SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 – Prominent figures on the American left, including Barack Obama, have lost thousands of followers since Elon Musk’s plan to buy Twitter emerged, while the numbers have skyrocketed for right-wing politicians.
Musk, the world’s richest man, reached a deal on Monday to buy the US-based social media platform for $44 billion (RM191.7 billion).
The news was greeted with enthusiasm by fans of Musk, who calls himself an absolute freedom of speech, and with awe by supporters of strong moderation in disinformation and hate speech.
Pledges to leave the popular platform under hashtags like #LeaveTwitter. Within hours, many seemed to follow.
NBC News reported that former US President Obama, the most popular person on Twitter with over 131 million followers, lost 300,000 followers overnight.
On the other hand, controversial Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green earned nearly 100,000 on her official Twitter account in Congress in just 24 hours.
Green, an outspoken ally of former President Donald Trump whose profile the platform has banned, welcomed the acquisition.
Referring to the site’s system for verifying details, she wrote on Twitter, users: “I am preparing for a massive blue flag collapse after @elonmusk has completed the deal and I must get my personal Twitter account back.”
“It’s really interesting to see how conservative accounts get huge increases in subscribers today,” Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, another Trump ally, said Tuesday.
Twitter told AFP on Tuesday that while they were monitoring the situation, the fluctuations appeared to be organic, largely due to the creation of new accounts and the deactivation of existing accounts.
The displacement extended beyond political calculations.
“It is strange to see a loss of about 35,000 followers overnight,” said the Auschwitz Memorial Report, published on Tuesday. The profile, which has 1.3 million followers, tweets pictures and stories of concentration camp victims.
Musk said he wants to build trust in Twitter, which he sees as a digital public arena for free expression and debate.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey tweeted on Monday that “Elon’s goal of creating a ‘maximum, inclusive’ platform at scale is the right one.”
Musk thanked Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal for “getting the company out of an impossible situation.
“This is the right way… I believe in it with all my heart.” -AFP
