Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos raised the specter of possible Chinese influence Monday, after Tesla founder and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion earlier in the day.
On Twitter Monday, Bezos — reportedly the second-richest man in the world — responded to a tweet from New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe, outlining the links between China and Musk (reportedly the World's Richest Man).
The exchange went as follows:
"Tesla's second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the U.S.)," the Forsythe tweet initially read, noting that "Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla's EVs," and that, "After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform."
"That may have just changed," added Forsythe.
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, then quote-tweeted Forsythe's message, writing: "Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?"
Musk has yet to comment on the tweet-exchange between Forsythe and Bezos.
Last week, however, Bezos reportedly agreed with Musk's now-deleted post about converting Twitter's headquarters into a homeless shelter, an exchange which caught the eye of Paytm CEO Vijay Sharma, who then shared a screenshot of the conversation.
"Jeff joins Elon on Twitter. Which platform in the world can ever pull this off ?", Sharma wrote in his post.
During his month-long courtship of Twitter, which included a reported final offering of $54.20 per share, covering all outstanding shares, Musk openly pondered the notion of free speech becoming the new normal again on Twitter, if he ever had any say.
Fast forward to Monday.
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk wrote in a statement about his purchase.
"I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."