Elon Musk hopes Trump victory will help his $44bn Twitter bet pay off
Two years ago, there was some trepidation among advertisers, anti-hate-speech groups and staff about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Those concerns have been borne out: advertisers have sharply reduced spending on the platform, Musk has sued nonprofits over their coverage of a rise in controversial content and about eight out of 10 employees have been sacked.
The service, now rebranded as X, is not worth the $44bn Musk paid for it on 27 October 2022 – later tweeting “the bird is freed” in a reference to its corporate logo. The plunge in value reflects the damage done to its advertising-dependent business model.
But its continued influence as a news source and its role as an outlet for broadcasting its owner’s rightwing views to his 200 million-plus followers, means the benefit to the world’s richest person does not need to be measured in financial benchmarks alone.
“It’s still setting the political agenda and has had some success in promoting his libertarian views,” says Nic Newman, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
