Elon Musk makes $43 billion bid for Twitter

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, after backing out of a plan to join Twitter’s board of directors, now wants to buy the company outright and take it private. The billionaire entrepreneur recently became the company’s biggest individual shareholder after buying a 9 percent stake in the social media giant. He wants to buy the rest of the company at just over $54 per share, bringing the total price tag to $43 billion. Twitter said it has received Musk’s offer and will consider whether it is in the best interests of shareholders to accept.

What would Musk do as Twitter’s owner? Musk said he believes the platform “needs to be transformed” as a private company to protect free speech. Speaking at a TED conference Thursday in Vancouver, British Columbia, Musk hinted that he would like to rein in Twitter’s controversial censorship practices. He said Twitter should be “very reluctant to delete” user content or to permanently ban users. He said temporary “time-outs” are a better way to police content.

Dig deeper: Read Anna Timmis’ report in Muse about Twitter’s content policies and the accounts — like The Babylon Bee’s — that run afoul of them.