edschweppe | Not bailing ... yet

Sounds like the folks at Twitter Corporate have just been given 44 billion reasons to let Elon Musk buy them out:

Elon Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion on Monday, promising a more lenient touch to policing content on the platform where he promotes his interests, attacks critics and opines on social and economic issues to more than 83 million followers.

The outspoken Tesla CEO, who is also the world’s wealthiest person, has said he wanted to own and privatize Twitter because he thinks it’s not living up to its potential as a platform for free speech.

Musk said in a joint statement with Twitter that he wants to make the service “better than ever” with new features, such as getting rid of automated “spam bots” and making its algorithms open to the public to increase trust.

“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,” Musk said, adding hearts, stars and rocket emojis in a tweet that highlighted the statement.

A more hands-off approach to content moderation has many people concerned the platform will become more of a haven for disinformation and hate speech, something it has worked hard on in recent years to mitigate.

The company's press release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/elon-musk-to-acquire-twitter-301532245.html

I've been on Twitter for quite a while (my first tweet was on June 11, 2010), ever since the folks I knew via the Shadow Unit fandom started playing the Fallen London / Echo Bazaar online game (which used Twitter as its login platform). I'm not planning on leaving Twitter any time soon, especially as $44b is a lot of cash. On the other hand, I did put in a request for my current Twitter archive, just in case ...