And then there was this companion tweet: “Most news outlets attempt to answer the question: ‘What are the worst things happening on Earth today?’” In a March 23 poll, he tweeted, “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. “Why is the ‘traditional’ media such a relentless hatestream? Real question,” he tweeted in February to 349,000 likes. Last week on his Twitter account, he asked, “Is a new platform needed?” The tweet received 333,000 likes. In 2018, as TechCrunch recently reminded us, he tweeted his plans for a media review operation called Pravda, “where the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication.” Alas, Pravda never surfaced. Most vanity press moguls praise the media. This makes Musk look like the person who doesn’t like the way Twitter censors messages, hence he’s buying the messenger.īut as much as Musk loves, loves, loves Twitter, he’s also taken a unique position - for an aspiring media mogul, that is - as the anti-media media mogul. Also, the herd, the dairy and the pasteurization plant.
Instead, Musk is that obsessive Twitterer who so loves its milk he wants to buy the cow. Twitter is largely self-sustaining and needs no billionaire help to regain lost glory. What’s different about Musk’s impending mogulhood is that most new rich people swoop in with the intention to restore flagship publications to their former glory - in the above examples, the rescue cases were the Post, the Times, the Globe. Viewed from that angle, it’s not strange that Musk has invested in media, only strange that it took him so long. Instead, it seems that Musk has belatedly reached the altitude where many of his fellow oligarchs dwell, a place where owning big media conveys status upon them that is beyond money. While the investment has goosed the company’s stock by 25 percent, providing Musk with a bigger bank account, money can’t be his main motivation. It’s not even a top social-media outlet, like Facebook or TikTok. Now, why would the world’s richest person want to buy into Twitter? It’s not a wildly profitable company. If he does so, in addition to being the electric car guy and the rocket guy, he’ll become the Twitter guy, too.
Given his $299 billion fortune, all it would take is a few mouse clicks to place the entire company in his shopping cart and complete the transaction in short order. He’s purchased a 9.2 percent share in Twitter for $2.9 billion - where he has 80.2 million followers - making him the social media company’s largest shareholder. Jack Shafer is Politico ’s senior media writer.Įlon Musk has found something to keep himself occupied until his first crewed mission to Mars fulfills his prediction and lands on the Red Planet in 2029.