Playful, aggressive and often juvenile, Musk's past tweets show how the world's richest man has used social media to craft his public image as a brash billionaire unafraid to offend. They may also reveal clues as to how Musk will govern the platform he hopes to own.
“Look at the feed: It's all over the place. It's erratic. At times it's pretty extreme,” said
Musk joined Twitter in 2010 and now has more than 85 million followers — the seventh most of any account and the highest for any business leader. He had mused about buying the site before he agreed on Monday to pay
“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk wrote in a tweet.
As the CEO of
He's also used the account to punch back at critics, such as when he called a diver working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in
A few years ago, after software engineer
“It's ironic to me that somebody who claims they want to buy Twitter to protect free speech has such thin skin,” she said. “He's a very smart man, and when he replies to people that criticize him, he knows what he's doing. To me that's not championing free speech, it's weaponizing free speech, and I think that's what he'll do owning this platform.”
Nineteen-year-old
Sweeney said he's worried he may get kicked off the site entirely if Musk's takeover is approved. But he said he likes Musk's free speech absolutism, and hopes he sees it through.
“He’ll make it more open, and I think that's a good thing,” Sweeney said.
Musk's use of Twitter has also led to problems for his own companies. In one
More recently, Musk appeared to have violated
Last year another federal agency, the
Those tweets helped cement Musk's reputation as a brash outsider, a workingman's billionaire, Grygiel said. But that doesn't mean he is equipped to run a social media platform with more than 200 million users, the professor added.
“Maybe he wants to burn it down,” Grygiel said. “I don't know. But I do know that it shows that no one person should have this kind of power.”
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