Days after polling Twitter users on whether they felt the platform had a free speech issue, Elon Musk has decided to go ahead and buy a nearly 10% stake in the company, making him Twitter’s largest shareholder ahead of Vanguard, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock (also sending Twitter shares soaring by more than 25% in the process).

Obviously this is a huge power move from Elon, who has taken issue with some of Twitter’s deplatforming policies over the last couple years and is a big advocate for free speech. He had spoken about starting his own social media platform, but so many “free speech” platforms have already tried and failed because you simply cannot get enough users to compete with Twitter at this point. So he decided to just buy a chunk of the company instead, and while no one knows what this will mean for Twitter exactly, its employees certainly aren’t happy about it…

Musk’s position in the company is being called a “passive stake” which means he won’t be actively involved in running it, but he could theoretically influence decisions and shape company policy, so time will tell how that turns out. People don’t seem to like him very much because he’s filthy rich and slightly conservative, but I don’t know – he seems like a pretty cool and easygoing kinda billionaire to me. I think we all agree that Big Tech has too much power anyway so a guy like Elon sliding in to (presumably) balance things out can only be a positive.  Either way, massive big balls move from Musk. Who knows – maybe he’ll keep on going until he buys the whole thing.

For the really stupid looking statue of Elon Musk that was unveiled for his 50th birthday, click HERE.