Cryptocurrency enthusiasts are cheering for a decentralized social network. Supporters of Donald J. Trump hope that the former president will return to tweeting. Some free speech advocates envision an end to censorship. And loyal fans of Elon Musk are betting that the billionaire will innovate.
For these groups and others, Twitter’s $44 billion sale to Mr. Musk, which closed on TK DAY, is a moment to celebrate. The six-month path to buying (then attempting to back out of buying, then being sued into buying) the social network was a roller-coaster ride, a tragicomedy and, for many people involved in it, a waking nightmare.
But throughout the drama, the deal elicited a frisson of excitement from a wide swath of people for a range of reasons. By captivating celebrities, commentators and world leaders, Twitter has lodged itself into the fabric of society. The platform’s future under Mr. Musk has become a symbolic receptacle of people’s desires to push the world in the direction they want it to go.
Few tech executives elicit the kind of blind adoration that Mr. Musk does. His fans — known variously as Muskies, Muskites, Muskrats and Musketeers — defend even his most questionable moves. His deal to buy Twitter has had plenty of critics, including the company’s employees, some lawmakers and disinformation researchers. Many fear what he will do with the platform, over which he now has more or less absolute power as its owner. But on Musk-focused message boards, Discord servers, blogs, podcasts and YouTube channels, the deal is a triumph.
“Him buying Twitter is pretty awesome,” said Bryce Paul, the host of the podcast “Crypto 101.” Mr. Paul does not consider himself a Musk fanboy but believes the billionaire is a “genius” and a “modern-day da Vinci.”
Mr. Musk has discussed plans to transform Twitter, which has not found the business success of its social media competitors. The company’s stock price has lagged, its user growth has stalled and its profits have been spotty. Since announcing his takeover plans in April, Mr. Musk has floated laying off Twitter employees, loosening the site’s moderation policies, incorporating blockchain technology, charging subscription fees and making it into an “everything app” called X.
First Amendment scholars have cheered Mr. Musk’s plans for less moderation on the platform, citing instances when Twitter banned users who had tweeted about pandemic policies or removed content, like a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop, as censorship run amok.
“Twitter is a tragic example of how censorship can become an insatiable appetite,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University Law School. “Once you start to regulate speech, it’s difficult to stop a natural expansion of that system. Twitter is a vivid example of that.”
Conservatives, some of whom claim Twitter has “shadow-banned” them (that is, hidden their tweets from followers without telling them), have also cheered Mr. Musk’s takeover. Mr. Musk said in May that he would lift Twitter’s ban on Mr. Trump.
Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative commentator, predicted that his Twitter following would double under Mr. Musk’s ownership and egged on the potential layoffs. “I think @elonmusk would do well to fire EVERYBODY and then carefully rehire the ones who share his vision of a free speech internet,” Mr. D’Souza wrote this month.
Others are in favor of more transparency. Jano le Roux, the director of marketing at Likeflare, a marketing agency in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he was surprised that more people weren’t in favor of the deal. He supported the possibility that Mr. Musk could expose more information about Twitter’s algorithms, which determine which tweets find big audiences.
“It’s really important we put glass walls on what is, essentially, the messaging factory of the world,” he said. Making the formulas of Twitter’s algorithms public could benefit democracy, he added.
Cryptocurrency fans have also rhapsodized about the future of Twitter under Mr. Musk, who has participated in crypto culture by sharing memes on Twitter and cracking jokes about the virtual currency Dogecoin on “Saturday Night Live.” After Mr. Musk agreed to buy Twitter, he discussed various cryptocurrency integrations, including running the social media service on a decentralized blockchain network, according to text messages released as part of the legal fight over the deal.
Mr. Musk ultimately concluded that “blockchain Twitter” wasn’t possible and complained about having to endure “laborious blockchain debate,” according to his messages. But rumors about a different crypto solution under Mr. Musk — digital currency wallets for Twitter users — bubbled up this week.
Mr. Paul, the podcaster, said such a move could drive adoption of digital currencies.
“You have the world’s richest man, in some way, legitimizing some of our concepts and ideas, and it will be a fantastic onboarding platform,” he said. The crypto world, he added, is generally pro-Musk.
“I’ve heard very few dissenting opinions about Elon,” he said.
In the days before the deal closed, some business leaders also made vaguely encouraging public comments about Mr. Musk, much as they might congratulate a new president.
Cathie Wood, the cryptocurrency investor, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance that she was “excited” to see Mr. Musk “open up the ecosystem, take away the censorship, make it much more transparent and, I think, add more value.”
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told CNBC that he hoped Mr. Musk “cleans up Twitter” by eliminating “all those people in the public square who are robots and emails and stuff like that.”
When Mr. Musk tweeted a video of himself carrying a sink into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday — adding “Let that sink in,” a recurring joke on Twitter, to the post — his fans responded with memes: Mr. Musk as Mr. Trump firing contestants on “The Apprentice”; Mr. Musk as Thanos; Mr. Musk as Ari Gold (of “Entourage”); and Mr. Musk as Drake.
Twitter employees were less enthusiastic. Stephanie Guevara, an engineer at the company, tweeted at Mr. Musk after his visit to the office.
“Was it fun to look at the faces of the people you said you’d be laying off?” she wrote. The post was quickly seized upon by Musk’s fans, who called for her to be fired.
