Musk Agrees to Buy Twitter, Promises "No Tweets Criticizing the Company"

by Kim Minyoung

Published 27 Apr.2022 17:19(KST)

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Minyoung Kim] Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, made a unique promise not to post tweets disparaging Twitter during his acquisition of the company, Bloomberg reported on the 26th (local time).

According to Musk's disclosure related to the Twitter acquisition, there is a clause stating, "Shareholders may post tweets about this merger or planned transaction as long as they do not disparage the company (Twitter) or its agents." This means Musk intends to restrict what can be said about Twitter.

Although it is usually unnecessary to prohibit someone who is spending $44 billion (approximately 55 trillion KRW) to acquire a company from publicly disparaging it, Bloomberg pointed out that Musk has posted too many tweets criticizing Twitter or its products over the past month.

In fact, before expressing his intention to acquire Twitter last month, Musk criticized Twitter for weakening democracy by not upholding the principle of freedom of expression. When Twitter's board decided to implement a "poison pill" as a countermeasure to his acquisition proposal, Musk tweeted that "if the acquisition succeeds, the board's salary will be $0," agreeing with conspiracy theories that Twitter was using unfair methods to block his acquisition.