Take Our Poll on Elon Musk’s Twitter Deal

Reports are that Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter is now a done deal. How do you feel about this? Take our poll.

Updated 4/25/2022 4:45 p.m. EDT: The New York Times and CNN are both reporting that the deal is done and that Elon Musk is buying Twitter. Says the Times:

“Twitter agreed to be taken over at $54.20 a share, a 38 percent premium over the share price before it was revealed that Mr. Musk had been buying up the company’s stock.”

Please take our poll anyway as it’s still relevant.

 Loading ...

Musk’s bid to buy Twitter for $46.5 billion has been under serious consideration according to all news services, with the New York Times claiming that an agreement could possibly happen sometime today and WaPo saying a deal is expected before the market closes. While the price above has been the one bandied about (WaPo’s saying “about $44 billion), expect that number to be rather fluid until the final deal is hammered out. Remember, a $1 change in a $100 deal is a $10,000,000 change in a billion dollar deal.

The Times has been talking with two people “with knowledge of the situation” who don’t want their name known because they’re not supposed to be talking. According to them, talks with Musk began after a Twitter board meeting held specifically to discuss the offer. They said that the board view of the offer suddenly changed with Musk’s announcement last week that he’d leveraged his stake in Telsa and SpaceX to obtain financing for the deal.

Evident Musk and the board talked Sunday and into the wee hours of Monday, with the talks evidently covering stuff like the potential deal’s timeline, and any money that would have go change hands if the deal goes sour after and agreement is signed.

What Twitter under the sole ownership of Musk will look like is anyone’s guess. The biggest question mark on the table right now is what this would mean for Donald Trump’s Twitter account, which was permanently closed by Twitter two days after a riotous mob motivated by a Trump speech breached the the U.S. Capital building. Musk, who has often used anti censorship terms to describe his priorities if he were to become the social sites owner, might well welcome the former president back to the platform, which could wreck havoc on the 2024 presidential elections — as well as the upcoming off-year elections, depending on how quickly the deal is finalized to give Musk control.

He’s also talked of banning the “fake” accounts run by automated robots — which could be problematic for some human owned and posted accounts that get caught up in any confusion during the purge. Time will tell.

One thing is for certain, there will be great changes if and when Musk takes control of the platform, as it’s not his style to take a hands off position with any organization under his control, and from what he’s been saying, this case won’t be any different.

So what do you think? Take our quick down and dirty poll so that we can check the pulse of the FOSS community — or at least the community of FOSS Force readers on this.