FTC ‘reviews’ Musk’s purchase of Twitter – HotAir

Liberal panic over Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter has risen to the highest levels of government and every major liberal media outlet. While President Biden did not directly criticize Musk’s ambitions by invoking his name, he did. reporters He has “longstanding concerns” about the power of social media and the influence of big business. Is he planning to do something about it? No one seems to want to comment on this directly, but it may not be a coincidence that the FTC launched a review From Musk’s attempt to buy the social media platform. And what reason would they offer for such a review? They want to make sure that your purchase will not conflict with any antitrust issues. seriously? (Fox Business)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reviewing Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal with Twitter, setting a deadline for a potential antitrust review, according to a report Thursday.

A person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the agency will decide next month whether to conduct an in-depth antitrust investigation of the Twitter deal — a move that could delay its closing for months.

The Federal Trade Commission declined to comment. Musk cannot be reached for comment.

If the FTC wants to examine Musk’s stock sales, loans and other financial machinations designed to allow him to come up with a Twitter price, that’s fine. Anytime that much money starts to change hands and does so in a way that could push the company’s stock in either direction, they’re bound to take a look.

But antitrust rap? SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company and Musk’s other projects all have one thing in common. They do not control a social media platform. In other words, the total number of social media platforms that Elon Musk currently owns is zero. If he gets on Twitter, that number will increase to one.

If Musk is trying to buy Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube along with Twitter, then you Probably You have a case to make about potential antitrust considerations. But even then, it’s probably questionable. If one person or company controls too many supplies of batteries, passenger planes, or other goods and services, they can cause shortages or unfairly raise prices and profits. How does one control the supply and demand of people talking online?

Even if the review is set to fail to find any antitrust concerns as most analysts believe, a full review could tie the Twitter sale to months. This might give the rest of the players involved some time to figure out a different way to thwart Musk’s efforts. And make no mistake about this. What we’re seeing is a very calculated effort to find some way to prevent Musk from making Twitter private and reduce censorship.

Just to throw out another note for consideration, isn’t it weird that no one has had a problem with how Twitter has worked all this time since it’s been controlled by the board of directors? The individual shareholders had no input regarding the company’s policies, at least not to any measurable degree. It’s as if the panicked critics currently burning their hair had no qualms about putting free speech on the podium as long as only the “right people” were able to speak. But now that conservatives have been able to avoid being shut down in the public digital arena, it’s an entirely different story and the monster must be stopped. Funny how it works, eh?