Elon Musk takes 9 per cent stake in Twitter as Jack Dorsey regrets playing a role in centralising the internet

The investment makes Musk the largest stakeholder in the social media firm

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has purchased a 9.2 per cent stake in social media platform Twitter, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing released on Monday.

Musk now owns 73,486,938 shares in the company, which is worth $2.89bn (£2.2bn), based Twitter's closing price on Friday.

Musk's Twitter stake is classified as a passive investment, implying that he is long-term investor who wants to keep his buying and selling of the shares to a minimum.

Musk's purchase of Twitter shares makes him the largest stakeholder in the social media firm, surpassing Vanguard's 8.8 per cent investment and more than four times Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's 2.25 per cent holding.

Musk's investment in Twitter represent a fraction of his reported net worth of $270 billion or more.

It's unclear what he intends to do with his Twitter investment. He is a regular user of Twitter, where he has more than 80 million followers.

Recently, he criticised the platform, asking his followers on Twitter whether they believed the platform adhered to free speech principles. He urged people to think carefully before answering the question because the "consequences of this poll" would be significant.

"Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy," he tweeted.

"What should be done?"

Musk has said that Twitter is hurting democracy by not adhering to the free speech principles. Instead of depending on Twitter to curate content, he believes that users should be able to pick or build their own algorithms that select the tweets they see.

Last month, the Silicon Valley billionaire said he was seriously considering building a new social networking platform.

The news of Musk buying massive stake in social media company comes as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said he misses the early days of the internet when protocols like IRC made the web feel like a place of limitless possibilities.

"The days of Usenet, IRC, the web… even email (with PGP)... were amazing," Dorsey said in a tweet on Saturday. Dorsey admitted that he was partly responsible for the current state of the internet.

"Centralizing discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I'm partially to blame, and regret it."

Dorsey, who stood down as Twitter's CEO last year, has undoubtedly played a significant role in the centralisation of information on the Web. In the last decade, social networking services such as Twitter and Facebook have transformed how content is displayed and discovered. These platforms are now responsible for a large part of what goes viral on the Web.

This isn't the first time Dorsey has expressed his dissatisfaction over the current state of the Web.

In December, spoke about how Web3 had already been co-opted by investors.

"You don't own Web3" he said. "The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives."

In other social media news, Donald Trump's Truth Social platform has got off to a shaky start.

Truth Social was set up after Trump was banned from Twitter for inciting the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol and for making false claims that the presidential election was 'stolen'.

Truth Social was one of the most downloaded apps at the end of February but, the BBC reports, downloads have since dropped by 95 per cent as the platform has failed to deliver, with long waiting lists and few users of any note.

Teething troubles are to be expected, a Republican source told the BBC, "But at this point, I would have thought it would have been resolved. Nobody seems to understand why."