Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are among the many most acknowledged enterprise leaders on the planet, however the billionaires aren’t above trolling one another on social media. This weekend the battle renewed.
The most recent barb, which got here on Saturday, concerned Musk’s Twitter deal. After writer and podcaster Michael Malice tweeted that “Not a single individual wringing their arms about @elonmusk shopping for Twitter has ever had an issue with Jeff Bezos proudly owning the @washingtonpost,” Musk replied, “Good level.”
Musk’s tweet follows a lot hand-wringing inside and outdoors Twitter about what’s going to occur if Musk does certainly purchase the platform for $44 billion. A protracted drama concerning the deal has unfolded this 12 months.
Many Twitter customers fear Musk’s vow to loosen content material moderation will result in extra misinformation, hate speech, and harmful content material. And inside the corporate, workers are fretting over a report within the Bezos-owned Washington Put up that Musk intends to slash 75% of the workforce.
Bloomberg additionally reported this week that the U.S. authorities intends to conduct a safety evaluate of Musk’s Twitter takeover, noting the uneasiness over Musk’s menace to cease supplying the Starlink satellite tv for pc service to Ukraine and what have been perceived as Musk’s Russia-friendly stance. The White Home denied such studies.
Musk vs. Bezos
In April, Bezos delivered a jab relating to the Twitter deal, when New York Occasions reporter Michael Forsythe famous in a tweet that China was Tesla’s second-biggest market, that the carmaker relied closely on Chinese language suppliers, and that Beijing had no leverage over Twitter, which China had way back banned.
Connecting the dots, Bezos replied: “Attention-grabbing query. Did the Chinese language authorities simply achieve a little bit of leverage over the city sq.?”
The billionaires have additionally traded barbs whereas competing within the house enterprise. Musk heads SpaceX and Bezos Blue Origin. Final 12 months, Musk made enjoyable of the truth that Bezos would solely journey the sting of house, not go orbital, when he joined the primary crewed flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard car in July.
A Twitter consumer captioned 4 photos of the 2, with phrases beneath Bezos studying “I’m going to house!” in a single field and Musk saying, “Orbital, proper?” In one other. The following field confirmed a much less excited Bezos saying nothing, and Musk repeating, “Orbital, proper?
Musk replied with “Haha.”
Musk additionally needled Bezos final November, when a choose struck down a lawsuit that Blue Origin had filed towards NASA, claiming the house company had improperly awarded a $2.9 billion contract completely to SpaceX. Musk tweeted, “You may have been judged.”
A 12 months in the past, Musk additionally mocked Bezos after overtaking him because the world’s richest man, replying to a Bezos tweet—through which Bezos touted Amazon beating the percentages and succeeding regardless of doubters—with a picture of No. 2 medal.
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