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

• Antitrust regulators should “welcome” Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, a top FCC official said.

• FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington said Musk’s purchase of Twitter would be good for competition.

• Simington said some have called on the FCC to block Musk’s $44 billion takeover.

A senior 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 will almost certainly increase 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 some were calling on the FCC to block Musk’s acquisition, which has not yet received shareholder and regulatory approval.

Simington wrote: “The FCC cannot and should not block these sales. But even if this transaction was within our competence, blocking it would be inappropriate and contrary to the public interest.”

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 believe that it would otherwise restrict competition or harm consumer welfare.”

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

The commissioner said on Monday that consumer choice had been undermined by “restrictive and often politically motivated content moderation practices across all major social media platforms.”

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

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