Elon Musk's devotion to free speech is the reason he says he has decided to buy Twitter. At least, that's how he frames it.
But will he really be a "free speech absolutist" as owner of the company, which he has described himself in the past on the social media platform?
Is Elon Musk For or Against Free Speech?
"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," Musk said in a letter to Twitter CEO Bret Taylor that was included in an Amendment No. 2 of a Securities and Exchange Commission Form 13D filing on April 13.
"However, since making my investment, I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this social imperative in its current form," Musk continued. " Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company"
Musk reported in the filing said that he owned 9.1% of Twitter's common shares and further stated in the 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% premium over the Jan. 28 stock price and 38% above the April 1 price.
Twitter agreed to the $44 billion takeover offer from Elon Musk Monday.
Advocating that Twitter be a platform for free speech is an honorable position to take. But will that always be the case once Musk has 100% control of Twitter?
While many conservative Twitter followers welcomed Musk's purchase of Twitter on April 25, others questioned his acquisition.
Musk and his company Tesla reportedly haven't always supported absolute, or unlimited and uncontrolled, free speech among its employees and certain customers.
As mentioned in the above tweet, back in 2016 The Guardian reported that California venture capitalist Stewart Alsop, who had placed a $5,000 deposit with Tesla for a Tesla Model X, said that Musk canceled his preorder of the electric vehicle after he sent an open letter to Musk criticizing a launch event for the model.
In his letter, Alsop criticized the late start of the event, an "amateur slide show" presentation and the process used to test drive the Model X at the event. Alsop said he was given badge number 1,344, meaning there were 1,343 people ahead of him for a test drive at the event. He said he gave up and went home.
Alsop said he thought Musk should have apologized to the guests at the event. He would later learn that his preorder was cancelled.
Musk in February 2016 confirmed Alsop's story with a tweet, saying: "Must be a slow news day if denying service to a super rude customer gets this much attention."
Tesla reportedly may not have approved of free speech depicted in a video review recently by of one of its employees. The company in February 2022 dismissed John Bernal, a San Mateo, Calif.-based advanced driver assistance systems test operator, after he produced video reviews on his YouTube channel AI Addict that revealed how the electric vehicle maker’s Full Self Driving Beta system worked, CNBC reported.
The company reportedly did not include a reason for his firing in a written separation notice Bernal received in February and the company wasn't available for comment on the story at the time it was published.
In another instance, an anonymous stocks blogger who wrote the Montana Skeptic blog for Seeking Alpha reportedly deactivated his Twitter account and stopped writing about Tesla after Musk threatened to sue the family office he worked at over analysis in his articles, according to a July 2018 FastCompany report. Somehow Musk, according to the blogger, discovered his true identity and complained to his employer.
