this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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He bought it to destroy it for his Saudi backers. Billionaires like Musk and the Saudis make more money with Republicans in charge. Twitter and Reddit were too good at educating voters that would keep Republicans out of power, and hold murderous Saudi princes accountable, so they had to be destroyed.
Would have been easier to shutter it as soon as he had control of it. This is legit his best effort.
I don't think that was his goal, but it was probably why the Saudis were so eager to loan him the funds to buy it. This reminds me of a time I was talking to a climate-denying friend who cited something about NY using "methane causes global warming" to push anti-small farm bills on the basis that they had cattle (or something, I can't remember exactly). The point being, sometimes it's not a grand orchestrated conspiracy (eg "global warming is fake") but rather malicious, opportunistic actors taking whatever advantages they can get. Billionaires don't cause recessions on purpose, but their wealth certainly does increase during them anyway because of how the system has evolved to optimize for wealth consolidation through the independent actions of the capitalist class, and they're not hurting enough to want to change it for the better.