A billionaire buys his voice

The eccentric billionaire gets himself a megaphone. The Tesla CEO acquires the short message service Twitter for 44 billion dollars. Since it was announced on April 4 that Elon Musk had become the largest Twitter shareholder with a stake of over 9 percent, the question has been raised as to what the billionaire plans to do with the social media platform. A few days later, Musk submitted a takeover bid for the entire company, which was rejected by Twitter. The company installed a “poison pill” that would have made an acquisition significantly more expensive. That all resolved itself in Minne. On Monday evening, Musk and Twitter agreed on a transaction. Now it still needs the approval of the shareholders.

Commercial interests should not be the driving force behind Elon Musk. “That’s not how you make money,” Musk said at the press conference. Twitter has been in business since 2006 and reported a loss last year. The short message service has established itself as an important channel for politicians, celebrities and companies. Commercial success has been disappointing in comparison, and explosive growth is unlikely in the next few years. In addition, technology stocks have no longer been the first choice in recent months given rising interest rates and falling economic and advertising growth. Musk pays nearly nine times Twitter’s revenue. A high price for a company that, despite numerous attempts in the past, has not been able to really grow strongly.

Stands across the conglomerate

Twitter is also across the “musk conglomerate”. The eccentric billionaire is an engineer who shows the car nation Germany how to build electric cars and the space agency Nasa that a flight to Mars before the never-ending day is possible. The other Musk projects, alongside Tesla and SpaceX, also deal with tangible technology and not with digital content. The eccentric with the Twitter purchase is not about a growth project, but about a sense of mission and a demonstration of power. Musk has been one of the most well-known and active Twitter users for years. He delights well over 80 million followers every day with information about his companies, new trend cryptocurrencies, politics and trivial things.

Musk is one of many billionaires who hold a media society as a “trophy” through which their own ideas and opinions also spread. Biopharma billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Los Angeles Times, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff owns Time magazine. In Germany, the news magazine Der Spiegel is financially supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Twitter has always been for sale

Everyone who is now throwing their hands over their heads over this purchase and lamenting that money can buy opinion was surprisingly calm when Salesforce, Google, and Disney were all interested in buying in the post-2016 years. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey always said: “Twitter is for sale.” Those interested at the time were interested in being able to network user data with other applications. Even the fact that before Musk got involved, a prince from Saudi Arabia was the largest shareholder did not seem to bother anyone.

“Freedom of expression is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital city square where the important concerns of mankind are discussed,” Musk was quoted as saying. He wants to improve Twitter, introduce new applications, open-source the algorithm, defeat spam bots and authenticate all participants. That sounds pathetic and is not easy to implement. But Musk also has to comply with national laws, such as anti-racism laws or rules of the stock exchange supervisory authority. Even with today’s Twitter, you often don’t know who is excluded, why and what the criteria for this are. Just because a billionaire has taken over a short messaging service doesn’t mean that free speech is more at risk than it was before.