Twitter agreed to be taken over by Elon Musk at $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the stock price
Twitter has over 217 million daily users, compared to billions for Facebook and Instagram.
Musk finalized the deal on Monday a sum reaching $44 billion, making him the company’s single largest shareholder.
“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,” Mr. Musk said in a statement announcing the deal. He said he wanted “to make Twitter better than ever.”
Musk had said he doesn’t trust Twitter’s current leadership to make necessary changes to promote free speech on the platform.
The billionaire already has over 83 million followers on Twitter and has said over and over that he wants to “transform” the platform by promoting more free speech and giving users more control over what they see on it.
Musk said in a tweet on Monday that he hoped even his “worst critics” continued to use the platform “because that is what free speech means.”
Earlier this month, he mentioned making the company an open-source model, which would allow users to see the code showing how certain posts came up in their timelines.
