Elon Musk

Industry analysts say it's not a stretch to think Musk might move Twitter's HQ to Austin, which has become a focal point for his companies.

"Other than the fact that Musk is moving everything he's got (to Austin), there's no obvious reason to take a company which is virtual, from the very beginning, born in the cloud, to create a physical location," Kay said. Last year, CEO Parag Agrawal announced in a tweet that employees would have the option of working remotely "forever." This could also have an impact on those employees who have relocated to other areas and whether they would be willing to continue with the company if that happens." Companies and employees relocating to Austin would likely enjoy a lower cost of housing, energy and living than many markets, including many in California.” "It's all part of the Musk structure." Musk late last year announced that he was moving Tesla's corporate headquarters from California to Travis County, on the site of the automaker's $1.1 billion manufacturing plant, which recently began production.

Elon Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion on Monday, promising a more lenient touch to policing content on the social media ...

Musk himself is a prolific tweeter with a following that rivals several pop stars in the ranks of the most popular accounts. Eventually he became CEO and led the company to astronomical success as the world’s most valuable automaker and largest seller of electric vehicles. But much of his money is tied up in Tesla stock – he owns about 17% of the electric car company, according to FactSet, which is valued at more than $1 trillion – and SpaceX, his privately held space company. Truth Social is part of Trump’s new media company, which has agreed to be taken public by Digital World Acquisition Corp. Shares of DWAC dropped 16.2% Monday and are down 46% since Musk revealed his stake in Twitter. The SEC has been investigating Musk’s August 2018 tweets in which he asserted that he’d secured funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share, though he had not. With initial concerns of its own about the deal, Twitter had enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. During his candidacy and presidency, Trump used Twitter as a powerful megaphone that enabled him to speak to the public directly, often using incendiary and divisive language on hot-button issues. Some users said Monday that they were planning to quit the platform if Musk took it over. Musk said last week that he had lined up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter, putting pressure on the company’s board to negotiate a deal. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules.” Asked during a recent TED talk if there are any limits to his notion of “free speech,” Musk said Twitter or any forum is “obviously bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. “Do not allow 45 to return to the platform.

His commitment is getting a mild test thanks to a fellow tech billionaire / rocket enthusiast / media mogul. Jeff Bezos quoted a New York Times reporter's tweet ...

Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?.” Of course, as Elon once told me, “ Twitter is fun,” and maybe this is just how billionaires joke, like poking each other on Facebook or something. Jeff Bezos quoted a New York Times reporter’s tweet pointing out that Tesla’s business interests in China could give the government leverage over Twitter via its new owner, saying, “Interesting question.

The world's richest man succeeded in a bid to acquire the influential social networking service, which he has said he wants to take private.

EU officials Cedric O and Thierry Breton warned Elon Musk he will have to comply with the bloc's new Digital Services Act. Musk wants to reform Twitter as a ...

Breton, a former CEO of French IT consulting firm Atos, is seen as a key architect of the European Union's digital reforms. Companies that fall foul of the rules risk facing fines of up to 6% their global annual revenues — just over $300 million for a company like Twitter, based on 2021 sales figures. For his part, Trump says he doesn't plan to return. Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market, warned Musk that he will have to comply with the bloc's new digital regulations. But officials stateside have raised concerns over the possibility of Musk reinstating Donald Trump's Twitter account. Cedric O, France's digital minister, said that while there are "some interesting things" Musk wants to push for at Twitter, the EU's new Digital Services Act "will apply regardless of the ideology of its owner."

After weeks of speculation, Elon Musk will buy social media platform Twitter for $44 billion, PBS NewsHour spoke to three experts in the fields of social ...

