Elon Musk Explains Why He Offered to Buy Twitter [Video]

In an interview with TED's Chris Anderson, Tesla CEO Elon Musk explains why he offered to buy Twitter.

Earlier this month, Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in the company. This led Twitter to offer him a seat on the board in exchange for limiting his ownership of the company to 14.9%. Initially, Musk accepted the deal; however, at the last minute he reversed course and instead offered to buy out the company for $43 billion.

In the interview, Musk revealed his goal to establish a platform based around free speech that has the trust of the public.


"I think it's very important that there be an inclusive arena for speech", said Musk. "Twitter has become kind of the defacto town square. It's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law."

"One of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people's tweets, if they're emphasized or deemphasized, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that action has been taken. So there's no sort of behind the scenes manipulation either algorithmically or manually."

"I think everyone will still blame me for everything. If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it's my fault, 100%. I think there will be quite a few errors."

"It's important to the function of democracy. It's important to the function of the United States as a free country and many other countries and to help freedom in the world, more broadly than the US. I think the civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform. I do think this will be somewhat painful and I'm not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it. And I should also say the intent is to retain as many shareholders as is allowed by the law in a private company which I think is around 2000 or so. It's not from the standpoint of let me figure out how to monopolize or maximize my ownership of Twitter. We'll try to bring along as many shareholders as we're allowed to."


Much more in the full video below...