When Elon Musk became the largest shareholder in Twitter last month, he immediately went to work suggesting improvements for one of the world's largest social media platforms.
One of them -- getting rid of the blatant censorship of particular points of view and alternative explanations and narratives for current events -- was immediately attacked by the 'democracy-loving' left as barbarous, dangerous, out of the question.
Then Musk upped his game: He got the money together to actually buy the platform, and then the left-wing talking heads really began to explode.
That any American, and especially those who make their living under the guise of the First Amendment, would find free speech objectionable and want to control it, is telling. But the fact that the effort to control speech on Twitter is coming from the left is even more telling, considering they are the ones who regularly tout their "democracy" credentials.
Now, according to the UK's Daily Mail, there is a new effort afoot to sabotage Musk's purchase by chasing away the platform's advertisers:
Twenty six NGOs and advocacy groups signed a letter expressing concern about the world's richest man's plan.
Musk himself responded to the letter asking who funded them: the answer being an assortment of 'dark money groups' like George Soros's Open Society Foundation; NGOs founded by former Clinton and Obama administration staffers; wealthy Democrat donors and their family foundations; labor unions; and the governments of European nations.
"Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety, especially among those already most vulnerable and marginalized," said the letter, going on to claim that putting ads on Twitter means their company "risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation, and conspiracy theorists" -- all of which actually describes the left, not Musk or his free speech views.
"Under Musk's management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached, polluting our information ecosystem in a time where trust in institutions and news media is already at an all-time low," the letter continued.
"Your ad dollars can either fund Musk's vanity project or hold him to account. We call on you to demand Musk uphold these basic standards of community trust and safety, and to pull your advertising spending from Twitter if they are not," the letter went on, suggesting that Musk's multi-billion offer to buy the platform is just an ego trip, not a true-blue business venture that he hopes will be successful.
To that end, reports noted this week that Musk has managed to secure several billion dollars more in investment funds, per TechCrunch:
A group of nearly two dozen investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firm Fidelity, has invested over $7.1 billion to back the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is also an investor in Tesla, delivered the largest check, at $1 billion, a Thursday filing revealed. Sequoia has chipped in $800 million, VyCapital $700 million, Binance financed $500 million and Andreessen Horowitz invested $400 million, the amended 13D filing said. Notably, no investor has put in more than $1 billion and large PE firms are still MIA.
“Elon is the one person we know and perhaps the only person in the world who has the courage, brilliance, and skills to fix all of these and build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve,” said Ben Horowitz, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, in a tweet.
4/Elon is the one person we know and perhaps the only person in the world who has the courage, brilliance, and skills to fix all of these and build the public square that we all hoped for and deserve.
— benahorowitz.eth (@bhorowitz) May 5, 2022
“We invested, because we believe in Ev and Jack’s vision to connect the world and we believe in Elon’s brilliance to finally make it what it was meant to be. While Twitter has great promise as a public square, it suffers from a myriad of difficult issues ranging from bots to abuse to censorship. Being a public company solely reliant on an advertising business model exacerbates all of these,” he added.
While the left seeks to do what it does best -- destroy -- this opportunity for Musk, he seems to have the confidence of a growing number of investors.
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