A consequential check

The takeover of a social media platform by the richest man on the planet turns out to be a nice little showcase of human behaviour

A couple of weeks ago, the long-awaited, off and on, acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, was completed. Unsurprisingly, this event led to some commotion: when someone takes control of a company, it is rarely with the intent to leave everything as is. Usually, it means that changes are afoot, and organizational changes seldom evoke a uniformly positive response. Amid the controversy the conclusion of the sale has produced, we could also see some intriguing behaviour, of Mr Musk himself, and of the Twitter users.

Elon Musk is one of the richest people on the planet (if not the richest — at least until he bought Twitter, as some argue that the company for which he paid $44 billion is now worth just $8 billion). As a businessman, he is undoubtedly well aware of the need for a company’s revenue to exceed costs, and since Twitter has been making losses every year except in 2018 and 2019, a return to profitability was unsurprisingly one of his top concerns. Another priority that he has been quite vocal about since he announced his intention to buy early in 2022 is the weeding out of fake users, known as Twitter bots, software that pretends to be a real user, for example…