Elon Musk has a 'plan B' in place should his offer to buy Twitter fail

Creative Commons

Rebel News Store

Purchase your new wardrobe staple today at the Rebel News Store.

Buy Now

Elon Musk revealed that he has a “plan B” ready should Twitter’s board of directors refuse his Thursday offer to buy the company in its entirety.

Speaking at a TED Talk on Thursday following his announcement offering to buy Twitter, Musk was asked if he had a backup plan in the event of such an outcome.

“There is,” Musk responded.

Asked what the plan entailed, Musk said he would elaborate at another time.

“I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said at the live event. “Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it’s really important that people have both the reality and perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.”

Musk insisted that Twitter needed to make its algorithm transparent, explaining that any action the company takes against offending tweets need to be thoroughly explained to the public to prevent any further “behind the scenes manipulation” on the platform by the company and its moderators.

“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 in the U.S.,” Musk said. “Civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform, and so I do think this will be somewhat painful.”

“My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” Musk said. “I don’t care about the economics at all.”

As Musk detailed, Twitter’s secret algorithms, which see the promotion of some tweets but the silencing of others, can be “quite dangerous.”

Musk suggested that when it comes to determining if offending tweets should be removed due to their contents, the policy should always be to let the tweets remain if there are any doubts.

Musk added that a good way to determine if free speech exists is whether someone is allowed to say something others do not like.

Posting on Twitter, Musk said that it would be “utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote,” in response to remarks by Claremont Institute director Nick Short, who suggested that the board would be acting in “direct opposition” to the interests of its shareholders should they fail to do so.

“They own the company, not the board of directors,” Musk said.