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| What if one of the world’s important tools for information was owned by a mercurial billionaire who could do whatever he wanted with it? | 如果一个在世界上举足轻重的工具被一个善变的亿万富翁买下，并且他可以为所欲为地使用它，会怎样？ |
| Yes, I am talking about Elon Musk’s proposal to purchase Twitter for himself, which he disclosed on Thursday. His offer works out to more than $43 billion, which is a lot of money, even for Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and the owner of SpaceX. (Musk’s letter offering to buy Twitter said that his purchase would be conditioned on finding help in paying for the acquisition. It didn’t say where the money might come from.) | 是的，我说的正是伊隆·马斯克于周四披露的个人收购Twitter的提议。他的报价超过了430亿美元，即使对于特斯拉首席执行官和SpaceX的所有者马斯克来说，这也是一笔不小的数目。（马斯克在提议收购Twitter的信中说，他收购的前提条件是找到和他一起参与收购的出资人。但信中没有说明这笔钱可能的来源。） |
| Will Musk actually have the cash and attention span to follow through on his proposed acquisition, and will Twitter say yes? Who knows? The word “unpredictable” doesn’t do justice to this moment. We’re already in Week 2 of Musk and Twitter’s very public and rocky romance, and there may be more weirdness to come. | 马斯克是否真的有足够的现金和耐心来完成他提议的收购？而且Twitter会同意吗？谁知道呢。这简直比“不可预测”这个词的意思还要难以预测。马斯克和Twitter跌荡起伏的公开恋情已经进入第二周，可能还会有更多的怪异事件发生。 |
| But imagine that Musk eventually buys Twitter from the stockholders who own it today. The closest comparison to this might be the 19th-century newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue their personal agendas, sensationalize world events and harass their enemies. | 但想象一下，马斯克最终从Twitter股东手中收购了Twitter。与此最相似的事件可能是19世纪的报业大亨，如威廉·伦道夫·赫斯特、约瑟夫·普利策，以及虚构人物查尔斯·福斯特·凯恩，他们利用自己的报纸追求个人议程、煽动世界事件并骚扰他们的敌人。 |
| We have not really had a Citizen Kane of the digital age, but Musk might be it. And Twitter’s global influence is arguably larger and more powerful than that of any Hearst newspaper of its day. | 数字时代的公民凯恩还没有出现，但可能就是马斯克。Twitter的全球影响力可以说比当时赫斯特名下任何报纸都更广泛、更强大。 |
| Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post and Rupert Murdoch’s news media empire are close, perhaps, but this would be a milestone: A 21st-century tech baron’s purchase of a digital platform of global importance, with the purpose of recasting it in his image. | 杰夫·贝佐斯收购华盛顿邮报和鲁珀特·默多克的新闻媒体帝国或许很接近马斯克对Twitter的收购，但后者将是一个里程碑：一位21世纪的科技巨头收购了一个具有全球重要意义的数字平台，目的是按照自己的想象对它重新塑造。 |
| “He would be a throwback to the ‘Citizen Kane’ days of press barons using their newspapers to advance their favorite causes,” Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan’s business school, told me. | 密歇根大学商学院教授埃里克·戈登告诉我：“他就像回到《公民凯恩》(Citizen Kane)时代，新闻大亨们利用他们的报纸来推进他们偏好的理念。” |
| Musk’s favorite idea is a Twitter that operates the way he uses Twitter: no holds barred. He imagines a social network transformed, by him, into a paragon of expression without theoretical limits. | 马斯克的偏好是以他使用Twitter的方式运作Twitter：没有任何限制。在他的设想中，一个社交网络被他转变为一个言论表达不受理论限制的典范。 |
| It’s basically the same pitch that former President Donald J. Trump has for his app, Truth Social. Several other social media sites also promised to build internet gatherings without the arbitrary rules imposed by companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook. But those sites remain relatively small and unimportant compared with Twitter. | 这基本上就是前总统特朗普对其应用程序Truth Social的宣传。其他几个社交媒体网站也承诺建立互联网群组，没有Twitter、谷歌和Facebook等公司任意强加的那种规则。但与Twitter相比，这些网站仍然相对较小且无足轻重。 |
| Musk’s proposed purchase of Twitter, then, would amount to a real-world experiment in a parallel social media app without restrictions on what people can do or say. I don’t know what this would look like when applied. | 因此，马斯克提议收购Twitter相当于在一个平行的社交媒体应用程序中进行现实世界的实验，而不受人们可以做什么或说什么的限制。我不知道应用时会是什么样子。 |
