Why has Elon Musk's Twitter takeover sparked backlash from critics?

Elon Musk's has offered $44 billion to buy Twitter, a platform he feels isn't living up to its potential for "free speech".

While many users back the billionaire's buyout, some are questioning what his takeover will mean for the platform, with others claiming they have already lost up to thousands of followers.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has reached an agreement to buy the social media platform for $54.20 (£42.20) per share – about $44 billion (£34.5 billion) in total.

Musk, the world's wealthiest person, has become embroiled in controversy for some of his own tweets, which have been deemed offensive or for which he has faced legal proceedings.

In the wake of the announcement, some have questioned online safety on Twitter going forward given Musk’s belief in absolute free speech, while others have vowed to leave the platform.

CEO Parag Agrawal admitted the team "don't know which direction the platform will go" once the deal with Musk is finalised.

After receiving mixed responses online, Musk responded on Twitter: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”

Why is Musk considered a divisive choice to take over the platform?

Critics of the takeover have said Musk’s stance as a “free speech absolutist” could mean Twitter’s content moderation rules are loosened and more controversial content will be allowed on the site.

Musk has previously said he wanted to buy Twitter because he did not believe it was properly serving the purpose of being a platform for free speech and too many people were being censored.

The billionaire himself, though, regularly blocks social media users who have criticised him or his company, and has used the platform to go after reporters who have written critical articles about him or his company.

Given some of Musk's divisive views - many of which he has shared on Twitter - some fear the platform will begin to turn a blind eye to hate speech under his leadership.

The Tesla CEO has previously come under fire for appearing to mock members of the LBTQ+ community, in particular those who identify as transgender or non-binary.

In March, Musk faced backlash for sharing a meme of a man waiting on a swing, with the words: "Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black Ukraine guy who falls in love with a transgender Russian soldier."

And in December 2020, he shared a meme reading “when you put he/him in ur bio” alongside a picture of a soldier rubbing blood-stained hands on his face.

After facing backlash, he tweeted: "I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic nightmare".

Earlier this year, he deleted a tweet comparing Justin Trudeau to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, in response to the Canadian prime minister's handling of his country's trucker protests, while he was also accused of tweeting misinformation about Covid-19 after posting in March 2020 that children were “essentially immune” to the disease.

In 2018, Musk branded a British man who helped with the rescue of 12 schoolboys trapped in a cave in Thailand as “pedo guy” on Twitter.

Following widespread criticism, he apologised, and later won a defamation case brought by the cave diver, Vernon Unsworth, who had sought damages over the tweet.

Musk's company Tesla, is currently facing allegations of racism and harassment against Black employees at its flagship manufacturing plant, according to CNN. A California civil rights agency has filed a lawsuit alleging it has received "hundreds" of complaints.

Tesla has denied all allegations and said it "continues to seek to provide a workplace that is safe, respectful, fair, and inclusive."

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Musk has also been embroiled in a debate over how much tax he pays - an issue which resurfaced following his Twitter takeover as US politicians called for a billionaire's tax.

After Musk was named Time's 2021 Person of the Year, US Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said: "Let's change the rigged tax code so 'The Person of the Year' will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else."

"For those wondering, I will pay over $11bn in taxes this year," the billionaire responded on Twitter at the time.

Ms Warren has called his Twitter takeover "dangerous for our democracy".

She tweeted: "Billionaires like Elon Musk play by a different set of rules than everyone else, accumulating power for their own gain. We need a wealth tax and strong rules to hold Big Tech accountable."

Musk has previously run into problems with US regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over his own tweets, having been accused of breaching trading rules when tweeting about his business interests.

The SEC has been investigating Musk’s August 2018 tweets in which he asserted that he’d secured funding to take Tesla private for $420 a share, though he had not.

Earlier that same year, a series of prank tweets by Musk drew condemnation, after he said Tesla had gone bankrupt.

Over the years, critics have questioned his social media use, as thousands relied on their jobs at his companies.

However, Twitter co-founder and former chief Jack Dorsey has put his full trust in Musk and his "mission to extend the light of consciousness", as he shared the Radiohead song "Everything In Its Right Place".

He said having the platform run as a company was his “sole issue” and “biggest regret,” describing Musk as a "singular solution".

Mr Dorsey said: "It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step."

“In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter,” he added.

“It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company.

What is Musk's background and how did he earn his fortune?

Musk is the world's richest person worth an estimated $287.6 billion (£219.5 billion) according to Forbes.

The 50-year-old was born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971 and is the son of Errol and Maye Musk. He's the eldest of three and has a sister, Tosca and a brother, Kimbal.

His mother is a South African-Canadian model who has featured on the covers of numerous magazines including Time and Vogue, while his father is an engineer and property developer.

ITV News US Correspondent Emma Murphy has the latest on Mr Musk's $44 billion purchase

Musk came from a background of wealth, with the family reportedly previously profiting from an emerald mine in Zambia.

According to Business Insider, Errol Musk acquired half of the mine in the mid-1980s after selling his aeroplane to a group of Italians he'd met en route to England for £80,000.

