Elon Musk news – latest: Tesla share price slumps day after Elon Musk buys platform

Tesla saw more than $100bn wiped offits market cap as the share price of the electic vehicle company slumped more than 10 per cent the day after Elon Musk bought Twitter.

At the time of this post on Tuesday, Tesla shares were down 11.5 per cent, or $114.82 to $883.20 per share.

The Verge’s David Pierce has argued that Twitter is not the ‘digital town square’ that Elon Musk believes it is. Instead of a debate it’s a carcophany of voices, unhelpful to debate.

“Twitter shouldn’t try to optimize the public arena, a 200 million-person conversation that will never make sense. Instead, under Musk, the company should focus on the private side of the platform, a woefully underdeveloped system for messaging and communicating that could turn it into the best messaging app on the market”, Pierce writes.

“Twitter should invest heavily in making DMs a powerful, searchable, encrypted messaging system. It should finally roll out the much-rumored “long tweets” feature that lets people post more than 280 characters. It should continue to work on the Communities feature so people can chat about things they’re interested in rather than junking up their followers’ timelines with stuff they won’t care about. It should integrate Revue newsletters and focus on making Spaces more useful and reliable. It should worry less about ranking your timeline and more about giving you ways to talk and people to talk to.”

While some Republicans took to publicly cheering Elon Musk’s $44bn purchase of Twitter as a major victory for free speech, there were some who viewed it with trepidation, according to reports.

For a series of top GOP insiders told Politico Playbook of their grave concerns about the new Musk-led Twitter becoming a haven to welcome back previously banned accounts, namely Donald Trump.

Johanna Chisholm has the story.

Elon Musk’s $44bn Twitter takeover is prompting some users to leave the platform while others are returning.

Following the announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s offer to buy the social media platform was accepted, several well-known users announced that they were considering leaving Twitter or using it in a different way.

Removing Twitter bots could be a challenge for Elon Musk, David Mahdi, chief security officer at Sectigo, says:

“In removing all those Twitter bots, hopefully, Musk will look at best practices across the entire identity lifecycle. However, those implementing these practices must also be aware that on top of securing digital human identities, machine identities are also involved in the background. That includes the secure onboarding for all human and machine-related elements (I.e. validating human identities, as well as the related devices used for the interaction, I.e. mobile device, OS, etc.). We also need to think about how the software involved in securing our digital identities, acting as the ‘connective tissue’, needs strong cryptography, PKI and certificates. This implies that Musk’s changes should call for strong management of its total cryptographic foundation.”

The price of the company’s stock fell by more than three per cent during Tuesday morning trading, to less than $50 a share. The Twitter board have accepted a $54.20 pershare cash offer fromthe Tesla CEO, which will have to be accepted by shareholders and pass regulators before becomingfinal later this year.

“The Twitter acquisition actually makes more sense than it at first appears”, Evan J. Zimmerman, an investor at venture capital firm Jovono, told The Independent.

Twitter is where much of the world’s most important communications actually happens. It is truly shocking that Twitter has struggled so much to monetize decently even though it is the only social media company where actually important, real-world events take place. And since our broken discourse has gotten in the way of our ability to get important things done, fixing Twitter would actually be good for humanity, though it would be in a different way than his other ventures. Elon got his start building software companies and has correctly identified Twitter’s biggest issues, particularly bots. As a huge Twitter user, he has probably been thinking about this for longer than his churlish manner appears.

“The main shock is that he was able to find financing for a deal that is shaping up to look like a rather reasonable LBO. One important question: given the amount of attention this will take from him and the importance of Tesla stock sales to finance the deal, is this a sign that Elon’s time as the CEO of Tesla will be coming to an end?”

‘Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,’ Mr Musk tweeted after the sale was announced on Monday.

Louise Boyle has the story.

The Tesla CEO, normally a voracious tweeter has now not posted for 20-hours, since his “Yes!!!” tweet in the wake of his takeover of the social media platform being announced by the company.