EDITORIAL: Here's to free speech on Twitter

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Twitter reached a deal on Monday afternoon for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to buy the social media platform for $44 billion.

When Musk first made his bid to buy the platform, CEO Parag Agrawal dismissed the matter and it was believed that the company’s board would attempt to thwart any takeover.

However, things changed when Musk began to disclose more financial details and terms to shareholders. Musk’s offer of $54.20 per share exceeded its price of $48.93, as of close on Friday.

Twitter has been a publicly listed company since 2013 but will now be taken private under Musk’s ownership.

One of the primary concerns that motivated the Tesla and SpaceX boss to make a bid for Twitter was free speech.

Here’s a statement Musk issued shortly after the deal was confirmed:

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”

This should be a statement that everyone gets behind. Who has a problem with free speech?

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Apparently a lot of people. An endless stream of prominent leftists unleashed tirades at Musk and Twitter about all of the evils that this purchase will supposedly unleash upon the world.

There’s definitely the chance that Musk will seek to further monetize the company and maybe we’ll see more pesky ads.

But the idea that a free speech champion owning a social media platform is somehow a problem is quite laughable.

We suspect that a lot of progressives are really just upset that Twitter will no longer be a home for selective censorship of posts and people they don’t like.

It’s ludicrous that Donald Trump was booted off the platform while he was still President. And it’s quite a double standard that Ayatollah Khamenei has always kept his account no matter how many hateful things he proclaims.

There’s no denying that Twitter — which wields a lot of influence in shaping the news media and politics — is a biased venue that would benefit from a free speech shake-up.