As publicly announced before, Elon musk finalized his move on Twitter and acquired it. In order to comprehend what this move looks like, let's take a quick deeper look at his background. He was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South African Republic. His father was a wealthy man who owned half of an emerald mine named Zambian. Although he was a super-rich mine owner, he failed to be a good father. He was also emotionally abusive and tough on his children, allegedly ordering Musk and his brother to sit silently for four hours as he lectured them. He is known to be a self-educated person since his early childhood, and in many public interviews, he has stated that he read lots of books, especially sci-fi and computers but he didn't have the best time in school because he said that he got bullied by his nerdy look and added “ That’s what made growing up difficult. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the [expletive] out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.”
Coming back to Musk’s educational background, Musk graduated from Pretoria Boys High School in Africa and went to the University of Pretoria. Since the day he has been a student he knew what Internet business could achieve further by the time in the 90s; thus he stood out as one of the internet investors. He had a very successful business life which started off with Paypal (the first big online bank that revolutionized online banking), and then followed up with SpaceX (the first and only private company to go to space) and, the top of it all, Tesla electric automobiles (Biggest electric car manufacturer). With all those start-ups and companies, Elon Musk’s net worth is the single largest in the world making him the world’s richest man.
Now, let’s come to our main topic: his connection to Twitter. As it is known, he has been quite eager to acquire Twitter for a long time. In the middle of April, he was on the verge of buying the company. Even the old CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal, condoned the idea of Elon buying the app, and both sides agreed on terms. But then Elon Musk terminated a previously agreed 44 billion dollar agreement and things went from sweet to sour really fast. Twitter sued Elon because he breached their agreement, and, in response, he humiliated Twitter to the public and to the press. After this announcement, Elon reconsidered the offer and accepted a newly signed agreement consisting of 44 billion American Dollars which is equivalent to $54.20 per share. When both sides signed the deal, Elon made an unconventional move: he brought a sink - yes, a literal sink - into Twitter headquarters and tweeted “Entering Twitter HQ: let that sink in!” This move attracted lots of hate in and out of Twitter because of two things: Firstly the deal was not yet made official; both sides had agreed on terms and signed the agreement, but it was not sent to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), making it unofficial. Secondly, and more importantly, his move was deemed unprofessional for the new owner and he was criticized by most of the CEOs of Twitter.
His next move was to meet with the top people on Twitter. After his tour, he wrote that he had met lots of beautiful people. He also tweeted “The bird is freed”. This tweet disturbed some bases on Twitter because setting the bird free, as he says, has a hidden message underneath. He actually meant he is going to set free already banned people like Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Racist, Anti-Lgbt+ people and so much more. Elon said that some of the banned people should be unbanned, adding that he thinks there is no moral truth that everybody should agree on. However, there has not yet been any real move from Elon to unban these people, and they remain banned for the time being.
Recently Elon decided that half of Twitter is not working hard enough so he laid them all off. A critical remark to make is that Elon fired nearly all Indians, including the head of management. While he does not clearly explain why he did that, he brought a monthly subscription for the blue tick, which is normally earned by getting confirmed, but now people can buy it for 8$ a month. This led to heated debates throughout Twitter because now scammers have accessed blue-ticked accounts. He said that with a monthly subscription, crime on Twitter will decrease, to which some people agreed and some did not. In Addition, bots and troll accounts will become shadow-banned, as well as real people who lack a blue tick. He later said that in order to find accounts without a blue tick, people need to scroll down a lot. This is the definition of a show ban and nearly everyone on Twitter protested this, but Elon Musk published a meme saying that people would buy a drink from Starbucks, which lasts for about half an hour, but consumers hesitate to subscribe to Twitter because of the possibility of getting promoted. People opposed this idea of Elon for the reason that he previously said that he freed the bird; however, according to them, he is making Twitter a place where only the rich can talk while the poor are pent-up to silence. Supporters of this idea are defending that 8$ is not a lot for a person while, on the other hand, for large trolls and bots owners, the bill is frightening, which will be the major role of subscriptions in fighting bots and trolls. Elon defends himself by saying that the interest rates are going up, and his actions made Twitter lose most of its ad revenue. To top it all off Twitter is in great need of cash money to cover up its losses. Twitter had bled nearly 270 million American Dollars in the stock market since the purchase, which is especially hard to subsidize while your ad revenue is in a plummet.
We can clearly see that Elon changed things up radically to an extent; whether it is good or bad is up to you. We don’t know yet but we will see. No one can deny the fact that Elon will, at one point, change the way we communicate and the meaning of social media.
Works Cited:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/13/why-twitter-is-suing-elon-musk
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-3700-twitter-job-cuts-half-of-employees/
https://www.india.com/business/let-that-sink-in-musk-self-proclaimed-chief-twit-walks-into-twitter-headquarters-with-a-sink-5707379/
https://medyanotu.com/piyasalarin-beklentisi-ne-fed-faiz-karari-ne-zaman/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Twitter_by_Elon_Musk
https://www.lifestyleasia.com/ind/living/people/who-is-vijaya-gadde-former-legal-head-of-twitter/
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/elon-musk-tweets-bird-freed-after-finalizing-billion-acquisition
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-childhood-was-excruciating-2015-5?op=1
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