Elon Musk's free speech devotion is the reason he has decided to buy Twitter. At least, that's how he describes it.
Will he be a "free speech absolutist" as the owner of the business, which he has previously described on social media?
Is Elon Musk Against Free Speech For or Against?
"I invested in Twitter as I believe it will be used as the platform for free speech around the world, and I believe that free speech is a societal obligation for a functioning democracy," says Twitter CEO Bret Taylor, who was included in an amendment No. 2 of a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on April 13.
"I now realize that after making my investment, the company will neither flourish nor serve this social obligation in its current form," Musk said. "Tact must be transformed as a private corporation."
Musk claimed in the filing that he owned 9.5 percent of Twitter's common shares and stated in a letter that he was seeking to purchase 100% of the company's outstanding stock not owned by him for $54.20 a share, a 54% increase over the stock price on January 28 and 38% above the price on April 1.
Elon Musk's $44 billion acquisition offer was approved by Twitter Monday.
It's an honorable option to take, for the company, to consider whether Twitter is a free speech platform. However, will it always be true once Musk has 100% control over Twitter?
On April 25, many conservative Twitter followers applauded Musk's purchase of Twitter.
TheStreet Recommends
Tesla reportedly haven't always supported absolute, or unlimited, and uncontrolled, free speech among its employees and customers.
Stewart Alsop, a California venture capitalist who had paid a $5,000 deposit for a Tesla Model X, stated in his interview that Musk had canceled his order of the electric vehicle, after sending him to Musk, citing a launch event for the model.
Alsop criticized the event's late start, an "amateur slide show," and the method used to test drive the Model X at the event. He said he was given the badge number 1,344, meaning there were 1,343 people ahead of him for a test drive at the event. He said he quit and went home.
Alsop said he believed Musk should have apologized to the attendees at the event. He would later discover that his preorder was changed.
Musk confirmed In February 2016 with a tweet, saying, "We should not be a slow news day if refusing services to a super rude customer gets this much attention."
Tesla reportedly may not have approved of free speech seen in a video review recently by a company's employees. In February 2022, John Bernal, a San Mateo, Calif.-based advanced driver assistance systems test operator, was dismissed after he wrote video reviews on his YouTube channel AI Addict, which reveals how the full self-driving beta system works.
In a written separation notice received by Bernal in February, the company allegedly did not include a reason for his departure, and at the time it was published, the information was not revealed.
According to a July 2018 report, an anonymous stock blogger who wrote the article deactivated his Twitter account and halted writing about Tesla. Musk threatened to sue the family office he worked at due to analysis in his articles. Somehow Musk, according to the blogger, discovered his true identity and complained to his employer.
