The Creator of Tesla and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, with a net worth of $273 billion proposed a deal with Twitter. He is giving Twitter $44 billion to own the social media app. Twitter board members finally accepted the deal on April 25, after many concerns from Twitter board members. Musk hopes to bring free speech back to Twitter by not censoring the voices of any users.

In recent tweets, Musk stated that Truth Social, a media app created by former President Donald J. Trump only exists because Twitter officials started taking down any tweets related to violence or false information. The creation of Truth Social came along when executives at Twitter deleted his account. Musk has allowed Trump back on to the app.

Trump was banned from Twitter at the end of his term in Jan. 2021 after the Capital insurrection on Jan. 6. The event was started by a string of tweets made by Trump inciting the violence and claiming the presidential election was compromised. Twitter claimed they banned Trump to reduce the risk of any more violence. 

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter allowed Trump back on the app. The return of Trump and many far-right extremists came with Elon Musk’s statement about making the app a place for free speech again. In a tweet, Musk stated, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.” Along with the tweet came a poll which showed that 29.6% agree, and 70.4% disagreed with the statement. 

After the purchase, Twitter saw a significant amount of people deleting the app, but also saw an increase in people joining the app. This came along with the influx of followers on Republican politicians’ accounts and a decrease of followers in Democrat politician accounts. 

Musk confirmed he will make Twitter private meaning that only he will own the app and no one else giving people who own stocks of Twitter their money back since they can no longer own any portion of the company. This leaves Musk with full control over the app giving him the power to allow anyone on and let anyone tweet anything. 

The purchase of Twitter has created concern over whether or not billionaires should privately own social media apps. The question of whether or not someone with this much power and money should be controlling a social media app lingers around on social media.