising will be significantly reduced.

Musk suggests that Twitter becomes subscription-based and users pay $2.99/month for premium services like the edit button mentioned above.

He also joked that he could pay for the subscription with Doge coins, although there’s no way to confirm if the statement carries any weight.

What happens to Trump now?

It’s no secret that former President Donald Trump was permanently suspended from the platform over the January 6 siege of the US Capitol.

Now, with new management, the question naturally arises as to whether Trump should be allowed to return to Twitter. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal says the answer rests solely with Musk.

It is interesting to note that Trump himself has said he has no plans to return to Twitter and wants to focus on his alternative platform, Truth Social. It’s also worth noting that Musk recently tweeted about Truth Social, saying that the platform is currently ahead of Twitter in the App Store and such it “exists because Twitter censored free speech.”

A new era for Twitter

Whether this is a good change for the social media platform, and which direction Musk’s Twitter leadership will take, is still difficult to say. We can only wait and see if Musk keeps his promises and if the consequences of these changes will positively impact the platform.