Jeff Bezos suggests Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter could give China leverage

Jeff Bezos holds Amelia Earhart’s flying glasses as he speaks during a press conference about his flight aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard into space on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas.

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Amazon Founding Billionaire Jeff Bezos heavier in Elon Musk bargain to buy Twitter for $44 billion.

Bezos shared a tweet late Monday suggesting that China could gain influence on Twitter once the acquisition is complete.

“Has the Chinese government gained some influence over the town square?” Bezos wrote, hinting at Musk’s trade ties with China. The Tesla The CEO set up a factory in Shanghai in 2018 and the company relies heavily on Chinese companies to supply the materials that go into its batteries.

Twitter board The two agreed to an acquisition from Musk Corporation. Twitter will go private at $54.20 per share in a deal valuing the company at nearly $44 billion.

Twitter is banned in China. The so-called “Great Firewall” in Beijing blocks access to a number of Western social media sites, including Facebookand Instagram and Youtube.

“My answer to that question may not be,” Bezos added. “The most likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than Twitter censorship.”

“But we’ll see. Musk is very good at dealing with this kind of complexity,” he added.

Despite the warning, Bezos’ comments are the latest in a long-running feud between billionaires.

The couple has often argued about their space ambitions over the years. Musk is the CEO of SpaceX, while Bezos runs his own space project, Blue Origin.

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While Musk has promised to improve Twitter’s role as a “digital city square” where users can speak and discuss freely, the acquisition has alarmed some politicians and activists who fear it will give the world’s richest man too much control over online discourse.

However, billionaires owning media companies is not a new phenomenon. Bezos himself He owns the Washington Postwhile the CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff It bought Time Magazine in 2018. But Twitter is unique in that it’s a platform where millions of people interact as well as share content – and as such comes under close scrutiny from regulators.

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