He said he was then offered to buy half of an emerald mine for £40,000, adding: "I said, ‘Oh, all right’. So I became a half owner of the mine, and we got emeralds for the next six years."

“We were very wealthy,” said Errol. “We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe... And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.”

However, Elon Musk has said "there’s no evidence whatsoever of an 'emerald mine'".

Musk showed an interest in technology - and money - at an early age. At just 12 years old, he sold the code of a video game called Blastar to a computer magazine for $500.

His mother Maye Musk told Esquire magazine in 2021 that she knew her eldest was "advanced from the very beginning", adding: "I have two brilliant children, but Elon's a genius."

But she described him as the "youngest and smallest guy in school" and was regularly bullied, while his brother Kimbal said he "hated" school because "kids gave Elon a very hard time".

Musk himself has also eluded to having a difficult home and school life, and shared how a gang of bullies once beat him so badly he was hospitalised.

"For a number of years there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the [expletive] out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well,” he

When Musk was 17, he moved to Canada to avoid conscription to military service in protest at South Africa's apartheid.

He said in an interview on Participant: "Spending two years suppressing Black people didn’t seem to be a great use [of the] force".

Musk later attended Pennsylvania University. It was here that his business ambitions began to take shape - when Musk and a friend rented out a fraternity house as a nightclub.

Early ventures like Zip2 and X.com gave him the capital to become CEO of online payments system PayPal in 2000.

However he didn't last long. Musk was booted out while on holiday - he made his time count - earning a life-altering $165 million (£124 million) as a shareholder when the company was acquired by eBay in 2002.

Musk bought into electric-car company Tesla in 2004. Using the power of Twitter in 2018, the company soared to a value of $63.8 billion (£48 billion) just 24 hours after he tweeted that he was considering taking the company private.

He later turned his attention to pursuing his boyhood obsession with science fiction and founded SpaceX - an aerospace company with the goal of reducing space travel costs with the eventual goal of colonising Mars.

In Christmas 2008, Nasa awarded SpaceX a $1.5 billion (£1.1 billion) contract, placing the company firmly at the aerospace table as a serious player.

Ten years later, the company had overseen dozens of launches and recently carried a dummy named ‘Starman’ into space, driving a Tesla Roadster.

What have critics said?

While many have welcomed the Musk takeover, others have vowed to leave Twitter - with some saying they have lost between hundreds and thousands of followers already - and raised concerns over what lies ahead on the platform.

Amnesty International USA said it was "concerned with any steps that Twitter might take to erode enforcement of the policies and mechanisms designed to protect users".

Michael Kleinman, director of technology and human rights, said: "Regardless of ownership, Twitter has a responsibility to protect human rights, including the rights to live free from discrimination and violence and to freedom of expression and opinion – a responsibility that they already too often fail."

He added in a statement: "The last thing we need is a Twitter that willfully turns a blind eye to violent and abusive speech against users, particularly those most disproportionately impacted, including women, non-binary persons, and others.”

Following the announcement that Musk was to acquire the platform, actor Jameela Jamil wrote "ah he got twitter" and vowed to leave the platform for good.

The Good Place star continued: "I fear this free speech bid is going to help this hell platform reach its final form of totally lawless hate, bigotry, and misogyny. Best of luck."

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill said on Monday night that he had lost 8,000 followers in the "last couple of hours" following the announcement - but said he would remain on the platform and encouraged others to follow suit.

Star Trek actor George Takei also voiced concerns about the takeover but said he planned to stay on the site and encouraged others to do the same.

“I’m not going anywhere. Should this place become more toxic, I pledge to strive even harder to lift up reason, science, compassion and the rule of law,” he said.

“The struggle against fascism, misinformation, and hate requires tough fighters. I hope you stay in the fight, right beside me.”

Others have complained of losing followers, with some questioning whether people were leaving the platform or if it was down to a "bot cleanse" on the platform.

Others have raised concerns Musk's takeover could see former US president Donald Trump allowed back onto the platform.

Civil rights organisation the NAACP released a statement urging: "Do not allow 45 to return to the platform... Do not allow Twitter to become a petri dish for hate speech or falsehoods that subvert our democracy."

Andy Burrows, head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, said urgent clarity was needed over what approach a Musk-led Twitter would take to tackling online abuse.

“There’s a huge difference in outcomes between a platform that tackles online sexual abuse versus meeting basic legal requirements,” he wrote in a tweet.

“It’s too early to draw conclusions but the headwinds point to a chilling effect. Proper regulatory guardrails have never felt more important."

The White House did not directly comment on Musk's acquisition of Twitter but stressed that "no matter who owns or runs Twitter", the president has "long been concerned about the power of large social media platforms" and that "tech platforms must be held accountable for the harms they cause."

Responding to the news, Downing Street said that “regardless of ownership, all social media platforms must be responsible”.

“That includes protecting users from harm on their sites,” the prime minister’s official spokesman said. “It is too early to say what – if any – changes will be made to how Twitter operates.

“It remains an important tool, it’s used by world leaders, and we will continue to work with them to make sure it continues to improve.”