In 2017, a Twitter user asked Musk to buy the company. He recalls the exchange | World News

A Twitter user, who, in December 2017, gave ‘idea’ to Elon Musk to purchase the social networking site, took to Twitter to share a screenshot of the chat, after Musk reached an agreement with the company to acquire the platform. “This exchange continues to haunt me,” Dave Smith, who has a verified account and goes by the username @redletterdave, tweeted.

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“I love Twitter,” the South African-born billionaire posted, on December 21, 2017. To this, Smith’s response was that the Tesla CEO ‘should buy it then.’

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“How much is it?” Musk asked.

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As it turns out, the world’s richest person will purchase Twitter for $44 billion, which will turn the publicly traded firm into a company owned by the entrepreneur, who also holds an American citizenship.

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After the deal was finalised, Musk issued a statement on his handle, which has more than 85 million followers. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” the statement read.

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The Tesla founder also said he hopes ‘even my worst critics’ remain on Twitter as, according to him, this is what free speech is all about.