Bezos questions possibility of Chinese influence after Musk’s Twitter acquisition

In a tweet posted Monday evening, Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos questioned the possibility of Chinese influence on Twitter after fellow billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter.

Bezos responded to a tweet by New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe outlining links between Musk and China.

“Tesla’s second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US),” the tweet 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,” wrote Forsythe.

Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, quote-tweeted the message, writing, “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”

Musk reached an agreement with Twitter earlier Monday to buy the platform for $44 billion.

He has previously said that he wants to reform Twitter in order to protect free speech and that he didn’t buy the social media giant as “a way to sort of make money.”

“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.”

Bezos is the world’s second-richest man, behind only Musk.