There’s a level to fame where it is impossible to not know about someone. You may have no interest in Elon Musk or his happenings. Yet when you just read his name, you almost certainly had a reaction; such is his prominence these days in the business world. In the public eye, he is the iris. His latest endeavour to buy Twitter has understandably ruffled some feathers.

Musk is not the first billionaire to buy a media company. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post; Jack Ma bought the South China Morning Post; John Henry bought the Boston Globe.

Granted, Twitter is a different animal. Twitter is a social media platform, which in itself should explain both the appeal to Musk and discontent of many others. Twitter drives genuine discourse with its procurement of real time conversation mixed in with political announcements from world leaders.

Musk himself is a character. His weird and awkward demeanour is relatable to many. An unconventional approach to PR and obsession with technology make him a hard investment to profile. He’s both what a smart investor should look for and avoid in a company CEO. Musk vibrates with that energy of the kid who’s trying to act edgy for everyone to see, but when he goes home he’s still an oddball.

Your faith in the Elon will largely shape how you view the acquisition. He has - either through ignorance or intent - thrust himself into the thorniest of online debates: free speech. What is free speech? How free are we? What are the responsibilities of a private company with respect to what its users say?

These are all big existential questions, the answer to which will not be found here. Ironically, Musk’s tweet about his idea of free speech being “that which matches the law” reads very un-Musk-like; as if he was instructed to say it. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, but what is clear is that like his predecessor Dorsey and his colleague Zuckerberg, kicking the can down the road is option A. Censorship may be loosened, but hope for a groundswell of change might be expecting too much.

The truth of the matter is that none of us are ready to decide the role of free speech as a right to exist online. Nor are we ready to answer the monster-under-thebed looming large: how much power for one man is too much power?

To recap Musk’s credentials, he currently heads SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company (transportation company) and Neuralink (human brain computer technology).

Adding Twitter to this portfolio would make him, indisputably, at a level of influence maybe never seen before. He controls more wealth than the GDP of many countries, yet is not elected.

Again, this is not a question we are equipped to answer. Some would say he was too powerful before Twitter. Some reject the premise; that there is no such thing as too much power. I’m not here to tell you who’s right, who’s wrong, or who’s going to whatever hell NFT creators surely end up in.

I’m here to say that Elonites will love the deal, Elon sceptics will not, and Elon has 66 billion reasons not to care what you thought to begin with. He’s the man with the microphone now, and we have to listen to him sing.

FEATURED IN: