When news broke earlier this month that Elon Musk had acquired 9.2 percent of Twitter’s shares, a wave of reactions was unleashed about the imminent takeover by this billionaire and famous businessman, considered today in day as the person with the greatest accumulated wealth worldwide.
From a distance, it would seem that a joking comment -apparently harmless- that in January 2020 the then CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, made to Elon Musk, who in a corporate meeting under the title of #OneTeam (#UnTeam) to the that thousands of employees of this social network attended, and to whom he took this as a surprise guest, specifically asked: “By the way, do you want to take over Twitter?” It would have aroused the worm in the famous entrepreneur to get used to the idea of not only taking over Twitter, but better yet, of acquiring all of his shares.
Surely in the following months we will hear and read many opinions or analyzes about the possible effects derived from this important transaction, valued at 44 billion dollars, and which, according to US media reports, is the largest agreement in amount, at least in recent years. twenty years, to convert a public company, listed on the stock markets, into a private company, away from the scrutiny of investors and regulators. The most relevant effects to be analyzed are on freedom of expression, for which it is extremely important to review Elon Musk’s particular conception on the subject.
According to what various media in the United States cite, Musk’s vision of freedom of expression leans more to the right on the political spectrum, more akin to the vision of Donald Trump, for example. For example, although he is recognized for his quick reaction to the request for support from the Ukrainian government in the face of the emergency arising from the war with Russia, the aggressor country, which, given the risk that a large part of Ukraine would lose Internet connectivity He requested support from Musk, who immediately sent dozens of antennas so that the satellite Internet signal provided by the company Starlink, owned by Musk, could be downloaded in Ukraine.
However, in the face of other requests for Starlink to block Russian news sources, in line with what Twitter had begun to do, which began to label these types of sites, or Facebook, which blocked a couple of government-funded sites in Europe Russian, Musk refused to follow the same policy, stating that they would not do that unless threatened at gunpoint.
It is widely known that Musk is not very tolerant of criticism. For example, there are confirmed versions of Tesla employees who were fired for not agreeing with some decisions within that electric vehicle producer, or intolerant attitudes towards analysts have also been reported in what are commonly known as “calls with investors.” in which companies usually explain to analysts who closely follow their activities, circumstances in which he has pointed out as boring the questions of some analysts.
In fact, he has come to have outbursts very similar to those of President López Obrador, who systematically insists on questioning the credibility of the media that are not related to him. In this sense, it is reported that in 2018, annoyed by the negative coverage of some media, he announced that he would create an Internet site where people could rank the credibility of journalists and media.
So, with these unfortunate antecedents regarding freedom of expression on the part of Elon Musk, or that allow us to place his conception of freedom of expression in its real context, in my opinion it is too early to praise this new entrepreneurial billionaire business venture.
*The author is an economist.
@GerardoFloresR
telecommunications expert
Economic Momentum