Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been mercilessly criticized on Twitter after he wondered aloud if billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform could give the Chinese government leverage over free speech.
Following the news that Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company and take it private, Bezos retweeted a post by New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe citing Musk’s multitude of not-so-secret dealings in China.
“By the way: Tesla’s second largest market in 2021 was China (after the US). Chinese battery manufacturers are the main suppliers of Tesla’s electric vehicles. After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government had almost no influence over the platform. That may have changed,” Forsythe tweeted.
Bezos responded: “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of influence over the town square?
Interesting question. Did the Chinese government gain a bit of influence over the town square? https://t.co/jTiEnabP6T
—Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 25, 2022
While it’s certainly no secret that Musk has dangerously set his sights on the Chinese market, Peter Schweizer outlined it in his book. red-handed while Breitbart News has reported it several times: Jeff Bezos criticized it because it is probably the most critical moment in the history of billionaires. His platform, Amazon, not only censored critical reviews of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s book, but a Foxconn factory in China was using child labor to make Echo and Kindle devices. As Breitbart News reported:
More than 1,000 students, as young as 16, were recruited from schools, hired by the factory as “interns” and pressured to work night and weekend shifts for meager wages. Chinese labor laws allow 16-year-olds to work, but not during night shifts or overtime.
The student workers said that their work had nothing to do with their studies at school, which is an apparent reason why they were sent to the factories as “interns”. However, the complainants, also paid by the factory, were told by their teachers that their grades and scholarship applications could be affected if they refused to work.
Bezos’s critics did not allow the billionaire to extricate himself from his own grassroots hypocrisy.
I have no sympathy for Elon’s connections to China, which I’ve done full monologues on my show. But Bezos is obviously bitter about being upstaged once again.
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) April 25, 2022
Almost everything on their website is garbage from China
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) April 25, 2022
It’s interesting that you ask this question on Twitter, but haven’t said anything about your concerns about Chinese influence over, say, BlackRock (the world’s largest asset manager). Or countless other companies. I wonder why.
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRAmaswamy) April 25, 2022
Incredible lack of self-awareness
— SETH TIMES (@sethweathers) April 26, 2022
https://t.co/SPFsyatP4u
— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) April 25, 2022
This is you? https://t.co/bYVI2qlbG6
— Helen Raleigh (@HRaleighspeaks) April 26, 2022
After enough criticism and criticism, Bezos answered his own question and defended Musk.
“My own answer to this question is probably no,” Bezos tweeted. “The most likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship on Twitter.”
But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity,” he added.
But we’ll see. Musk is extremely good at navigating this kind of complexity.
—Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 26, 2022