In 2021 Elon Musk created overnight millionaires by pushing the Dogecoin meme. In 2022, he may be gearing up for something far more dramatic. The world’s richest man might be on the cusp of launching a global crusade to restore freedom of speech.
Creating an alternative platform could be interesting, though several of these exist already. Twitter remains, by Elon’s own admission, the de facto public town square. Despite its severe censorship, it is still the only major digital public space where anonymous accounts can interact with celebrities, journalists and business titans (including Elon), where world leaders engage in spirited public diplomacy, and where dominant cultural and political narratives incubate and spread.
The most exciting possibility is therefore the most obvious one: Musk should simply buy a controlling stake in Twitter itself. He could certainly afford it. At $31 billion, Twitter’s market cap is less than 15 percent of Musk’s current net worth. Even if one regards Twitter stock as entirely worthless, Musk could theoretically buy a controlling stake in it and still be the world’s richest man by fifty billion dollars, and free speech would be restored to the “land of the free.”
