Elon Musk And His Controlling Shares Of Twitter. What Are The Implications For Free Speech And Wealth?
The Oasis Reporters
April 26, 2022
There has been a media frenzy all over the world since South African born Elon Musk dropped down $44billion to purchase the short messaging app, Twitter, which has further revolutionized social media and made it more exciting.
This exchange continues to haunt me pic.twitter.com/W06oSqx0MR
— Dave Smith (@redletterdave) April 25, 2022
So he drops down the cash and buys it.
But the National Advancement For Coloured People has a word for Elon Musk:
NAACP statement: "Mr. Musk: free speech is wonderful, hate speech is unacceptable. Disinformation, misinformation and hate speech have NO PLACE on Twitter. Do not allow 45 to return to the platform. Do not allow Twitter to become a petri dish for hate speech."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 25, 2022
And who is Musk ?
Musk was born to a Canadian mother and White South African father, and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17 to avoid military conscription.
He was enrolled at Queen’s University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics. He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University but decided instead to pursue a business career, co-founding the web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. The same year, Musk co-founded online bank X.com, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. The company was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, of which he is CEO and Chief Engineer. In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008.
In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company that was later acquired by Tesla and became Tesla Energy. In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain–computer interfaces, and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. He also agreed to purchase the major American social networking service Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion. Musk has proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.
Musk has been criticized for his unscientific stances and controversial statements. In 2018, he was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. He settled with the SEC, temporarily stepping down from his chairmanship and agreeing to limitations on his Twitter usage. In 2019, he won a defamation trial brought against him by a British caver who advised in the Tham Luang cave rescue. Musk has also been criticized for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and for his other views on such matters as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and public transport.
The journey of Musk says one thing about the future and it’s prosperity. The future is in technology.
As it seems, all the wealth of Africa’s most populous country Nigeria, pales insignificantly to what this young South African man controls. Nigeria’s wealth comes from crude oil. South African came initially from mining that was controlled by the Boers, the fore parents of Elon Musk. But the physics and economics graduate has dusted both African countries in wealth.
Do you want to compare the fat bank balance of Elon Musk with Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund ?
Welcome, Nefertiti:
1. Nigeria’s External Reserve is $39.9 billion. So Elon Musk is 6.8X richer than Nigeria. He can afford to buy a Sovereign, not just Twitter. If Dangote must survive the headwinds in Nigeria, then he must innovate, move away from the old ways of doing things, & welcome technology
— NEFERTITI (@firstladyship) April 26, 2022
Nefertiti again:
5. There is a world of difference between being the richest man IN Africa vs the RICHEST African. Aliko is the richest man IN Africa, but Elon is the RICHEST African & the richest man in the world. By the way, Dangote is still the richest black man. That must count for something.
— NEFERTITI (@firstladyship) April 26, 2022
Just because of education and innovations. What more can one add ?
Greg Abolo.
Additional resource:
Wikipedia
Twitter
