Elon Musk turns Twitter into a revealer

Ln January 17, 2020, Twitter gathered 4,000 of its employees in Houston, Texas for its biannual convention called “#OneTeam”. On stage, CEO Jack Dorsey announces a surprise guest to spice up the event. Then appears on a giant screen… Elon Musk, live from his office at Tesla, the high-end electric car company he has been running since 2008. The audience applauds wildly, delighted to discover this iconic and provocative figure of tech, a heavy user of the social network with its 80 million followers – he has more than 105 today. “ Hello Elon, what would you do better than us if you were to run Twitter ? », asks Jack Dorsey. Before adding: “ By the way, you want to run Twitter ? » Some employees laugh. Response from Elon Musk: “ I think it would be useful to differentiate between real and fake users. Is it a real person or a bot or a troll army or something? »

In retrospect, the scene brings a smile. Because a little more than two years later, in April 2022, the CEO of Tesla submitted an offer of 44 billion dollars (43.6 billion euros) to acquire the company, which the board of directors of Twitter agreed. But, as of May 13, he suspended the operation, on the grounds that the figure of 5% of false accounts put forward by the company was incorrect. On July 8, the South African-born billionaire withdrew his offer altogether. His lawyers explained in a letter that he “ had requested for two months the data and information necessary to conduct an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake accounts and spam »but that Twitter had “ failed or refused to provide this information”. A volte-face which led the social network to attack Elon Musk in order to make him pay a billion dollars (990 million euros) in severance pay. A trial is expected to be held next October.

But, throughout this period, the 7,500 employees of Twitter – them “Tweeps”, as they are called – were nowhere near as enthusiastic as they were at the 2020 convention. Most feared that under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter would once again become much more open to conspiratorial accounts, especially those run by ultraconservatives. A hypothesis that the interested party allowed to prosper by multiplying the statements