Why did Elon Musk really buy Twitter? Here is TRUTH

Ahead of his $44 billion Twitter acquisition deal, Elon Musk dismissed speculation about why he's buying Twitter.

Elon Musk dismisses speculation about why he's buying Twitter. Know here. (AFP)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ahead of his USD 44 billion Twitter acquisition deal, dismissed speculation about why he'd buy the micro-blogging platform and his thoughts on advertising.

Musk took to Twitter and shared a statement that was captioned, "Dear Twitter Advertisers." It read, "I wanted to reach out personally to share my motivation in acquiring Twitter. There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong."

He continued, "The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society."

He said Twitter should be "warm and welcoming to all" and enable users to choose the experience they want to have. Further, Musk told advertisers that he wants the platform to be "the most respected advertising platform in the world."

According to The Verge, this Twitter thread from Musk appears to be a fairly direct response to a report published earlier in the day from The Wall Street Journal that said, "Advertisers are concerned about the billionaire's plans to soften content moderation and what they say are potential conflicts of interest in auto advertising."

Advertising provided for 89 per cent of Twitter's USD 5 billion in revenue last year, noted the WSJ article. While Musk has publicly tossed out ideas about reshaping the service to focus on becoming a WeChat-style everything app and reportedly privately discussed ideas about moving away from advertisers as the main revenue source, any changes in that direction would take time to implement, as per The Verge.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday Musk visited the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco, and walked the halls of the office carrying the bowl of a sink.

He tweeted a video of him and described his visit as an experience that he was trying to "sink in" as the Tesla CEO has until the end of the week to either close the Twitter deal or face a trial, CNN reported.