In the early morning hours on Wednesday, September 20, 2018, Elon Musk tweeted out a link to an opinion piece about the dangers of artificial intelligence. The tweet garnered over 12,000 retweets and 27,000 likes in 24 hours. The next day, Wednesday afternoon at approximately 2:45 pm EST, Musk tweeted that he would be taking Tesla private at $420 per share with funding secured.
Tesla is a company that produces electric cars and energy products. Musk currently has a majority stake in the company and is its CEO. Musk also owns other companies including SpaceX and Neuralink.
What followed was pandemonium among investors as they scrambled to figure out what this tweet meant for the company.
Why Did He Do It?
In a tweet late on Thursday, Musk said: Just heard that my friend @realDonaldTrump has lost his twitter account. Too bad. Will do what I can, he added.
The Repercussions
The social media world has been in a frenzy since Musk announced that he would be lifting the ban on President Trump's twitter account. Some are calling Musk a hero for helping to unblock the president, while others are criticizing him for supporting an outspoken bigot. I see both sides of the argument, but what I'm most worried about is that this could open up the floodgates and allow any account to be accessible again. If we don't want to see more people blocking accounts on social media then we need to support those who stand up for free speech online by not banning accounts just because we disagree with what they have to say.
What Do We Think?
When Tesla CEO Elon Musk joked to a reporter that he would delete Trump's account, many were wondering how serious he was. I don't know, Musk replied when asked if he would do so. That seems somewhat reasonable. Well, it turns out that the whole thing was just a joke, as the company has actually done what Elon Musk wanted them to do: delete Donald Trump's Twitter account. The tweet in question, which said my touchstone for whether something is good or bad is whether I'd want my kids to read it and confirmed that the company had deleted POTUS' account, came from an official Tesla account owned by Elon Musk himself. However, the tweet in question does not mention anything about deleting President Trump's Twitter account.
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