AFP, published on Saturday 09 April 2022 at 18:31
Elon Musk, the Tesla boss who is now a Twitter board member, questioned in his typically provocative manner whether the social network was “dying” on Saturday, citing highly followed but inactive accounts. †
“Most of these ‘super’ accounts rarely tweet and post little content. Is Twitter dying?” he wrote, at a list of the 10 profiles with the most subscribers.
Former President Barack Obama is in charge with 131 million people, followed by several entertainment stars (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga…) and Elon Musk, in eighth place with 81 million subscribers.
“Justin Bieber has only tweeted once this year,” added the businessman, who posts about his businesses, personal thoughts and memes (hijacked humorous images) almost every day.
After becoming the first shareholder of the California group on Monday, the erratic billionaire had indicated in the document sent to the stock market regulator that his interest was “passive”, that is, he had no intention of influencing important strategic decisions. .
But he was later invited to join the company’s board of directors by its director, Parag Agrawal, who considers him “a passionate and intense critic of the network, which is exactly what we need”.
Since then, Elon Musk has multiplied the provocations. In particular, he ran a poll on his profile, asking if Twitter users wanted an “edit” button to correct a tweet after it was published. Nearly 4.4 million people voted and about 73% answered “yes”.
The platform then announced that it was testing this feature, which many users have been asking for for years.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder will soon be meeting with Twitter employees for a question-and-answer session.
According to the Washington Post, several employees have expressed concerns, particularly believing that the values of the richest man in the world did not align with the social network’s corporate culture.
The Tesla factory in Fremont, Silicon Valley, has been accused of racial discrimination by the state of California.
On Thursday, Elon Musk posted a meme on Twitter consisting of a photo showing him holding a joint surrounded by a halo of smoke. The snap, from one of his stints on host Joe Rogan’s podcast, is captioned, “The next Twitter sign is going to rock.”
