Facing wave of criticism, Musk goes on tweeting spree

NEW YORK - Under pressure and facing a wave of criticism, Mr Elon Musk has increasingly turned to his favourite release valve: Twitter.

Since Saturday, Musk, the world’s richest man and

the new owner of Twitter

, has embarked on a tweeting spree so voluminous that he is on a pace to post more than 750 times this month, or more than 25 times a day, according to an analysis from the digital investigations company Memetica.

His recent tweets have covered an increasingly broad range of topics.

Over the past four days, Mr Musk, 51, needled comedian Kathy Griffin and beefed with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on the platform.

He made X-rated jokes aimed at a rival – and much smaller – social media platform. He posted, then deleted, a tweet engaging with a quote from a white nationalist.

And he defended his ownership of Twitter, including why

he had laid off 50 per cent of the company’s staff

and why people should not impersonate others on the service.

All in all, Musk, who described himself in his Twitter profile as “Chief Twit” before later changing the description to “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator”, has tweeted more than 105 times since Friday, according to a tally by Memetica.

“Birds haven’t been real since 1986,” Musk tweeted Sunday in a discussion thread about Twitter, including a meme from an absurdist conspiracy theory that posits that birds are actually robot spies.

Mr Musk is under tremendous scrutiny 11 days after completing his US$44 billion (S$62 billion) deal for Twitter, which was the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company in history.

On Friday, he

cut roughly 3,700 of the company’s 7,500 employees,

saying he had no choice because Twitter was losing US$4 million a day.

At the same time, he has found himself embroiled in the same content debates that have plagued other social media companies, including how to give people a way to speak out without spreading misinformation and toxic speech.

Already, Mr Musk has had to delay the rollout of a subscription product that would have given people check marks on their Twitter profiles. Advertisers have paused their spending on Twitter over fears that Mr Musk will loosen content rules on the platform.

In a report published Monday, researchers at the Fletcher School at Tufts University said the early signs of Musk’s Twitter “show the platform is heading in the wrong direction under his leadership – at a particularly inconvenient time for American democracy”. NYTIMES