Musk acquires Twitter (X)

In October 2022, Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, one of the most consequential and closely watched deals in tech history. He took the company private and set out to remake it: cutting costs dramatically, loosening content-moderation policies in the name of free speech, and laying out a vision to turn it into "X," an everything-app combining social media, payments, video and AI.

The acquisition was — and remains — intensely controversial, drawing both fierce criticism and passionate support. But it placed one of the world's most important public communication platforms under an owner explicitly committed to open discourse, and catalyzed a broader industry rethink of how speech online should be governed.

Whatever one's view of the changes, buying and steering a platform used by hundreds of millions of people, and reorienting it around a distinct philosophy of free expression, is among the most visible things Musk has done — and it reshaped the global conversation about social media.