Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter stirs excitement, consternation among users

Beginning early April, multi-billionaire and Tesla-owner Elon Musk’s buyout and acquisition of the giant social network company Twitter has attained finality.

Musk went on to oust several top executives, including CEO Parag Agarwal and the company’s legal head and policy maker Vijaya Gadde; the latter was behind banning Donald Trump’s twitter account.

Calling it “extremely foolish”, Musk is all set to undo Gadde’s move and bring back Trump on Twitter.

He has also claimed he will make room for untethered 'self-expression' and 'comedy' by stripping the bird app off most of its censorship rules around hate-speech, violent messaging and political propaganda. 

Moments after sealing his ownership, Musk tweeted:

After seven months of legal wrangling and negotiations with the former owners, Musk finally bought the app for 44 billion dollars – the price that he had originally offered. This mighty buyout stirred up various reactions within the Twitter community:

In alignment with his eccentricities, ahead of his takeover, Musk walked inside the Twitter headquarters with a kitchen sink in his hand:

Post his takeover on Thursday, he tweeted: “Twitter will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints,” adding that there will be changes made to how the app functions under the purview of this council – about which he hasn’t disclosed any information.

Now dubbing himself as “Chief Twit”. Musk clarified that no changes have been made to the app’s content moderation policies yet. However, he also tweeted:

Following Musk’s declaration of his “free-speech” plans for the place – a lot of users have claimed that they will quit the app out of fear for its future. Apart from everyday users, several verified celebrities and eminent Twitter personalities, also known as, twelebs, have announced their exit: 

“I fear this free speech bid is going to help this hell platform reach its final form of totally lawless hate, bigotry, and misogyny. Best of luck,” said actor and activist Jameela Jamil in a now deleted tweet.  

In a more optimistic note, actor Mia Farrow tweeted: “You gave us Tesla and SpaceX. Thank you!  Hope you can keep Twitter worthy of your previous achievements and of lawful people everywhere.”

While Musk’s eccentricities are well-known across the social media scape, his acquisition of the app that widely impacts both pop-culture and socio-political discourse, is being heavily critiqued by some – while others are generating an abundance of memes.