top of page
Buscar

Twitter Sale: Musk Shows That Power “Buys” Power

  • 4 de mai. de 2022
  • 3 min de leitura

Billionaire Elon Musk managed to complete the purchase of the Twitter platform this afternoon (25), after cornering the company's owners in a strategy known in the stock market as "hostile".

ree

Twitter struggled as long as it could from Musk's "claws", that's undeniable. The company's board used the so-called "shareholder rights" plan a day after Musk's offer, which would have made it more difficult to buy the company, but it wasn't enough. By adopting this strategy, Twitter would allow investors to buy shares at a discounted price unaffordable for Musk, which could give the company leeway. According to Bret Taylor, chairman of the independent board of Twitter, “one of the points considered for the sale of the company was the impact on the shares for the shareholders”.


Information and Power


Keeping control of information is a crucial weapon in the “Digital Age”, especially user data. Companies like Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Tik Tok and Instagram manage to reach a great interest of billionaires around the world, and this should be one of the first concerns of all of us users: how much is our data worth?


People like Elon Musk are not difficult to find in the select group of billionaires, (what we can call “Forbes” or “Time covers”), the overwhelming majority of which are white men and heirs who already have a lot of power and do not spare maneuvers to accumulate even more.


Musk, it seems, is less pruned in telling the four winds his views and how much economic power is not seen as a problem for his eccentric ideas of what he classifies as the “world of the future”, which ranges from “colonizing” planets to sponsored trips to the moon. On the other hand, leaving the planet it inhabits seems to be a more interesting point than looking around. The richest man in the world is born on the poorest continent in the world. Elon Musk is the son of a South African and a Canadian and was born in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.


His mocking and “cool” tone, guaranteed by his fortune that grows more and more and makes him almost unattainable, seems to please the generation of “defenders of freedom of expression”, including that was the flag he raised when he bought Twitter this afternoon. But Musk, in turn, sails very well in rough seas, it is no wonder that he is always involved in scandals and controversies. One of them happened when he severely criticized Twitter when the platform banned former President Donald Trump for spreading fake news and inciting violence in the US Capitol invasion.


Twitter's Future

ree

Why would Musk invest so much in a social network that basically survives on sponsored ads? In a mass society, where social media gives everyone a voice and provides a false sense of influence, Musk's gamble was meticulously thought out and calculated. Having a social network like Twitter today means having at your disposal 217 million users, perhaps with greater potential, although this number seems to have stopped in the year 2021. On the other hand, Musk takes the risk of the stampede of users and some even fear that the environment becomes more “toxic” than it already is.


The path that Twitter will follow is difficult to predict, but this afternoon in the 21st century we had once again an example of how much information is power and can even be part of its maintenance.


Text by Katiane Bispo

Graduated in International Relations and specialist in Public Policies and Social Projects. She is a podcaster for “O Historante” and a columnist for “Zero Águia”.

Instagram: @uma_internacionalista

Sources:





Elon Musk compra Twitter por US$ 44 bilhões | CNN 360°: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_rrRU38G8Y - access in 25.04.2022





 
 
 
bottom of page