Elon Musk is here to save the day for conservative-leaning thinkers.
That’s a sentence I never thought I would write, or, frankly, would ever have to write. But here we are in 2022 and you don’t know what idea you might share on your Twitter page that could end up with your account getting locked down.
However, Tesla owner Elon Musk is trying to change all of that. Musk recently became Twitter’s largest shareholder when he purchased a 9.2% stake in the social media giant. The Tesla CEO also decided against joining the company’s board, and now he wishes to buy the entire platform at $54.20/share, which would set the purchase price at around $43 billion.
As BNM reported, in his first remarks, Musk spoke heavily of the influence Twitter plays on the function of a country’s freedom and democracy, so he wants the platform to be as trustworthy as possible.
“It’s important to the function of democracy,” Musk said. “It’s important to the function of the United States as a free country and on many other countries, and actually to help freedom in the world more broadly than the US. I think the civilizational risk is decreased if Twitter, the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform.”
Musk is exactly right. And conservatives around the world are cheering. Not because Elon Musk is “one of them”. In fact, there’s very little evidence that he is conservative.
However, his passion for allowing Twitter to be a true free speech platform that is basically the 21st Century’s town square, is vitally important at a critical juncture in our social fabric.
Granted, the bigger picture here is that there’s something inherently wrong, and frankly, pathetic, about having to cheer on one of the richest men in the world to save one of the biggest social media platforms in the world to just be able to guarantee free speech. Nothing about this should be normalized or treated any less bizarre than it is. However, it’s the game that has to be played right now, for as long as social media giants are protected under Section 230.
By the way, look around social media on Thursday and see the reaction from many who would call themselves liberals. Why is the possibility of Elon Musk buying Twitter so bothersome to them? What is so upsetting about not being able to ban those from the platform they disagree with?
Musk admitted at a TED event he spoke at Thursday that this won’t be a smooth process, even if he can pull it off, saying, “And so I do think this will be somewhat painful, and I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it. And I should also say the intent is to retain as many shareholders as is allowed by the law in a private company, which I think is around 2000 or so.”
The fact that Musk is willing to risk a massive part of his own fortune, along with taking on the pain, makes him the hero we need now more than ever. Not because I want anyone else banned that I disagree with. I don’t. I just don’t want to wake up one day without an account because a woke Silicon Valley snowflake considers it “hate speech”. So with that, I say, “Let’s Go E-Lon!” [clap, clap, clap, clap, clap].
Pete Mundo is a weekly columnist for Barrett Media, and the morning show host and program director for KCMO in Kansas City. Previously, he was a fill-in host nationally on FOX News Radio and CBS Sports Radio, while anchoring for WFAN, WCBS News Radio 880, and Bloomberg Radio. Pete was also the sports and news director for Omni Media Group at K-1O1/Z-92 in Woodward, Oklahoma. He’s also the owner of the Big 12-focused digital media outlet Heartland College Sports. To interact, find him on Twitter @PeteMundo.
