Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, it seems like the multi-billionaire wants to become his own best customer. While many are appalled by his radical changes and layoffs and more and more advertisers are turning their backs on the short message service, the richest man in the world is blowing message after message out onto the internet. There is hardly a topic on which Musk has no opinion.
In the past four days, the tech billionaire had the well-known US comedian Kathy Griffin blocked and fought word duels with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. He made masturbation jokes on a competing -- and much smaller -- social media platform, posting a tweet citing a quote from a white nationalist that he later deleted. And he defended his purchase of the platform, including the reasons he laid off 50 percent of the company's employees. In all, Musk, who first described himself as "Chief Twit" on his profile before later changing the description to "Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator," has tweeted more than 105 times since Friday, according to a Memetica analysis .
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One day before the important midterms, Musk makes an election recommendation for the Republicans. "Shared power reins in the worst excesses of either party," he tweeted on Monday. "That's why I recommend voting for a Republican Congress because the presidency is Democratic." The 51-year-old added that "hard-core Democrats or Republicans" would never vote for the other party anyway. That is why it is independent voters who will decide on future majorities.
"Like most people in America, I agree with some of the Democratic policies and some of the Republican policies, but not all," Musk continued in a lengthy thread. "However, if the executive and legislature are dominated by *one* party, we lose the balance of power." In the congressional elections on Tuesday, President Joe Biden's Democrats are threatened with losing their majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives to the Republicans of ex-head of state Donald Trump.
The head of Tesla and SpaceX had already declared in May that he had voted for the Democrats in previous elections, but would vote for the Republicans from now on. At the time, the richest man in the world explained that the Democrats had become a "party of division and hatred" and that he "can no longer support them".
After a long back and forth, the quarrelsome multi-billionaire bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars (around 44.2 billion euros) at the end of October. Months earlier, he had already announced that he wanted to leave ex-President Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter after the Capitol storming on January 6, 2021, on the platform. However, Trump stated that he did not want to return at all.
In addition, critics fear that Musk could drastically limit the fight against the spread of hate speech and fake news on Twitter. After his takeover of the platform, right-wing and far-right figures gained followers, while more progressive profiles lost followers. A network analysis by the renowned "Tufts University" also sees clear signs that extremist accounts are becoming more active under Musk.
Those fears are fueled by the firing of around half the Twitter workforce over the past week.
Sources: NY Times, Digital Planet Analysis, Twitter, with AFP footage
