FCC official says antitrust regulators should ‘welcome’ Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion acquisition of Twitter

• Antitrust regulators should “welcome” Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, a top FCC official said.
• FCC commissioner Nathan Simington said Musk buying Twitter would be good for competition.
• Simington said the FCC had been called upon by some to block Musk’s $44 billion takeover.

A top Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official says antitrust regulators should “welcome” Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.

“If Mr Musk follows through on his stated intention to ease Twitter’s restrictions on speech, he would almost certainly enhance competition and better serve those Americans, the majority, who value free speech,” Nathan Simington, a Republican FCC commissioner, said in a statement Monday.

Simington said, without providing details, that the FCC had been called upon by some to block Musk’s takeover, which has yet to receive shareholder and regulatory approval.

Simington wrote: “The FCC cannot, and should not, block this sale. But even if this deal were within our purview, it would be inappropriate and contrary to the public interest to block it.”

He continued: “Mr Musk’s acquisition does not raise any concerns about vertical or horizontal concentration in the social media market, and there is no reason to think it would otherwise limit competition or harm consumer welfare.”

Simington joins a chorus of Republicans who see Musk’s takeover as a way to combat perceived anti-conservative bias on social-media platforms.

The commissioner said Monday that consumer choice has been damaged by “restrictive, and often politically motivated, content moderation practices adopted across all major social media platforms.”

Experts told Insider that relaxing Twitter’s rules around content moderation could lead to an increase in hate speech and misinformation on the platform.