'Is Twitter Dying?' Asked Twitter's Largest Shareholder

Twitter is where free speech happens.

In the place where real-time communication and information are shared, Elon Musk is one of the platform's most prominent, avid, and influential users.

Musk who is also the world's richest man with a net worth far exceeding $200 billion, is famous for using the social media to share almost anything he has in his mind.

And this time, Musk has bought a huge 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the largest single shareholder of the company.

Musk didn't stop just there.

After his headline-making move, he questioned the future of the social media platform he just bought, after observing a lack of engagement by some of Twitter's biggest names.

Musk retweeted a number of top Twitter accounts by followers, asserting that the majority of the platform's top accounts rarely utilize the platform.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama appears at the top with 131 million followers, followed by celebrities like Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Taylor Swift, as well as India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, and among others, also include Musk himself.

"For example, ,em>@taylorswift13 hasn't posted anything in 3 months," Musk continued.

"And @justinbieber only posted once this entire year."

Through the tweet, he wondered whether it was a sign that Twitter is becoming obsolete.

"Most of these ‘top’ accounts tweet rarely and post very little content," Musk said. "Is Twitter dying?"

Ever since founder Jack Dorsey resigned from the company, and his CEO position replaced by Parag Agrawal, he created a room for a more diverse power hierarchy.

Musk is an avid Twitter user, and has been using his influencer to not only speak with other influential figures and politicians, but also with other Twitter users.

Musk has also "played" with the market through his tweets, that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has already fined Musk for "misleading investors with tweets," and insisted that he have someone with legal experience oversee his tweeting.

Musk openly ignored this.

After joining Twitter, Musk through his influence is planning to make "significant improvements to Twitter," and began polling his followers on whether to add an "edit" button to the service, a long-discussed tweak.

And Twitter later said that it is starting to experiment with one.

He also created a poll, where he asked his followers whether to turn Twitter's headquarters to become a homeless shelter, "since no one shows up anyway."

Later, Musk also tweeted a photo of himself smoking marijuana on a Joe Rogan podcast in 2018, with the caption, "Twitter's next board meeting is gonna be lit."

With the ownership at Twitter he bought by spending $3 billion, Musk has the ability to better unleash his influence on Twitter across the industries, to benefit both the social media platform and his companies, like Tesla and SpaceX.

Following Musk's move, Twitter’s share price up by more than 25%, and it continued to grow in after-hours trading.

This investor enthusiasm is not surprising, given how big Musk's influence is.

It's also worth noting that most of the internet is controlled by a handful of companies, including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and more. Twitter however, is not high on the list.

Investors are certain that he has the ability to make Twitter a better competitor in the growing fast-paced internet.

The bad thing however, Musk also has the ability to control people's channel of communication on Twitter.

Many said that by joining Twitter as its biggest shareholder, Musk has the ability to bend the company toward his preferences, with the possibility of making Twitter a different place that it is at the moment.

Even if Musk is known to troll people and make jokes, his influence makes his moves effective.

And this can be worrisome because Musk as a free speech absolutist, isn’t favoring speech coming from media companies.