 Monday, April 25th brought us news which might be a milestone in the history of big tech. On that day it was announced that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is all set to buy Twitter, which is one of the most important digital platforms of our time. Now this comes after a lot of negotiations, a lot of ups and downs, and a lot of skepticism for various sectors regarding the future of the company and this deal. We'll be talking about all this with Bappa Sinha. Bappa, thank you so much for joining us. So first of all, there's a lot of issues to talk about here, but could you first tell us, many people have said that this deal would never go through, because people said it is a gimmick, just Elon Musk doing his usual stuff on Twitter, etc., etc., but then it actually worked out over the past one week or so. So what changed? Right, so what changed, I think, is that he got financing for the deal. See, Elon Musk is a peculiar character, right? So he had, in fact in 2018, also announced that he would go in to take Tesla private and that apparently was a stunt. He had no intention of doing that, he was doing it just to drive his share prices, company share prices higher. And later, SEC had an investigation for him unfairly manipulating stock prices. So when Elon announced this, people thought it was a gimmick and they were not taking it seriously. But now that he has gone ahead and produced a letter of financing the deal with big names like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America behind him, I guess the Twitter board is now considering it seriously. And look, the Twitter stock historically hasn't done well. Like when we talk about Twitter, we think about the big tech companies, right? Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. And yet the Twitter stock price has done very poorly as compared to the other companies. So in a way, Elon making the offer and giving it a, there is a significant premium from what the stock price was trading in even two, three months back, right? It's about a 50% premium, so it was- It makes financial sense. Financial sense for the existing investors. Absolutely. Right. So this key question here really is what is his plan? So that is what all the speculation has been about because he's dropped various hints about what he wants to do with Twitter. The most significant one being that he wants to add an edit button. But also some dangerous stuff regarding, for instance, you know, all the users will be verified supposedly to prevent spam accounts, but which could also put activists and minorities, many of these people in danger. And then there's also this big elephant in the room, which is this notion of free speech as well, which he is touted time and again, he said Twitter is a town hall. That's how it should be. All kinds of voices should be there. So what's your take on what look like, what really seems to be the plan? Is it to make money? Because I don't know that's happening. Well, I think that would also be part of, I mean, Elon Musk is after all a capitalist, a big businessman and making money would be a part of it. Like I said that because Twitter's market value is much less than the other companies, it would be a attractive company to take over on the cheap and then see if you can expand its market cap to something like closer to Facebook and other platforms. And if he's successful in doing that, then he will make a huge amount of money, right? So that clearly probably is one of his motivations. He's also talked about free speech, right? So there is a political angle to it. I mean, Elon is more closely associated with the American right wing and Twitter has gone fairly aggressively after like banning some of these right wing accounts, including Donald Trump's account. So there could be a political motivation. Though Twitter themselves, other than banning the right wing accounts, their record of free speech has been actually pretty abysmal, right? I mean, the current Ukraine war has shown that they have gone very aggressively against any voices which are not towing the American establishment line, right? So it's not just Twitter, all the big tech companies, right? Facebook, YouTube, the big media houses in the West. They effectively look like they're taking directions directly from American defense establishment and the military establishment. And they have banned a lot of dissenting voices. So it's not like this play of evil enormous taking on this- Be kind of hope that is Twitter. That is Twitter. I mean, Twitter has a pretty bad record. Elon Musk has a pretty bad record. And so it in some ways is a power play between elite circles of American Western establishment, right? That's how I would see it. So basically, it's two sets of oligarchs competing over what is a large public platform. It is two sets of corporate interest, right? And one representing the American right, which is the Republican Party and Donald Trump. And the other, America doesn't have a left, right? The other is- Far less right. The Democratic Party, which is now more a party of war than the Republicans. Historically, the Republicans were the party of war, right? At least more than the Democrats were. But I mean, with the Obama administration and the Biden administration, those roles seem to have reversed. Absolutely. Right. So what you're also pointing out basically is that while a lot of concern has been raised in probably very legitimately regarding the global impact and issues like that. And also this notion of some absolute idea of free speech. When you look at actual terms, Twitter