As Musk buyout looms, Twitter searches for its soul

By BARBARA ORTUTAY
AP Technology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A toxic cesspool. A lifeline. A finger on the world’s pulse. Twitter is all these things and more to its over 229 million users around the world. For Elon Musk, its ultimate troll and perhaps most prolific user whose buyout of the company is on increasingly shaky grounds, Twitter is a “de facto town square” in dire need of a libertarian makeover. Whether and how this will happen, at this stage in the game, is anyone’s guess. But if Twitter’s history is any indication, the process will be messy — inside and outside of the company.