‘Or die trying’: With his eye on the prize, Elon Musk vows big improvements for Twitter

Elon Musk let it be known Thursday that he has secured the financing in his bid to take Twitter private and is considering a “tender offer,” which is a direct pitch to shareholders.

“A tender offer would appeal directly to a company’s shareholders, rather than its board. If Musk decides to officially pursue his Plan B, he would essentially be offering to buy each Twitter shareholder out at $54.20 per share,” Time magazine explained. “If he convinces enough shareholders to sell to him, he would eventually gain a controlling interest in the company. Tender offers can be associated with a hostile takeover, because they bypass the company’s leadership and appeal directly to shareholders.”

The Tesla CEO also took to Twitter to vow that if his bid is successful, he would eliminate spam bots and ensure only “real humans” can use the platform.

“If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!” he tweeted, adding, “And authenticate all real humans.”

It was the latter comment that got a lot of folks worked up over the possibility of there no longer being anonymous accounts on Twitter.

Needless to say, there was plenty of skepticism and complaints about this being the antithesis of free speech — here’s a couple of examples:

There were plenty of fair questions posed and some who liked the idea of users having to identify who they are… here’s a quick sampling of some of those responses from Twitter:

Tom Tillison

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