And I think we’re going to see that more and more around the world and that’s going to create constraints on his ability to change the rules internationally, too. And so I think that as he kind of relaxes the rules, let’s say, the kind of harm that people see here may be less evident than what people see in other countries where it’s already hard to get the platform to enforce its rules. So, that globally could be even worse, and just over time, I think people will just find it less and less valuable as a place to go if it doesn’t have those kinds of constraints set for it.” We know that Facebook has dramatically under-invested in human moderation in languages other than English. So, if you live outside the U.S. and English is not your first language, your speech on the platform is much more likely to be moderated by robots essentially, than by humans, and robots are not very good at detecting things like satire or nuance or humor, which means that that leads to over-removal of legitimate content by people outside the U.S., and then under-removal of harmful content that does violate terms of service. And if they do, I think people will start to really kind of become frustrated with Twitter. They’ll see it as I think many people saw it five, six years ago, which was a place for Nazis and white supremacists, and others who really just want to use and weaponize the platform for propaganda.” But I think another kind of possibility would be for him to essentially move in a direction of [understanding] that free speech is not just about the speaker, but it’s also about audiences. But he should adopt essentially a human rights approach and say, “This platform is about expanding everybody’s access to information, everybody’s right to freedom of expression, and I want this platform to be the best that it can be in doing that.” David Kaye: “One, is he has talked about transparency and I think there is a lot of value to opening up Twitter — and all of the platforms — to greater disclosure about how they make their rules and how they enforce them. If Elon comes in and changes the way the rules are adopted and the way they’re enforced I think it can just undermine people’s interest in using the platform. But I also think that he’ll figure out pretty quickly that Twitter has rules in order to expand freedom of expression and he’ll probably come to appreciate them the more he’s there and sort of working on making it a better platform.” But to me, this isn’t about Elon Musk. It’s about the fact that we just should not live in a world where one person making the decision to purchase one website or app can have such a profound impact on millions of people’s speech and safety. Roy Gutterman: “There are plenty of other businesses and entities that have single owners or private owners or answer to shareholders.

Full coverage of Twitter's deal to sell itself to Elon Musk and earnings from Microsoft and Alphabet.

While the deal would heighten Twitter’s future credit risk, it could be good news for the company’s current bond holders. The firm said it would likely cut the rating by multiple notches if the deal goes through as expected. Elon Musk’s takeover plan for Twitter Inc. entails piling at least $13 billion of new loans onto the social-media company’s balance sheet, which would drop its credit rating deeper into junk territory, according to analyst reports.

Musk, the C.E.O. of Tesla and the richest man on earth, plans to take the social-media company private, and has said that he wants Twitter to adhere more ...

And I think people are recognizing that Elon Musk has created a lot of value for his companies by being unhinged on Twitter. And I think there are imitators, and I think we’re kind of early in the game. If you are the richest person in the world, and annoying, and you constantly play a computer game, and you get a lot of enjoyment and sense of identity from that game, maybe a little addicted, then at some point you might have some suggestions for improvements in the game.” At one level, this is a more personal account of his desire to buy Twitter. And then there is the more financial, or business, account, which you have just explained. But, at the same time, it almost seems like it’s impossible to disaggregate those two things, unless you think that all of his behavior is some elaborate performance or something, which I don’t think anyone really believes. He might say, “Look, I get so much value out of this direct access to the public.” Owning that direct access to the public—owning that thing that creates so much value for Elon Musk and Tesla—it has to be valuable somehow, whether it’s by increasing the value that it creates for Tesla, or whether it’s by finding a way to monetize the value that it creates for sports stars and celebrities and Donald Trump and lots of other people. It’s not obvious how the company would, but if you’re sitting on top of a thing that can create that much value, surely, if you’re really smart then you can extract some value out of it. And those expectations are probably helped by having a charismatic, noisy founder who makes a lot of jokes online and is sort of a science-fiction character himself, and portrays himself as a science-fiction character, and who appeals to people who like that by making jokes. The value of his company is enhanced by his being a very strange public figure on Twitter, and so he clearly sees a lot of value in tweeting, and probably wants to own that for himself. And the stock-market value of Tesla, which makes Elon Musk the richest person in the world, comes from a lot of extreme optimism about Tesla’s future ability to make more cars and become the dominant player in car-making as cars become more electric. And so the value of these companies in the market is largely derived from expectations around how much money they’ll make in the future, as opposed to how much money they’ve made in the past. It’s not obvious to me how, if he bought Twitter, he would then be better able to get his message out, or better able to tell a story in a way that is good for Tesla and good for his economic interests. So how much do you connect Tesla’s worth to Elon Musk as a person and the way he orients himself toward the world, especially on Twitter? To talk about Musk and what the future holds for his newest acquisition, I spoke by phone with Matt Levine, a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who has been comprehensively reporting on and analyzing this story over the past month in his newsletter.

After Twitter agreed to a buyout deal from Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk, Musk outlined a series of plans for changing the platform.

