“Frustration purchase for 44 billion”
Twitter users celebrate, scold, laugh at Musk
4/26/2022, 2:39 p.m
Elon Musk wants to take over Twitter. While some celebrate the supposed salvation of free speech, others conjure up a threat to democracy. Others scoff at the richest man in the world.
Twitter is often described as a bubble in which users are mostly concerned with themselves – and with Twitter. It goes without saying that the intended takeover of the social network by the richest man in the world will be discussed on the platform the day after the agreement between Elon Musk and the Twitter management, in the usual style with humor and malice, but also with thoughtful contributions. While some users celebrate Musk, who is known for his tweets sometimes well below the belt, as the savior of freedom of expression…
… others fear that hate comments, false reports and political manipulation could get the upper hand on Twitter.
The political dividing line in the reactions is clear. While in the left and left-liberal spectrum a danger to democracy is evoked by the concentration of power in the hands of billionaires, …
… right-wingers and conservatives in the US, Germany and other countries are hoping that Musk will end an alleged censorship of their political camp.
While some users are announcing plans to move to other social networks and – sometimes seriously, sometimes ironically – discuss possible and impossible alternatives, …
… others practice sarcastically exaggerated submission to the new Twitter owner. Even God now wants to be Musk’s best friend. He “just wanted to say that he’s always loved and respected Elon Musk,” tweeted the @tweetofgod account.
Some Twitter users, apparently too intense according to their own knowledge, are counting on Musk to fail and destroy the platform in order to be cured of social media addiction.
Musk has officially stated that on the one hand he should increase Twitter’s financial return through improvements and generate profits, and on the other hand he wants to strengthen the network as an open discussion platform for democratic society. However, not all users believe that these are his real motives. Is the multi-billionaire just frustrated? And what does his alleged rejection by the bouncers of the Berlin club “Berghain” have to do with it?
As with the rest of the Twitter community, the opinion of the employees about their new boss is also divided. The founder Jack Dorsey, who has since left the company, explains in detail that the platform “in principle” does not “want” to belong to anyone at all. But since that’s not so easy in practice, he advocates his old friend Elon as “the only solution I trust”.
However, several employees see it differently. One writes, for example, very subtly that now is the right time for the competition to approach Twitter employees with job offers.
Another is shorter: “Fire me, Papa El * n”