NEW YORK: Elon Musk said Thursday he is acquiring Twitter to enable “healthy” debate on a wide range of ideas and counter a trend in which social media splinters into partisan “echo chambers.”

‘Overpaying’ Musk on deadline to close Twitter deal

The billionaire entrepreneur pursued the deal “because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” Musk tweeted on the eve of a court-imposed deadline to finalize the $44 billion acquisition.