Even if a name isn’t revealed to other users, collecting information on real identities offers a trove of information for governments to request, and it’s vulnerable to hacks or security flaws. It could refer to people having to pass some kind of captcha-style “am I a human” test to post — although, as with spambot bans, if there were an easy way to do this without affecting good-faith users, Twitter would probably have done it already. Musk has indicated that “spam and scam bots” and “bot armies” are Twitter’s new Public Enemy No. 1. Bots are a long-standing and beloved part of Twitter, and separating a good bot from a bad bot might be harder than Musk thinks. In a TED interview, he indicated that Twitter should “match the laws of the country,” which suggests he could continue practices like region-locking certain content and follow rules like India’s social media regulations. And a strict automation crackdown could block bots that perform interesting and valuable services on Twitter — like Big Tech Alert, which tracks who Silicon Valley’s big players (including Musk) are following and unfollowing, or Editing TheGrayLady, which illuminates how The New York Times tweaks its headlines and copy over time. But virtually every site that claims a “free speech” banner ends up banning something that makes it deeply unpleasant for users, advertisers, or the site owners themselves — so it’s premature to say how far his commitment will go. Musk has a lot more leeway over changing Twitter’s policies around what kinds of content are banned, of course, and when users are suspended. He’s indicated that he would rather err on the side of “time-outs” and leave borderline content online. Online speech is a minefield, and if Musk really intends on a minimally moderated Twitter worldwide, he could expect huge fights in countries that restrict things like hate speech and false information. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

Internal market commissioner raised concerns that hate speech will increase on the platform.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a campaign group, said: “The UK and the EU are going to have tools to deal with this. Musk has said he favours temporary “time-outs” for users who breach Twitter’s policies, instead of outright bans. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.” At first, Twitter’s board seemed opposed, enacting an anti-takeover measure known as a “poison pill” that could have made a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. He is familiar with European rules on automotive, and will quickly adapt to the Digital Services Act.” Changes to its policies, features, and algorithms, big and small, can have disproportionate and sometimes devastating impacts, including offline violence,” she said.

Shares of Tesla fell as much as 10 percent Tuesday, as investors in the electric carmaker began to digest the prospect of CEO Elon Musk using his shares to ...

On Monday, Twitter and Musk announced the tech titan had purchased the social media platform. Among those asking is Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. Shares of Tesla fell as much as 10 percent Tuesday, as investors in the electric carmaker began to digest the prospect of CEO Elon Musk using his shares to pay for his acquisition of Twitter.

Twitter's board is negotiating with CEO Elon Musk over his bid to buy the social media platform — and a deal could be announced as early as Monday.

When Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion 10 days ago, the platform didn't welcome him with open arms. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is in some ways ...

Among them is Ben Thompson, the writer of the popular newsletter Stratechery, who believes that Twitter should go private—even if that means a transformation engineered by Musk, which could mean less moderation and more acrimonious discourse, as well as a larger focus on subscriptions. Twitter’s board had to justify rejecting a generous offer, more than 10% above the company’s current stock price. On April 21, Musk said he has the funding to get this deal done quickly.

The Tesla mogul's $43 billion cash buyout looked Monday like it was going ahead.

Trump was banned after the Capitol riot and insurrection in 2021. However the stock rose 5 percent to $51.47 in pre-market trading Monday. Initially Twitter seemed poised to fight the takeover attempt with a “poison-pill” share offer that would have diluted Musk’s stake; however Reuters now says that the sale is likely to go ahead.

Twitter is gearing up to accept Musk's original $43 billion offer. Apparently he wasn't just trolling.

Musk first announced his offer to buy the social media company at around $54.20 per share on April 14. In premarket trading, they reached about $51.50 per share, but at the time of writing, had fallen to around $50.7. Although the deal is unconfirmed, both the Times and Reuters reported that sources tell them a deal could be finalized and made public later today. If Musk makes the purchase, Twitter would no longer be a publicly traded company, but instead, private. Important to point out though, it literally isn’t. The first amendment doesn’t protect anyone’s right to post on Twitter. Though Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, seemingly doesn’t understand that. Any moment now, a deal between between Twitter’s 11-member board and Elon Musk could be announced.

Musk has led his companies to success through a variety of means. There are a few specific rules he rigorously enforces that have worked well for his ...

Musk has also made his belief in the free flow of information clear through other public means. As far as big meetings go, Musk believes that they’re largely a waste of time and that they should be infrequent. The rules, as detailed by Your Tango, often pertain to meetings, productivity and the free flow of information.

Twitter is nearing a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk, two people with knowledge of the situation said, a move that would unite the world's richest man with ...

On Monday, Twitter confirmed the billionaire and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX plans to acquire the social media company in a deal valued at $44 billion. Once the ...

Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. How is everyone responding to the idea of Twitter under new ownership? I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness." Reactions to the deal have been mixed. Musk has long criticized the platform for how it moderates content. What does Musk's plan mean for the future of Twitter and its users?

Elon Musk is set to take control of Twitter in a $44 billion deal that, at least judging by some of the reactions, feels like it could reshape the internet ...

"This potential deal is about much more than the future of Twitter," said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, a watchdog group that called on Twitter to keep its current platform rules. On Monday, Musk offered a hint to the contrary when he said , Twitter has had a policy of labeling state-run media organizations and government accounts, and not promoting them in recommendations. he will not return to Twitter even if he is allowed back on the platform. What this means for Twitter's everyday content enforcement isn't entirely clear; Musk has avoided going into specifics, and his objection to Twitter's approach seems rooted more in how much content moderation Twitter needs, rather than whether it ought to have any at all. Its total revenue last year was roughly the same as Western Union. And prior to this month, Twitter's stock was below the closing price from its first day of trading more than eight years ago.

Before Twitter accepted Musk's $44 billion offer, he has floated numerous ideas for changing the social network. Not all of those proposals have been ...

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Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. UPDATE: In his first tweet since the news became official, Musk posted an excerpt of the Twitter press release, quoting him as saying: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. "Once completed, the richest person in the world will own arguably the most influential social platform in the world, though from a business and user standpoint Twitter is significantly smaller than companies like Facebook or TikTok," says The Hollywood Reporter's Alex Weprin." In a tweet hours before the deal was approved, Musk tweeted: "I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."

Political leaders have made it a megaphone, while companies, celebrities and others have used it to hone images and make money. Editors' Picks. Sweet and ...

Mr. Agrawal was asked by employees whether former President Donald J. Trump, who was banned from the service after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, would be reinstated. Employees would receive their same benefits packages for a year after the deal was finalized, and there were no immediate plans for layoffs, he added. Mr. Musk has repeatedly said he wants to “transform” the platformby promoting more free speechand giving users more control over what they see on it. Executives tried to assure employees that they wouldn’t be shortchanged by Mr. Musk’s acquisition. Shareholders will vote on whether to accept the deal. He also urged employees to “operate Twitter as we always have.”

Four years ago, Twitter cofounder and then-CEO Jack Dorsey laid out four key focus areas that would propel the company's growth.

But with Musk, "it feels like ... we have to go and re-educate another kind of billionaire, libertarian, man-child that [Twitter] is the real world ... I would hope he can see the difference between you know, being a douche and being dangerous." Each of the major social media platforms have faced pressure from lawmakers, researchers and the public to do more to crack down on abuse, harassment and misinformation, and have taken different approaches with varying degrees of success. It does not mean free speech for the less powerful," said Leslie Miley, a former Twitter engineering manager who started its product safety and security team and left the company in 2015 "I think people don't understand how much we have to lose." She now worries the progress she and other users have pushed for on Twitter will be reversed. that under Musk's leadership, Twitter could "further become a terrain of culture wars. . "[Musk] says he wants to make it a free speech platform. Still, Musk's experience of using Twitter as an ultra-rich, White man, is inherently different than that of most users, and especially those who are women or from other marginalized communities Twitter has tried to protect and who now may be at risk if its moderation policies are rolled back. Musk and others have pointed out that most of Twitter's board has little experience actually using the platform. But obviously in the case where there's perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet." Beyond potentially alienating employees who have worked on or support efforts to improve content moderation on the platform, undoing Twitter's progress on "healthy conversations" also risks losing users at a time when the company has been fighting to reverse sluggish growth. Musk has a mixed reputation in the tech industry.

Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion Monday. Tucker Carlson, Jameela Jamil, Azealia Banks and more share what's in the future for them on the app.

"I’m not going anywhere," tweeted "Star Trek" actor and activist George Takei. "Should this place become more toxic, I pledge to strive even harder to lift up reason, science, compassion and the rule of law. After Musk's deal was finalized on Monday, Greene used her Congressional account, which is still active, to share screenshots of the five tweets flagged for misinformation that lead to the banning of her personal account. She also detailed her experience being banned, calling Dorsey "racist AF" and writing about "his plot to capitalize off the first Black Lives Matter movement." "I fear this free speech bid is going to help this hell platform reach its final form of totally lawless hate, bigotry, and misogyny. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness," Dorsey tweeted on Monday. He’s upset that Twitter won’t allow white nationalists to target/harass people. "Thanks to new ownership, I’ve decided to come back!" Fox News' Tucker Carlson returned to Twitter hours after Musk's deal was finalized. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. Levin tweeted on Monday. Instead, he will formally join his own Truth Social app in the coming days, Trump told Fox News on Monday. Both Dorsey and Agrawal have shared endorsements for Musk's takeover.

