Twitter Deal: Bezos Shoots Musk - "Has China Gained Influence?"
Created: 04/26/2022, 12:53 p.m
By: Patricia Huber
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos doesn't seem too thrilled with Elon Musk's Twitter purchase.
© P. Martinez Monsivais/Carstensen/dpa
Elon Musk has taken over Twitter - and his biggest billionaire competitor, Jeff Bezos, promptly shoots at him again.
He suspects that China could gain power over Twitter through the takeover.
San Francisco – Yesterday (April 25) it was officially confirmed: multi-billionaire Elon Musk is buying the short message service Twitter.
For a whopping 44 billion dollars (41 billion euros), the Tesla boss gets full control over the online service.
Opinions on the takeover are extremely divided.
Because Musk had previously made it clear that he wanted to strengthen freedom of expression and speech on the platform again.
Elon Musk: Users are divided on the Twitter deal
Market expert Thomas Hayes said in an interview with
Yahoo Finance
that Elon Musk's takeover was "the best thing that could have happened to Twitter." He thinks that Twitter could become interesting again for influencers.
Critics, on the other hand, are concerned about Musk's views on freedom of expression.
Because while Twitter has increasingly taken action against false information and hate messages in recent years, Musk, as the future Twitter boss, seems to want to allow this type of tweet again.
His biggest competitor, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, is now railing against him.
Sharing a tweet by New York Times journalist and China expert Michael Forsythe on his Twitter account, he also raises a new question about the takeover: "Has the Chinese government just gained a little leverage...?"
Elon Musk: Thanks to Tesla, does China now have influence on Twitter?
What Bezos means: Tesla sales figures suggest that China is the second most important market for the electric car maker.
Because the electric car market in China is booming.
According to finanzen.net
, 2.99 million electric cars were sold
there last year .
The top-selling brand was Tesla, with 473,000 vehicles sold.
This is also made clear in the tweet quoted by Bezos.
In 2009, the short message service was banned from China, along with numerous other western social networks.
The reason: the Chinese state had little or no means of control.
But that could change now.
The Chinese government could use its economic power to put pressure on Tesla boss Musk and thus regain influence on the platform.
Whether that is realistic remains to be seen.
After all, the billionaire repeatedly emphasizes how important freedom of expression on the platform is to him.
(ph)