So for days I’ve been listening to all the analyst dissection of your $44 billion plan to buy (or not to buy) Twitter. And reading your tweets about counting bots and creating open source algorithms and having “fun” by opening the platform to just about anyone no matter the lies or misinformation or disinformation. Like reinstating President Trump. And his buddies. All of whom were banned for life after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol.

So Elon (I hope you don’t mind my using your first name – kind of what to expect when you restore that old soapbox to Twitter). Anyhow – Elon – you say you want to take a public social media platform private. But I’m not sure you really understand about Twitter. You really CAN’T own it. Nor -actually – can the current shareholders. Nor the board members who represent them and whom I’ve been told never actually use the platform.

Seriously Elon. WE own Twitter. Really. All of us who use it. That, of course, includes you – but no more or no less than each of us. And have you actually looked at who “us” are? Well there’s me of course but I really don’t count. And all the yahoos who think they’re being really cool by being snippy and snarky and just plain stupid. You know – like a lot of them who tweet back at you. No – I’m talking about literally every leader in the modern world – except perhaps those who have banned Twitter in their countries because it IS owned by the rest of us. In fact I would call Twitter the newsfeed for the world. Presidents and Prime Ministers and Kings and Queens make their official policy announcements on Twitter. Movie stars and rap stars and universities and companies — and on and on — tell their Twitter followers first. With all the rest of us watching.

Twitter is too important to belong to one somewhat erratic, imperious but brilliant entrepreneur Elon. It’s not Facebook or Instagram or Telegram or any other social media app. It’s too important to the world to be judged on Wall Street’s standards of new monthly users or total advertising dollars. Maybe it started that way but it’s morphed into something very different now. Something quite unique. Something which is the center of official and unofficial world information.

So – Elon – you really can’t have it. It’s not your plaything. Give it back to us. To everyone who thinks or writes or governs or sings or has a winning tennis swing. Just go back to getting us to Mars . It’s really more interesting and needs your genius. Twitter doesn’t. It just needs everyone who matters in the World – including you – to keep tweeting. So those of us who don’t matter quite so much can continue to feel a part of something really, really BIG.