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#ICYMI… Twitter’s favorite CEO-lebrity is now its biggest shareholder. Two weeks ago Elon Musk asked his 80M followers whether Twitter was doing a good job supporting free speech: 70% of respondents said no. Yesterday an SEC filing revealed that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had owned a big chunk of Twitter shares at the time of the poll.
Itchy Twitter finger… Elon has called Twitter a “de facto public town square,” and he’s famously loud in that square: he tweeted 3K+ times last year. In just the past month, he posted memes of ducks in police cars, “Lord of the Rings” quotes, and that poll about the future of free speech. But tweets have also landed the Technoking in hot water:
Seats speak louder than tweets… The Tesla titan looks more interested in influencing Twitter than owning or profiting from it. As the world’s richest man, Elon could buy Twitter seven times over if he wanted. But since Twitter doesn’t have “supershares” that give founders voting control — unlike Google, Meta, and Snap — some analysts are speculating that Elon’s relatively small stake could lead to a seat on the board. Translation: Elon may have found a way to demand change at the platform he loves to hate even more loudly than before.