For six months, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has been working to purchase Twitter and make it private. Beginning on April 14, Musk made an offer to purchase Twitter for $43 billion, according to CNN. However, after months of back-and-forths regarding suspected spam users on Twitter, Musk threatened to terminate his agreement to purchase Twitter. 

“I feel like in general a lot of things we see on social media are either spam or bot-created. At the end of the day, Musk ended up buying it, so he must have been satisfied with it,” BAHS business teacher Mr. Ryan Myers said.

After Musk continued to follow through with backing out of the agreement, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk to enforce the agreement. In October, Musk agreed to purchase Twitter at the original price on the condition that Twitter would drop the lawsuit. Twitter dropped the lawsuit and on October 27, Musk and Twitter closed the deal.

“I’m not a big fan of celebrity CEOs and politicians in general. I want the leaders of the companies I use to be experts in their field and not just uber-wealthy people trying to be in the spotlight,” Myers said. 

Since Musk purchased Twitter, he has implemented several controversial policies and laid off over half of Twitter’s employees. Some of these policies have included charging customers who want to be verified with the blue checkmark, implementing a premium Twitter Blue program, and intensifying the working conditions and hours of Twitter employees. However, due to Twitter being a private company now, it is further removed from the scrutiny of the public and any SEC requirements. 

“Mainstream news sources will claim that user numbers are down, but we won’t ever know for sure because now that Musk owns Twitter, he’s not required to release any of that information and [is] not subject to the same SEC reporting. He’ll use the power of Twitter as a media outlet to frame the discussion to his interests,” Mr. Myers said.

As there have been many controversial policies and changes made, there have been numerous celebrities who have left Twitter due to the new operations. These celebrities include Jim Carrey, Whoopi Goldberg, and more. 

“I hated it [the Elon Musk Twitter takeover]. I will personally be sad because I love Twitter for following Penn State football and getting lesson ideas from other business education teachers across the country,” Mr. Myers said.