“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. ”
After a whiplash-inducing last few months, Elon Musk is nearing Friday’s deadline to close the Twitter Inc. deal, and it looks like the tumultuous acquisition is really going to happen.
Banks have started to transfer their financing, according to the Wall Street Journal, and Musk’s latest actions don’t give the indication that he’s looking to back out of the arrangement (once again) at the 11th hour: The Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
chief executive visited Twitter’s
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offices Wednesday—sink in hand—and then sought to provide more information about his purchase intentions in a Thursday post to the service.
Musk explained on Twitter that he currently sees “a great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” whereas he sees value in “dialogue.”
That said, Musk noted, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” That means that in “addition to adhering to the laws of the land,” Twitter “must be warm and welcoming to all.”
See also: Elon Musk reportedly tells Twitter staff he won’t cut 75% of workforce
The Twitter post was directed not at the company’s users, but rather its advertisers, given Musk’s belief that people have been “wrong” in their speculation about his thoughts on ads.
“I also very much believe that advertising, when done right, can delight, entertain, and inform you; it can show you a service or product or medical treatment that you never knew existed, but is right for you.”
He stressed the importance of relevance in ads, saying that low-relevancy ones are “spam” while “highly relevant ads are actual content!”
Twitter shares were up 1% in morning action Thursday, recently changing hands at $53.97 and inching ever closer to Musk’s $54.20-a-share takeover price.