(AP) – He may be good with missiles and electric cars, but don’t turn to Elon Musk for public health predictions.
“Probably almost zero new cases also in the US by the end of April,” the world’s richest man tweeted about COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the pandemic was growing.
It’s one of many tweets that offer a glimpse into the mind of Twitter’s new owner and chief moderator. Playful, aggressive, and at times ruthless, Musk’s past tweets show how he’s used social media to promote his companies, hit back at critics, and burnish his brand as a brazen billionaire unafraid to speak his mind.
Musk joined Twitter in 2009 and now has more than 112 million followers – the third most of any account after former President Barack Obama and Canadian singer Justin Bieber. He had long thought about buying the platform before the $44 billion deal closed last week.
Musk didn’t detail the changes he plans to make to Twitter, though he didn’t waste time making sweeping layoffs. But he has said he wants to make Twitter a haven for free speech. He said he disagreed with the platform’s decision to ban ex-President Donald Trump for inciting violence before the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.
“I hope even my worst critics stay on Twitter because that means free speech,” Musk tweeted earlier this year when announcing his intention to buy the platform.
As CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk uses his Twitter account to make business announcements and promote his companies. He ponders technology and trade, but has also posted jokes about women’s breasts and once compared Canada’s prime minister to Hitler. He regularly comments on global events, as he did in March 2020 when he tweeted that “the coronavirus pandemic is stupid.”
That same month, he tweeted that children were largely immune to the virus and predicted cases would soon disappear.
Musk has also used his Twitter account to include other big news events — with mixed results.
This fall, Musk infuriated Ukraine’s leaders when he took to Twitter to open the door to a possible peace deal. Under Musk’s plan, Russia would keep Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine would have to drop its plans to join NATO.
Musk also suggested that people living in other territories illegally annexed by Russia should vote on whether Russia or Ukraine should be given control of the territories – a move Ukrainian supporters said blamed Russia for its illegal would reward aggression.
“The danger here is that Musk will turn back the clock in the name of ‘free speech’ and make Twitter a more powerful engine of hatred, division and misinformation,” said Paul Barrett, a disinformation researcher and associate director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights of New York University.
Stern highlighted Musk’s comments on Ukraine as particularly worrying. “It’s not going to be nice,” he said.
Just days after buying Twitter, Musk was caught in another firestorm when he posted a link to an article that proposed a bizarre conspiracy theory about the attack on US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. The article suggested that Paul Pelosi and his assailant were lovers, although authorities said the suspect confessed to assaulting the speaker and did not know her husband.
Musk later deleted the tweet without explanation.
Musk has long used his Twitter account’s megaphone to hit back at critics or people he dislikes, such as when he attacked a diver working to rescue boys trapped in a cave in Thailand by smacking him called “pedophiles”. The diver previously poked fun at Musk’s suggestion that a submarine be used to rescue the boys. Musk, who won a defamation lawsuit filed by the diver, later said he never intended to interpret “pedo” as “pedophile.”
Three days before Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter, the world’s richest man tweeted a photo of Bill Gates and used a crude sexual term while making a joke about his stomach.
Earlier this year, he criticized the Twitter executive who oversees the platform’s legal, policy and trust departments. In response to his tweets about the executive, many of Musk’s supporters heaped misogynist and racist attacks, urging Musk to fire them if his purchase was approved by Twitter.
Musk fired the executive on day one.
Musk’s use of Twitter has caused problems for his own companies at times. For example, in an August 2018 tweet, Musk claimed he had the funds to take Tesla private for $420 per share, despite a court ruling that was not true. That led to an SEC investigation that Musk is still fighting.
Last year, another federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, ordered Musk to delete a tweet that officials said unlawfully threatened to cut stock options for Tesla employees who joined the United Auto Workers union.
Those tweets helped cement Musk’s reputation as a brazen underdog. But that doesn’t mean he’s capable of running a social media platform with more than 200 million users, said Jennifer Grygiel, a professor at Syracuse University who studies social media. Grygiel has made Musk’s tweets available for student reading.
“Look at the feed: it’s everywhere. It’s unpredictable. Sometimes it’s pretty extreme,” Grygiel said. “It portrays him as some sort of rebel leader who’s going to take control of the public square to save it. That’s a myth he constructed.”