almost has a very bad record itself. And what Elon Musk could bring is also a very bad record. So there's no real, like you said, it's not a black and white, a good and evil battle in the sense. But that said, how do you also see this in terms of, Twitter is, of course, we understand that it's a tech company. It's obviously a product of a very capitalist environment. But it is also, like many other social media firms, acquired a kind of public space, which is what Elon Musk also hints when he says town square. And it is capitalized on a lot of our individual networks, which is how Twitter is made ultimately. It's all about our networks, about our willingness to engage with each other, about desire to do so. And that is what has made, that is what Twitter has sort of taken up and taken over. But how do we see the sort of, as time passes, do we see, is this a consolidation of big tech? Is this, are we moving towards more such things in this direction, for instance? Yeah, so the consolidation of the media space is actually a longer term trend than big tech itself. Big tech is what we're talking about the last 10, 20 years. But the media space, like Chomsky writing in the early 90s, was talking about the, like, ten companies effectively which reached 90% of the American population. So that has been, that's a long term process happening. Big tech, if anything, has accelerated that process, right? And you now have companies like Facebook and Twitter through which most of us get our information. And so they, in a way, control the information which we have easy access to. And now with these tech billionaires, these people, individuals, unlike earlier, where a group of companies would control the big media spaces. And because there were a group of companies, there would be some space which would open up for democratic discussions. Papers like New York Times, they would, for foreign affairs, they would still tow the line of the State Department. But for internal domestic politics, there would be some space of debate and discussion. Those are now closing, right? And if you have people like Bezos, Amazon founder, and he's no longer the CEO, right? But he's the founder of Amazon. Bezos taking over Washington Post, where a single individual owns the entire news publication. Now you have far more concentrated media ownership patterns. Media ownership patterns. And the platforms further restrict that, right? Because the platform, now just you publishing a story is not going to reach the people. People consume it through these platforms. And so the platforms further narrow down what is available to you, right? And so that clearly is happening. We're now with Elon Musk taking over, a single individual, taking over the ownership of a platform. So you have extreme concentration of information and sources of information. Right. I'll also find you one last question in the sense that we're talking about what this means for the United States capitalism in general. But for us in the global south across the world, we do know, for instance, in India, the right wing is very excited about the fact that there's been a lot of celebration in the right wing about Elon Musk taking over. And we do know that globally, he's somehow seen as some kind of right wing icon in various ways for whatever reasons. But do we also see this affecting how Twitter functions in our respective countries, in our respective regions? We know for a fact that, for example, in case of Facebook, not only were Facebook policies very supportive of the current government and its ideology and were much more amenable to carry hate speech from the BJP and the right while blocking voices against that from the opposition. Twitter was also, to some extent, doing that. We didn't see hate speech being blocked by Twitter. Also, the Indian government laws were such that these platforms effectively had to follow the directives of the government. So I don't know whether it really makes much of a difference in that way. The right wing elements in India celebrating this is more of an ideological affinity because Musk has been supportive of Trump and the Indian right wing kind of identifies with the American right wing. So in that way, they would be supportive. But anyway, these platforms were very, they were almost in the pockets of the Indian establishment. So I don't see much of a difference. From a global South point of view, the platforms were, especially the Ukraine war, like we have said, have shown how biased the platforms are where they're just refusing to carry any anti-West, anti-American, or not even anti, right? Even voices which are critical of American policies, they would not carry. So in that sense, whether, and that's not going to change with Musk. Musk can talk all he wants about free speech, but he's not going to go against the American defense establishment, their military and foreign policies. In fact, he offered to send Stalin's terminals to Ukraine as well. Yeah. And he has justified coups like, for example, the coup in Bolivia where somebody pointed out that the Bolivian coup directly benefited him because they captured the Lithium mines in Bolivia. And he said that we'll coup whoever we want, and I deal with it, right? So in terms of that policy. Bonafide imperialism, right? That politics is not going to make any difference. All right. Thank you so much, Mubba, for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. We'll keep a watch on what this means for Twitter, what kind of new policies are emerging as well. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.