Billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion on Monday.

New Yorkers had different reactions to the blockbuster purchase of the social media giant.

"He has the money for it and he also has the influence on Twitter already," says Nathan Bersaub, of Queens. "So he knows what he is doing."

Others are not a fan of it.

"It just gives him more influence when he already has too much of it," says Rom Pasaoa, of Queens.

Tech Radar editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff says Musk was relentless and wasn't going to give up.

Musk says he wants to own and privatize Twitter because he thinks it's not living up to its potential as a platform for free speech.

In a joint statement with the company on Monday, he added that he wants to make Twitter "better than ever."

"Elon has been very clear with his dissatisfaction with the fairness with the content on Twitter," Ulanoff says. "He thinks people are being shadow banned, choices that have been made aren't correct. He wants complete transparency, he wants it to be an open platform, he wants to get rid of all the bots, he wants to authenticate humans on the platform. How he's gonna do that, I don't know."

Shares of Twitter rose 6% on news of the deal to $52. Its all-time high was at $77 a share in February 2021.