Tech billionaire Elon Musk has struck a deal to buy social media platform Twitter for $44 billion. Mr Musk, who is as famous for his Internet presence as he is for his business undertakings, has negotiated a purchase price of $54.20 per share, Twitter said. With this, the publicly traded firm will now become a private company owned by the Tesla founder.
Twitter and social media users, in general, are quite divided on development. While some believe that Elon Musk taking over the reins of the micro-blogging platform implies a victory for free speech, others believe that it could undermine democratic principles and promote hate speech.
Dave Smith, a Twitter user who joked with Elon Musk in 2017 that he should buy the platform appears to fall in the latter category. Mr Smith, late on Monday, claimed that the aforementioned exchange continues to “haunt” him. A screenshot shared by Mr Smith, whose bio states that he is a host and producer at Insider, begins with a tweet from Elon Musk that says, “I love Twitter.”
To this Mr Smith says, “You should buy it then,” only to have Elon Musk ask, “How much is it?”
Posting the screenshot, Mr Smith wrote, “This exchange continues to haunt me.”
Replying to the post, one user said, “How does it feel knowing that all of this was entirely your fault?” To this, Mr Smith replied, “Honestly Aimee, not great!”
“One of those days you should turn off the phone the entire week,” another user suggested to Mr Smith.
Asking Dave Smith to demand a cut in the deal, a comment said, “You should at least get percentage deal fee. 0.5 to 2 percent of $46 million is not nothing!”
In a statement announcing the deal, Elon Musk said, “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.”
Now, with Elon Musk at the helm of affairs, it is all eyes on the tech billionaire to see where he takes the platform.
