Shares of Twitter are soaring 25%  Monday morning as it was announced that Elon Musk has purchased a 9.2% stake in the social media company.

Less than two weeks ago, Musk publicly criticized Twitter for censoring conservative speech.

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On March 26, the Tesla CEO tweeted “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

Shortly after, he tweeted, “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”

Musk has over 80 million followers on Twitter, and many of them have been encouraging him to either buy the company or start his own competing social media company.

One follower asked the billionaire on Twitter if he’d be willing to create a new social media platform, “One that would consist an open source algorithm, one where free speech and adhering to free speech is given top priority, one where propaganda is very minimal.”

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Musk tweeted his reply, “Am giving serious thought to this.”

Twitter has shamelessly censored conservative viewpoints on their platform. When the New York Post first broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Twitter blocked the story from their platform, claiming that it was Russian disinformation.

Recently, however, both the left-leaning New York Times and The Washington Post have acknowledged that the story was accurate.

Twitter also locked the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee out of its Twitter account for jokingly awarding Biden administration official Dr. Rachel Levine a “Man of the Year” award. Levine is a transgender woman.

The financial publication, Barrons, reports that Musk’s stake in Twitter reduces the risk to Twitter that the Tesla billionaire would start his own social media platform.

Analysts suggest that Musk could keep his minority stake in Twitter and put pressure on the company to stop censoring conservative views. If Twitter management continues to suppress right-leaning viewpoints, Musk could become much more aggressive and purchase more shares, or even take the company private.

One thing for sure: Elon Musk’s run on Twitter can only be a good thing.

This piece was written by Steve T on April 4, 2022. It originally appeared in Objectivist.co and is used by permission.

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