On April 25, 2022, I posted an article saying that “Elon Musk May Regret Buying Twitter”.
I noted that I was skeptical whether the deal would go through. I was skeptical whether Musk could afford to buy Twitter or if he wanted to afford to buy Twitter. There are a lot of leftist flakes who work at Twitter who would try to sabotage things from the inside.
I also warned that Musk might not know what’s coming his way. The establishment would be gunning for him, and we saw how ruthless they were (and still are) with Donald Trump.
Now it is being reported that Musk is backing out of the deal. Musk’s lawyer claims that Twitter failed to comply with the merger agreement. It’s hard to say if this is the real reason. Maybe Musk sees the recession coming (as he has said) and doesn’t want to overpay. Maybe he sees the shots being fired his way by the establishment and doesn’t want to deal with it.
After I posted my article in April, someone commented as follows:
“This article did not age well and sounds retarded now that Musk did in fact buy Twitter.”
Aside from the commenter’s lack of eloquence and elegance, it was completely wrong. I’m not sure that the person actually read my article carefully, as I had in fact written it after the two parties had tentatively agreed.
The commenter said my article did not age well when in fact it was this comment that didn’t age well. I clearly said that it was not a done deal at that point.
Some people now think that Elon Musk was bluffing the whole time. Maybe he was just calling attention to the ridiculous censorship of Twitter. I think the ridiculous part is that they care much more about promoting their worldview than they do about actually making a profit for shareholders.
It’s fine if a company wants to discriminate against certain people. It may not be fine with regard to the law, but it should be fine. But it’s not as if Twitter advertised from the beginning that you weren’t allowed to express conservative, libertarian, or anti-establishment views. The company still doesn’t say this. It just says that they try to prevent the spread of misinformation (or is it disinformation?).
Alex Berenson was recently reinstated on Twitter because of a settlement from a lawsuit. I don’t really agree with the lawsuit as a libertarian, but it is still something you can smile about in a sense. Berenson was censored for spreading disinformation on COVID and vaccines, yet it was his comments that were pointing out the disinformation promoted by Fauci, Biden, the establishment media, and company.
Anyway, I can’t say for sure that Musk wasn’t bluffing from the start. I had thought from the start that he might have been bluffing. Then when they reached a preliminary deal, I figured he wasn’t bluffing after all.
If he had been bluffing completely, I don’t think he would have signed the original deal that has apparently now fallen through. I do think he reconsidered because he realized what he was getting himself into.
Whether it was the money, the headache, or both, I don’t know for sure. I think it is wise for Elon to back out. Just like Trump, he has helped to expose the villains for what they are. That’s really all that needs to be done.
If people want a platform that has relative free speech, they can find one. And some people will continue to stay on Twitter and tiptoe around in order to reach more people.
As much as the oligarchs want to censor speech, I don’t think it is working very well. I am surprised how much companies are willing to sacrifice customers and profits in order to promote a particular political agenda, but it will catch up with them. And there are still plenty of places on the internet where you can speak and be heard.