Elon Musk secures deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion

Billionaire Elon Musk reached a deal Monday to purchase social media giant Twitter for a sum of $44 billion.

"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," Musk said, per Reuters.

Twitter has been mired in accusations of censorship for years, earning particular scorn from conservatives for banning former President Donald Trump from the platform.

The company went public in 2013.

Amid the debate over censorship in social media, Trump has worked to develop his own free-speech-based platform, Truth Social, which ended its beta-testing period on Friday, migrating to the Rumble cloud to allow it to onboard millions of users.

The former president has since indicated the Musk Twitter buyout would not convince him to return to the platform, even should it lift its censorship policies and enact a free speech agenda.

“Twitter’s become very boring. They’ve gotten rid of a lot of good voices on Twitter, a lot of their conservative voices,” Trump told Americano media.