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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Thursday 28 april 2022

What Musk's past tweets reveal about

Twitter's next owner

that targeted both individ-
uals. For Vijaya Gadde, an
11-year Twitter employee
who heads up the compa-
ny's legal, policy and trust
divisions, the harassment
included racist and misog-
ynistic attacks, in addition
to calls for Musk to fire her.
Musk has long used the
megaphone of his Twitter
account to punch back
at critics or people he op-
poses, such as when he at-
tacked a diver working to
The Twitter page of Elon Musk is seen on the screen of a com- rescue boys trapped in a
puter in Sausalito, Calif., on Monday, April 25, 2022. cave in Thailand by calling
Associated Press him a "pedo," short for pe-
dophile. The diver had pre-
By DAVID KLEPPER the site before he agreed viously mocked Musk's pro-
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — on Monday to pay $44 bil- posal to use a sub to rescue
Three days before Elon lion for Twitter, which he the boys. Musk, who won a
Musk agreed to buy Twit- said he hopes to turn into a defamation suit filed by the
ter, the world's richest man haven where all speech is diver, later said he never in-
tweeted a photo of Bill allowed. tended "pedo" to be inter-
Gates and used a crude "I hope that even my worst preted as "pedophile."
term to make fun of his critics remain on Twit- A few years ago, after soft-
belly. ter, because that is what ware engineer Cher Scar-
Playful, aggressive and of- free speech means," Musk lett criticized Musk's han-
ten juvenile, Musk's past wrote in a tweet. dling of the cave incident,
tweets show how he has As the CEO of Tesla and the tech billionaire fired
used social media to craft SpaceX, Musk uses his Twit- back and she was soon
his public image as a brash ter account to make busi- being harassed by dozens
billionaire unafraid to of- ness announcements and of Musk's online fans. He
fend. They may also reveal promote his enterprises. later deleted the posts, but
clues as to how Musk will He muses about technol- not before Scarlett had to
govern the platform he ogy and trade, but has lock down her account be-
hopes to own. also posted jokes about cause she was receiving so
"Look at the feed: It's all women's breasts and once many hateful messages.
over the place. It's erratic. compared Canada's prime "It's ironic to me that some-
At times it's pretty extreme," minister to Hitler. He regu- body who claims they want
said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syr- larly weighs in on global to buy Twitter to protect free
acuse University professor events, as he did in March speech has such thin skin,"
who studies social media 2020 when he tweeted that she said. "He's a very smart
and who recently assigned "The coronavirus pandemic man, and when he replies
Musk's tweets as reading is dumb." to people that criticize him,
material for their students. On Tuesday Musk used he knows what he's doing.
"It paints him as some sort Twitter to criticize one of To me that's not champion-
of rebel leader who will the platform's top execu- ing free speech, it's weap-
take control of the public tives and an attorney, in onizing free speech, and
square to save it. That is a one case in a reply to a far- I think that's what he'll do
myth he has constructed." right activist who promoted owning this platform."
Musk joined Twitter in 2010 the discredited conspiracy Nineteen-year-old Jack
and now has more than theory that pizza parlors Sweeney got Musk's at-
85 million followers — the around the U.S. were being tention when he created
seventh most of any ac- used to traffic children. an automated Twitter ac-
count and the highest for Musk's tweets were fol- count that tracked the
any business leader. He lowed by a wave of harass- movements of Musk's jet.
had mused about buying ment by other accounts Musk responded by offer-
ing Sweeney $5,000 to pull
the account. When Swee-
ney refused, Musk blocked
him on Twitter.
Sweeney said he's worried
he may get kicked off the
site entirely if Musk's take-
over is approved. But he
said he likes Musk's free
speech absolutism, and
hopes he sees it through.q