Elon Musk Becomes Largest Twitter Shareholder & The Grand Fight For Free Speech

Background: Last week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk criticized Twitter’s censorship policies and contemplated creating an alternative. Today, Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the company's largest individual shareholder. Conservatives are already calling for him to reinstate Donald Trump.

Why buy? There have been multiple attempts of creating Twitter alternatives—Parler, Gab, Gettr, and Truth social are just a few. These alternatives are insufficient because they fail to recreate Twitter’s value.

Twitter’s value: Twitter is the only platform where political leaders engage in global diplomacy, top journalists break stories, and everyone has the opportunity to participate (before censorship). Despite Twitter’s increasing censorship, it has remained the de-facto public square.

Musk’s opportunity: Being a significant stakeholder means that Elon Musk will influence Twitter operations. He can remove censorship and transform Twitter into an absolute free speech platform—how it was before.

What this could mean for America: Liberating America’s most powerful and influential social media platform would result in a drastic shift in the status quo. The Democrat-Silicon Valley alliance would lose its ability to moderate our conversation, and conservative America would regain its freedom of speech. Because of this, the establishment would likely wage war on these efforts.

War on Twitter: In the case of liberation, ****progressives will leave the platform in protest, the establishment may attempt to deplatform Twitter similarly to Parler, and there will probably be attempts to tie Twitter to fringe political movements.

The road to liberating Twitter will see significant pushback from those who control our speech. Regardless, it will be the most consequential attempt made in the fight for free speech so far.

For a longer read on how this can play out, check out Revolver’s The Battle of the Century: Here’s What Happens if Elon Musk Buys Twitter.