Twitter is among the web’s favourite locations for web beef and Elon Musk is not any stranger to it. A selected beef involving a college student tracking his private jet was the catalyst for the billionaire buying shares of Twitter, commencing his takeover of the social media platform, based on a brand new e-book in regards to the ordeal.
“Musk had additionally unsuccessfully petitioned Agrawal [CEO of Twitter at the time] to take away a Twitter account that was monitoring his non-public aircraft,” says an excerpt from Battle for the Chook, a brand new e-book on Musk’s takeover, revealed by Bloomberg on Thursday. “The billionaire began shopping for Twitter shares shortly after Agrawal denied his request.”
The brand new e-book is an in depth investigation into the facility wrestle at Twitter, now known as X, in the previous couple of years. The e-book appears to substantiate that Musk’s private gripes performed a key position in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform.
Musk touts “free speech” as the principle motive he purchased Twitter, however the billionaire was actively attempting to silence a school pupil he had a feud with earlier than he was CEO. A Twitter account monitoring Elon Musk’s non-public jet, @elonjet, was entrance of thoughts for the billionaire in Jan. 2022 when Musk began shopping for inventory within the firm, based on a tweet from the e-book’s creator Kurt Wagner.
Almost a yr later, Musk’s acquisition was full and he ended up banning @elonjet. The individual behind the account, Jack Sweeney, is a school pupil who’s now well-known for monitoring the non-public jets of Musk and Taylor Swift. Sweeney merely amplifies publicly out there flight info, however celebrities hate him.
Musk promised to not ban Sweeney’s account a month earlier than he did, crediting “his commitment to free speech,” though the account posed “a direct private security danger.” Sweeney now operates @elonjet on Threads.
The billionaire’s feud with Sweeney is a case examine of Musk’s motivating components. Sure, free speech is essential to him, however not as essential as getting his approach. Shopping for Twitter made Musk king of the sandbox, and he’s actually exercised that management within the yr since.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has all the time been complicated. It’s extensively been seen as a misstep for the billionaire, distracting him from different initiatives at Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. Musk was closely targeted on selling right-wing speech when he purchased Twitter, which was missing beneath Jack Dorsey’s administration, but in addition on settling his web beef.
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