| Truth Social does not permit absolute free expression. Few people want to have their social media feeds clogged by spammy advertisements for cryptocurrency, terrorist recruitment pitches or harassment of children. No one is sure what a Twitter that is accountable to no one but Musk would be like. (One intriguing question: Would Musk restore Trump’s Twitter account?) | TruthSocial不允许绝对的自由表达。很少有人希望他们的社交媒体时间线上被加密货币的垃圾广告、恐怖分子招募宣传或对儿童的骚扰占满。没有人知道一个只听从马斯克而不对任何人负责的Twitter会是什么样子。（一个令人感兴趣的问题：马斯克会恢复特朗普的Twitter帐号吗？） |
| I also wonder if Musk actually wants to own Twitter. It’s fun to imagine what you’d do if you were the boss of Twitter, but it’s not so fun actually being the boss of Twitter. Look at Mark Zuckerberg running Facebook. That guy does not seem like he’s having fun. | 我还想知道马斯克是否真的想拥有Twitter。如果你是Twitter的老板你会做什么？这样想象很有趣，但真的成了Twitter的老板就没那么有趣了。看看经营Facebook的马克·扎克伯格吧。这哥们好像并不觉得很好玩。 |
| “My guess is that Musk enjoys being able to tell Twitter what to do and does not care very much about it actually getting done,” the Bloomberg Opinion writer Matt Levine said Tuesday in an eerily prescient column. | “我猜，马斯克喜欢的是可以告诉Twitter该做什么，而并不非常关心它是否真的做到了，”彭博新闻社观点作家马特·莱文周二在一篇充满真知灼见的专栏文章中表示。 |
| If Twitter were solely owned by Musk, he wouldn’t have to worry about the vagaries of a stock price or shareholders’ demands, as Zuckerberg does. But that doesn’t mean Musk would be free from irritations. | 如果Twitter由马斯克独资拥有，他就不必像扎克伯格那样担心浮动的股价或股东变幻莫测的要求。但这并不意味着马斯克不会被烦到。 |
| When you own a powerful internet site, you might be on the receiving end of threats from the Russian government to imprison your employees over posts they don’t like or a family member asking why a stalker is allowed to harass them in their private messages. Musk might not want to deal with the ugly details of owning a tool of global influence, but he wouldn’t have a choice if he were Twitter’s sole proprietor. | 当你拥有一个强大的互联网网站时，俄罗斯政府不喜欢某些帖子而威胁将你的员工投入监狱，或者一个家庭成员会质问你为什么一个跟踪狂可以发私信骚扰他们。这是一个具有全球影响力的工具，马斯克可能不想处理附带而来的丑陋琐事，但如果他是Twitter的独资拥有者，他将别无选择。 |
| I want us to save a small measure of pity for the executives and directors of Twitter. They are in an impossible situation. (The company said that its board would “carefully review” Musk's proposal and decide what it believes is in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders.) | 我希望大家能给Twitter的高管和董事们保留一点点同情。他们处于左右为难的境地。（该公司表示，其董事会将“仔细审查”马斯克的提议，并做出最符合Twitter及其股东最大利益的决定。） |
| Twitter’s board of directors could agree to Musk’s offer, and he could decide that finding the cash to buy Twitter and turn it into an imagined free-speech haven is not a great use of his money, time and energy. Then, Twitter would have a worthless acquisition offer, the company’s share price would most likely tank, and angry stockholders would probably sue the board. | Twitter的董事会也许会同意马斯克的提议，并且他也许会发现，对他的金钱、时间和精力来说，寻找资金收购Twitter并将其变成一个想象中的言论自由天堂是一种浪费。然后，Twitter得到的将是一个一文不值的收购要约，公司股价很可能会暴跌，愤怒的股东可能会起诉董事会。 |
| Twitter’s board could say no to Musk on the theory that the company has a long-term plan that would make it far more valuable than what Musk is offering. In that case, Musk has said, he might sell the billions of dollars in Twitter shares that he recently bought. Twitter’s stock price would most likely tank, and angry stockholders would probably sue the board. | Twitter的董事会可能对马斯克说不，理由是该公司有一个长期计划，这将使它的价值远远超出马斯克开出的价码。在这种情况下，马斯克表示，他可能会出售他最近购买的数十亿美元的Twitter股票。Twitter的股价很可能会暴跌，愤怒的股东可能会起诉董事会。 |
| Twitter’s relatively new chief executive, Parag Agrawal, might prefer to yank out his toenails than to deal with weeks of messy drama over Musk. Maybe it’s not great for Musk, either, to continue engaging in messy drama over Twitter — although … OK, that is what he does in his leisure time. | 帕拉格·阿格拉瓦尔上任Twitter首席执行官还没有多久，比起花几周时间处理马斯克的闹剧，他可能更愿意拔掉自己的脚趾甲。也许对马斯克来说，继续在Twitter上参与乱七八糟的闹剧也不是什么好事——尽管……好吧，他在闲暇时间就爱做这种事。 |
| What if Musk achieves what he thinks he wants? I won’t spoil the movie “Citizen Kane” if you haven’t seen it, but here is the short version: Kane achieved his wildest dreams, and he was miserable. | 如果马斯克觉得这就是他想要的，并把它实现了，怎么办？如果你没有看过电影《公民凯恩》，我就不剧透了，但这里有一个简化版：凯恩实现了他最疯狂的梦想，然后他很痛苦。 |
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