‘I’ll save the world by buying Twitter’

Elon Musk says taking Twitter private isn’t for the money but the “future of the civilisation” – and that if his hostile takeover bid fails he has a “plan B” line of attack.

The billionaire sent shockwaves around the world after he launched a hostile bid to take Twitter private to turn it into a platform for free speech.

In his first interview since making the offer, Mr Musk said at the Ted2022 conference in Vancouver that Twitter’s algorithm should be made public and that any “grey area” speech should be allowed to exist on the platform and any censorship should match the laws of the country.

“This is not a way to sort of make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important,” Mr Musk (pictured) said. “So is the future of civilisation, but you don’t care about the economics at all.”

Asked by interviewer Chris Anderson if he had a plan B if his offer is rejected, Mr Musk said he does, but that it’s “for another time”.

He added that the algorithm be made public on a platform such as Github to allow the public to understand how it works rather than tweets being “mysteriously promoted and demoted”.

“This can be quite dangerous,” he said. “It’s very important that the algorithms be open-sourced and any manual adjustments be identified,” he added. “I wouldn’t personally be in there editing tweets.”

Twitter, meanwhile, hit back at the hostile bid to take the company private, holding a crisis board meeting while one of the company’s major shareholders rejected the bid.

Saudi prince Al Waleed bin Talal said on Twitter he would reject Mr Musk’s offer to buy the company because the offer was “too low”.

In his SEC filing, Mr Musk said he told Twitter the company should be private to “go through the changes that need to be made”.