In December, Time caught some serious flak for naming Elon Musk "Person of the Year." Less than five months after that announcement, it's hard to argue the ...

The software is still in beta, and is far from fully autonomous in spite of its name. Despite many broken promises, Musk has achieved remarkable feats, and underestimating his ambition and capabilities has come to haunt his naysayers. No other platform has been able to replicate Twitter's messaging utility, and not for lack of trying. "If in doubt, let the speech exist," Musk said at the TED conference. Twitter is where news and feuds break out in real time, steering the national conversation on any given day. In taking the company private, Musk will face little resistance to lowering content moderation guardrails that his predecessors put up.

Tesla shareholders are worried the distracted CEO, who already runs two companies, will have to dump stock to finance his shiny new toy.

So the questions that spooked investors appear to be asking themselves is: When will Musk start dumping Tesla shares to raise the cash to buy Twitter? And how many shares will he flood the market with? He did not comment to Forbes. But, in a tweet on Tuesday, he seemed to place the blame for the dropping stock prices elsewhere: “The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all.” Prior to pursuing Twitter, Musk had already pledged more than half his 21% Tesla stake as collateral for other loans. As part of the $46.5 billion financing package Musk revealed Monday, he will pledge $62.5 billion worth of his Tesla stock to secure a $12.5 billion margin loan. In the aftermath of Elon Musk winning approval from Twitter’s board to buy the social media company for $44 billion, Tesla shareholders are running for the hills. Musk is still the world’s richest person by a mile–currently worth an estimated $239.2 billion, some $74 billion more than No. 2., Jeff Bezos, according to Forbes’ real-time tracker.

There is every chance that Twitter's board will have extracted an improved offer or terms from Elon Musk as an announcement on a deal is expected later on ...

According to the media outlet, both sides met on Sunday to discuss the proposal - and the social network "is more likely than before to seek to negotiate". Musk argues that the social network needs to be taken private in order to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech. He has offered to buy the social network for $43bn (£33.5bn) and placed the right to uphold free speech at the forefront of his argument for a deal, accusing Twitter of failing its users to date.

Elon Musk must pay a $1B termination fee if he doesn't go through with his $44B acquisition of the social network, as will Twitter under specific ...

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The Twitter purchase led to investor fears about how much of his own wealth Musk was leveraging to buy the company.

The Twitter purchase was expected to add to the share he was willing to risk. And Tesla has warned about the consequences of all that collateral to its stock. At points last year, Musk had put more than half of his Tesla shares down as collateral, according to financial filings.

A securities filing on Tuesday provided a deeper look at the conditions of sale, including a breakup fee if the deal falls through.

Kate Conger: Twitter is sort of a strange and unique creature, and so is Elon. I think he is so hands on with the companies that he runs. As a social network, Twitter is an influential platform that sets the agenda for many in business, politics and society. So if he decides to allow former President Donald J. Trump back on the platform — which seems like the elephant in the room — it will be Mr. Musk’s choice and his choice alone. So one thing that I’m really curious about is to what extent, well, loosening up on moderation impacts the business and how — or if, frankly — he’s taken that into account as he’s kind of designing a broader economic plan with the new business that he now owns. Mr. Musk has repeatedly said he wants to “transform” the platformby promoting more free speechand giving users more control over what they see on it. Not Twitter’s. Instead, Mr. Musk said in the statement that he wanted to eliminate spammers and promote free speech. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser for Mr. Trump who is now aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory, reposted a message on his Telegram account suggesting that Twitter could be used to recruit — or “wake up” — others to their cause. “I have a feeling the dam is about to break.” The deal is not set to close for another three to six months, Twitter told its employees on Monday. According to Tuesday’s filing, Twitter would have to pay Mr. Musk in certain circumstances if the deal goes awry. Since Mr. Musk disclosed that he had bought a large stake in Twitter, the company’s stock is up 26 percent. It’s not unusual for the shares of an acquisition target, like Twitter, to trade for less than what a suitor has promised to pay for them. The world’s richest man struck a deal on Monday to buy the social media company for $54.20 a share.