In some ways it’s a strange standard to measure Musk by: Elon’s not giving away his money. He’s not trying to dodge taxes; he’s buying a company. But he does see his role as that of a guarantor, someone taking stewardship over a vital organ of democracy and what he’s called (on Twitter, of course) the world’s “de facto public town square.” In this sense, Musk’s bid is philosophically in line with those who buy newspapers or found universities. He is not in it for the ad revenue. He doesn’t “care about the economics at all.” He’s in it to shape the discourse. To free it.

The idea that the world’s richest man should control the world’s public square is, obviously, worrisome all on its own. His half-baked quest for an edit button has already caused this magazine to move away from embedding tweets in our stories. Perhaps Musk will make his tweets appear in 24-point font, and tinker with the proclamations of foreign leaders, and appoint himself a hands-on, trollish editor in chief of the world’s front page. But that seems like an edge case even for the billionaire trickster—he’d have an investment to uphold!

Either way, it represents a hilarious conclusion to the fantasy of philanthropic investment in the institutions of public knowledge: the world’s richest man buying a company whose great achievement, basically, has been making all its users incredibly mad all the time. We were, literally in this case, promised flying cars; we got Elon Musk bidding for Twitter.