Elon Musk is in the news again, and this time, he has finally acted upon long-promised pledges that were rumored to be false. After months of speculation–and weeks of Musk playfully teasing the general public–he has confirmed his desires to become a partial owner of the multimillion dollar social media platform, Twitter.

Elon Musk is a frequent and popular user of the platform, amassing over 87 million followers who appreciate his political, yet quite often politically incorrect, business, and technology posts to the app. Despite his status as an innovator and business owner, Musk has made a name for himself in the world of social media influence. At the spry age of 50-years-old, Musk finds himself competing for popularity in the young and evolving world of social networking.

This desire to purchase part of Twitter, if not all of Twitter, arose several months ago following a series of “shadow bans” that Musk experienced on the platform. A “shadow ban” occurs when a user of a social media platform posts arguably controversial content on their social media page, so in return, the platform selectively elects to hide their information from the main view of the general public. This causes influencers to lose their most precious possession–their influence. Several influencers have spoken out against this alleged attack on their ability to speak freely without consequences. Amongst its top proptents, Musk protested this claimed “attack on freedom of speech” and openly stated that there are several “changes that need to be made” in the Twitter interface (NBC).

Despite these tremendous claims, Musk remained relatively quiet regarding his shadow-ban on the platform. Three weeks ago, however, Musk made overnight headlines after declaring that he wished to become a share owner of Twitter, and he claimed to have already begun the purchasing process with Twitter. Somewhere in the legion of articles, a three-billion-dollar price tag was placed upon Musk’s portion of the pie, and that figure has since been corroborated from statements from statistic analysts, Musk’s team, and Musk himself. He purchased some 73.5 million shares of Twitter stock, and he now holds the largest amount of Twitter stock in all of Twitter (New York Times).

Staunch critics of Musk criticize his immense spending on such a debatably useless prize. Many claim that the 3 billion dollars could have been donated to a charity of some sort or gone to increase working conditions for the millions of workers who are employed under Musk. Musk’s actions, nevertheless, have not gone without some degree of public acclaim (CNN). Other shadow-banned influencers praised Musk’s determination to protect American access to freedom of speech, even if that battle is won through purchasing stocks of Twitter.

Since those initial announcements, Musk’s purchases have been made official, and now he is an undeniable shareholder of Twitter. His plans to renovate the Twitter public forum begin with rebuilding some of the core foundations of Twitter. He firmly condemned the fact that the current state of Twitter is “failing to adhere to free-speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” and fixing that flaw will be his core focus as a multi-million shareholder” (LA Times).

As for the billions of Twitter users without shadow-bans and millions of followers, Twitter shall remain largely unchanged. The risk of shadow-banning does not affect the standard user of Twitter, and the changes that Musk plans to implement will have little overall effect on the everyday Joe. Nicole Philips (12), a rare but notable user of Twitter claims to think that the entire situation has been overhyped. “Whatever happens,” she lamented, “won’t affect my Twitter page in the slightest.” The situation’s sentiment could not have been conducted in a more perfect summary. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter stock smay have an effect on the very few, but for most users of Twitter, it will remain relatively the same.