Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Elon Musk is back, and now he wants to own Twitter again! Delightful.
Today let’s talk about the backdrop against which he made this decision, whether it’s somehow an incredibly elaborate effort to get out of the deal, and what Twitter’s beleaguered employees are saying about it internally.
I.
Did the news come as a surprise? Sure, I suppose. The billionaire Tesla CEO has for months now remained uncharacteristically on message, holding fast to his assertion that the amount of bots and spam on the platform ought to be reason enough for him to abandon his deal. His legal team seemed buoyed by the late-breaking appearance of a whistleblower willing to assert that present-day Twitter poses a threat to national security, and amended its…