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。

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。

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。

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。

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。