Disclaimer: This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos is often in the news. In July, to his credit, we reported that Bezos went after President Joe Biden for lying about inflation.
Now, in a world where conspiracy theories run abound, Bezos seems to be stirring up one regarding fellow billionaire and media darling, Elon Musk. The conspiracy has several interesting words in it. They are: “Musk”, “China”, and “Twitter”.
That would seem to merit some curiosity and perhaps attention. Certainly, it merits a story. Bezos is currently contemplating if China has gained some sort of leverage regarding Twitter. This, of course, is in the aftermath of Musk finally closing that multi-billion dollar deal with the tech juggernaut.
It is now being reported that:
On Monday, Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos mulled whether China has gained leverage over what happens on Twitter now that Tesla CEO Elon Musk closed a $44 billion deal with the social media company.
In response to a New York Times reporter who noted Tesla’s dependence on China for its large market and lithium batteries Bezos tweeted: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage of the town square?”
Bezos went on to say that Beijing probably did not gain leverage over Twitter.
The Amazon founder added: “My own answer to this question is probably not. The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.
But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.”
The “town square” apparently refers to Elon Musk’s tweet after closing the deal with Twitter: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
Bezos’ comments on Tesla’s relationship with China is strange given a Reuters investigation in December that found Amazon had capitulated to China’s demands to continue doing business and grow the company there.
And in 2019, the Washington Post, (which Bezos bought in 2013) included an eight-page “advertising supplement” advertising the achievements and talking points of the Chinese government in a piece that was off-limits to the paper’s editors.
Last summer after nearly 27 years with the company Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive and transitioned to executive chairman of the company.
Musk and Bezos are trading insults over the years, also taking shots at each other’s companies.
Earlier this month, Elon Musk joked on Twitter that the Washington Post was “always good for a laugh,” in response to an op-ed titled: “Elon Musk’s Twitter Investment Could Be Bad News for Free Speech.”
Elon Musk, for his part, certainly kept at Twitter to get the deal close. We actually reported towards the end of August that Musk made the effort to subpeona Twitter’s whistleblower, Peiter “Mudge” Zatko in the hope of advancing his at the time ongoing lawsuit with Twitter.
This was when he was seeking various documents that would speak to any security vulnerabilities within Twitter as well as its policies concerning its spam. Please follow The Raging Patriot for more on this story as it develops!
