Elon Musk Is Now Twitter's Largest Shareholder

"I think he intends to go active and force change at Twitter," Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNN. "This is a shot across the bow at Twitter's board and management team to start discussions." Considering the Tesla CEO recently said that he wanted to make his own social media platform, perhaps this purchase is a way for him to fast-track his ideas onto an already existing space. Even as a millionaire or billionaire, starting a new social media platform to successfully compete with Twitter wouldn’t be easy (just ask Donald Trump how his Truth Social project is going). Injecting your ideas into a popular company, though, could be a more efficient route to get your voice heard.

Musk is easily one of the most well-known tweeters, but not necessarily in a good way. The Washington Post points out that Musk has frequently taken to Twitter to spread misinformation about COVID and questioned censorship. He also frequently uses the social media platform to get opinions from followers, including when he started the conversation about free speech on social media.

He even (jokingly) took to Twitter to get some thoughts on selling Tesla shares in 2021 for $420, but when he got slammed with an SEC complaint, his explanation was that he’d "recently learned about the number’s significance in marijuana culture and thought his girlfriend 'would find it funny, which admittedly is not a great reason to pick a price.'" Yes, that is actually what’s in the filing.

In short, Musk is nothing but chaos on Twitter and now he has a pretty significant influence behind the scenes as well, which feels like not a great situation for us casual Twitter users. Alas, money talks, and Musk’s money bought his way into a majority stake.

Neither Tesla nor Twitter has responded to anyone’s requests for comment. Musk, however, tweeted today, “Oh hi lol,” which bodes well for the future of Twitter.

Photo via Getty/ Paul Harris