Ripple CTO Rips into Elon Musk on Twitter over ‘Real Intentions’ behind Takeover Bid

UTC by Tolu Ajiboye · 3 min read
Ripple CTO Rips into Elon Musk on Twitter over ‘Real Intentions’ behind Takeover Bid
Photo: Shutterstock

Ripple CTO David Schwartz launched an attack, stating what he believes Elon Musk truly wants buy offering to buy Twitter.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz has criticized Elon Musk, suggesting “true intentions” for Musk’s decision to take over Twitter (NYSE: TWTR). According to Schwartz, the Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO wants to use the microblogging platform to give “better treatment to political speech that he favors.”

Schwartz’s scathing assessment of what he believes to be Musk’s real agenda comes after a recent Musk tweet. On April 19th, Musk put out a tweet that hinted at the billionaire’s vision of the optimal moderation policies for any social media platform. The message read, “A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.”

Timeline of Ripple CTO Criticizes Elon Musk on Twitter

A majority of participants on Twitter seemed to agree with Musk’s message and his plan to take over the platform. However, the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive’s Twitter statement irked Ripple’s Schwartz, setting off a torrent of accusatory responses from the Ripple CTO. In one of his direct responses to Musk on Twitter, Schwartz said:

“[Musk’s 10% policy] is an incredibly bad policy that works absurdly poorly. It rewards unreasonable people and punishes reasonable people. And if there’s one lesson to learn from economics, it’s that people respond to incentives.”

In addition, the Ripple CTO proceeded to further offer a subsequent trail of detailed reasons why he disagreed with Musk. After doing this, Schwartz capped off by questioning Musk’s competence at identifying “social media moderation problems,” saying:

“It really looks like Musk has literally never spoken to anyone who has tangled with social media moderation problems at all and is just listing off the top of his head all the policies that sound good to someone who does not understand the problem at all.”

When one of the participants on the message timeline @XRPcryptowolf accused Schwartz of trying to undermine Musk’s “freedom of speech” vision, the Ripple CTO responded by saying:

“[Musk] is not trying to make Twitter a better place for freedom of speech though. He’s trying to push Twitter’s moderation policy to give better treatment to political speech he favors and to give worse treatment to political speech he disfavors.”

Another Twitter user @digitsmoney took a similar stance with @XRPcryptowolf, also accusing Schwartz of being more of a problem than a solution. To this, the Ripple CTO simply responded with, “What do you think Elon is trying to do exactly?”

Musk Twitter Takeover Bid

Elon Musk recently offered to buy Twitter outrightly to transform the platform and “unlock” its “true potential”. Pursuant to his offer, the South African-born billionaire businessman proffered an acquisition value of $43 billion, or $54.20 a share. Musk also revealed his intention to make Twitter private if his transformation plan is accepted. Prior to this offer, the well-heeled business investor had also flirted with starting his own social media platform from scratch. 

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