MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Musk's Twitter account grows despite his absence from social media

With over 100 million followers worldwide, Musk has joined the exclusive ranks of Cristiano Ronaldo, Rihanna, Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has vowed to buy over the Twitter social media platform, has suddenly vanished from the space, thus raising speculations about his ulterior motives, as both his tweets and the negotiations for the transaction are on hold.

Despite his silence, Elon Musk's account has surpassed 100 million followers. The owner of Tesla and SpaceX posted his last message on June 21, when he shared an image that accounts for the increase in fuel prices in the United States. Since then, he has turned 51 and his male-born son Xavier Alexander Musk, who has recently turned 18, the age of consent in California, has filed to have his gender and name changed from male to female.

In any case, negotiations seem to have stalled even after the company released the statistics on bot accounts and ghost visitors the tycoon had demanded to see before finalizing the purchase.

Musk had demanded that Twitter shared reliable information on the number of fake and spam accounts, to which the California-based company replied said that the figure was below 5%, a fact that Musk challenged and on which he has maintained a series of disagreements with Twitter's current CEO Parag Agrawal.

Even amid his disappearance, Musk's account exceeded 100 million followers, which makes him the sixth-largest user of the platform to cross that threshold, thus joining the exclusive ranks of Cristiano Ronaldo, Rihanna, Barack Obama, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry.

Argentine soccer legend Lionel has barely over 430,000 followers on social media he is not particularly keen on.

The number of Musk followers skyrocketed since he announced his intention to buy overe the company for US$ 44 billion. Before that, he only had less than 800,000 followers.

The Wall Street Journal has somehow linked Musk's silence to the recent US Supreme Court decision to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling, which returned the federal and state legislatures the authority to legalize (or not) abortion and in what circumstances.

Musk, who has been known to support the Democratic Party, has recently said that in future elections he would vote Republican and also allow back onto Twitter former President Donald Trump, who had been banned from the platform since the beginning of 2020 for postings the company deemed were inciting to violence. At that time, when Trump was still President, the idea of a private company curbing anyone's right to freedom of speech was already controversial, let alone if that someone was no other than the President himself.

After his last message, Musk has only liked a few entries but has not posted anything new. Other observers have pointed out that SpaceX workers have released an open letter to their boss, criticizing him for being too long online: “Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks,” the letter read.

‘As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX — every tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company,’ the workers added. SpaceX has reportedly fired some of the employees behind the note.