It’s a battle of the world’s richest men.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos posed a question about foreign influence, reacting to a New York Times reporter listing ways in which China is tied to Elon Musk, who on Monday convinced Twitter to sell him the company for $44 billion, and his electric car company, Tesla.
“Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?” Bezos said in a tweet.
Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square? https://t.co/jTiEnabP6T
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 25, 2022
Bezos answered his own question a little more than an hour later as he started to make headlines for throwing shade at Musk.
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“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,” he said. “But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.”
But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 26, 2022
Musk has referred to Twitter as the “de facto public town square” and recently overtook Bezos as the world’s richest man, trolling Bezos in October with a silver medal emoji.
Musk is expected to submit the deal for review by the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission, but regulators are unlikely to sue to block the arrangement, former antitrust officials told the New York Times.
Musk, who plans to take Twitter private, has touted the platform as being a bastion of free speech, even for those who vilify him. “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” he said in a tweet Monday.
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Musk has a net worth of $268.2 billion, while Bezos has $171.9 billion, according to Forbes. Bezos owns the Washington Post and founded Blue Origin, a company that has competed with Musk’s SpaceX in the new space race to the moon.
Musk recently made headlines for a confrontation with a different multibillionaire, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, about short-selling shares of Tesla stock. Musk said Sunday that he is “moving on” from that clash.
