Elon Flips the Bird

If the rest of the billionaire class are jocks and cheerleaders basking in popularity at the cool kids’ table, Elon musk is the leather jacket-clad misfit cutting class to shoot pool.

Now imagine that misfit became a crypto millionaire and decided to buy his high school.

Elon Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. to become the platform’s biggest shareholder, a week after hinting he might shake up the social media industry.

Twitter shares surged as much as 26% after Musk’s purchase was revealed Monday in a regulatory filing, the stock’s biggest intraday increase in more than four years. The stake is worth about $2.89 billion, based on Friday’s market close.

Musk, 50, polled his more than 80 million followers on Twitter last month, asking them whether the company adheres to the principles of free speech. After more than 70% said no, he asked whether a new platform was needed and said he was giving serious thought to starting his own.

It looks like Musk decided to buy a plurality of Twitter instead of starting his own social network. Which is a smart move considering what a disaster almost every attempt to start a Twitter competitor has been.

Twitter is particularly vulnerable to outside pressure because unlike Google, Facebook, Amazon and Snap, the company’s founders don’t have special voting control over its future. The company has just recovered from activist pressure by Elliot Management that started in 2020 which led Dorsey, who was serving his second stint as CEO of Twitter, to set a succession plan.

That blink-and-you-miss-it detail is the crux of this matter. As the biggest shareholder, Musk can force Twitter’s board to vote on pretty much whatever he wants. He could also make the company go private again. And the founders can’t veto him.

As others have pointed out, Musk has a frustrating history of issuing tantalizing statements he doesn’t follow through on. It remains to be seen if his major stake in Twitter will lead to the shakeup a lot of pundits are predicting.

A good sign to look for would be the reinstatement of accounts banned for running afoul of the Woke Cult narrative like Alex Jones, Nick Fuentes, and Donald Trump.

Whether Musk cleans up Twitter or not, you can do your part by not funding people who hate you.