Elon Musk is a Twitter super user. He has tweeted more than 19 000 times since joining the platform 13 years ago. This year, he has tweeted an average of six times a day.
At least 150 of the posts are about Twitter itself, according to a “Washington Post” analysis.
Musk is locked in an on-again-off-again struggle with the social media company as he tries to back out of a deal he made in April to acquire it for $44 billion (about R750bn). But some of his tweets make you wonder why he ever wanted it.
Like many Twitter users, the richest man in the world has a love-hate relationship with the platform where he posts memes, videos of SpaceX launches and random musings about life, love, colonising Mars and population collapse.
Unlike most Twitter users, Musk has long noted Twitter's problems with spam and bots. (He has voiced suspicion that many of his 105 million followers are not real people.) the billionaire is arguing that he should be allowed to call off the purchase because Twitter has understated its bot problem.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
What follows are some of Musk's most telling tweets about the company.
He loves Twitter, he loves it not
Does Musk even like the company he has offered to buy? He seems to have struggled with this question for years.
Since joining Twitter in 2009, Musk has amassed the fifth largest audience on the site, surpassing even Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga – as well as @realDonaldTrump in its heyday.
Sometimes Musk seems to love Twitter and its reach. He'll poll his users about its strength as a platform for free speech. He'll ask whether they really want an edit button. But then he'll get upset about the spam bots or a new emoji. The billionaire has also tweeted that he is taking a break from the site, most of which were short-lived.
In many ways, Musk's feed mirrors the roller coaster of emotion experienced by many Twitter users: One minute, he's loving his ability to share his thoughts easily and engage with fans and followers. The next, he is noting how quickly conversations can become toxic.
February 5, 2017: “Yeah. And Twitter is a hater Hellscape.”
December 21, 2017: “I love Twitter.”
October 26, 2018: “On Twitter, likes are rare & criticism is brutal. So hardcore. It's great.”
July 24, 2020: “Twitter sucks.”
In other ways, Musk's relationship with Twitter is unique. After he tweeted in August 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla, his electric-car company, private at $420 a share, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued him for allegedly misleading shareholders. How many users have a tweet that cost them $20 million?
He has long known about the bots
In May, when Musk first signalled that he was hesitant about the Twitter deal, he blamed Twitter's alleged obfuscation about the number of fake bot accounts on the site. But his tweets show that he has been aware of the bot problem for years.
July 11, 2018: “Lots of fake accounts on Twitter characterized by high following/follower ratio to make it seem like many real people when it isn't. Wonder why.”
On August 28, 2018, he praised Twitter's actions to remove fake accounts: “Great actions by Twitter to delete bogus accounts. Will increase usage by real users.”
He has since tweeted about bots more than 10 times.
January 21, 2022: “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”
On April 21, a week after he launched his hostile takeover bid, he tweeted that Twitter had the power to defeat the bot plague: “If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!”
In May, Musk accused Twitter of having no grasp of the problem. And when he backed out of the deal in July, he accused Twitter of having failed or refused to hand over information that would help him determine the true number of bot accounts.
Twitter has long estimated in regulatory filings that fewer than 5% of its monetisable daily users are spam and bots, and said that it has provided Musk with sufficient information on the issue.
His free speech concerns are new
Until last year, Musk rarely tweeted about Twitter's role in guaranteeing freedom of speech.
March 31, 2019: “Some people use their hair to express themselves, I use Twitter.”
But since the platform banned former US president Donald Trump and others in the wake of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, he's become increasingly vocal about the idea that Twitter is essential to civic discourse.
On January 11, 2021, a few days after Twitter banned Trump: “A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech as the de facto arbiter of free speech.”
In March 2022, as Musk was buying up a big stake in Twitter, he unspooled a string of tweets calling on Twitter to be politically neutral and to maintain wide access to its site or risk undermining democracy.
March 26: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”
A month later, after he agreed to buy Twitter, Musk said he would restore Trump to the platform.
“Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it's just really important that people have … both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law,” he said in an April TED interview.
Other tweets from that month:
April 25: “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
April 26: “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”
April 27: “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.”
He has used Twitter against itself
This spring, Musk's nearly 10% stake in Twitter transformed him from user to a minority owner overnight. As his campaign to buy the company unfolded, he used Twitter itself to shape public perception of the deal.
April 9: “Most of these 'top' accounts tweet rarely and post very little content. Is Twitter dying?”
April 14: “If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty. The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale.”
May 13: “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
May 17: “20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher. My offer was based on Twitter's SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter's CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”
Sometimes his tweets were confusing. The same week he revealed his big stake in the company, he tweeted that Twitter might be dead. The next day, Twitter revealed he wouldn't be joining the board after all.
Sometimes his tweets seemed like satire. His offer price for Twitter was $54.20 a share, causing speculation that it was an inside joke. (The number 420 is linked to marijuana.)
More importantly, he used Twitter to get his message across. He egged on Twitter shareholders when it appeared the board might reject his offer. Then, in May, he tweeted that the deal was on hold. At the time, the stock market was tanking – along with Musk's personal wealth.
He continued to tweet doubts about the company, particularly allegations that its user base was riddled with bots, until finally attempting to call the deal off in July. The saga is scheduled to culminate in October in Delaware Chancery Court, where Twitter has sued Musk to force him to complete the purchase.
Some of Musk's tweets could play a role in the trial. Did Twitter mislead Musk? Or does his tweeting history suggest that Musk has had a strong understanding of the platform's strengths and weaknesses all along?
* The Washington Post obtained nearly 19 000 Musk tweets – from his first tweet in June 2010 to September 2022 – from PolitiTweet and filtered them to identify the roughly 150 that mentioned Twitter or the names of the company's executives.
The Washington Post