'Is Twitter dying?' asks Elon Musk, cites inactivity of top 10 accounts on platform

Days after becoming the largest shareholder of Twitter, tech-billionaire Elon Musk left everyone stunned after he asked users whether the micro-blogging platform was in fact 'dying'. Reacting to a post on the top 10 accounts on Twitter, Musk pointed out how most of the users on the list tweeted rarely and posted very little content.

The SpaceX CEO cited American pop artists Taylor Swift and Justin Beiber who occupied the sixth and second places on the list as examples. "For example, @taylorswift13 hasn’t posted anything in 3 months...," he mentioned. "And @justinbieber only posted once this entire year." 

Netizens React 

While several netizens agreed that celebrities were moving to other platforms to propel their brand, others countered Elon Musk's theory asserting that platforms did not 'live or die' based on the activeness of influencers, which were smaller in number compared to the millions of other users active on Twitter. 

Musk becomes largest shareholder in Twitter, appointed to company board 

On April 4, Elon Musk bought the majority stake in Twitter, making him the largest shareholder in the company. According to a Securities and Exchange Commission 13G filing released on Monday, the billionaire owns 7,34,86,938 shares, which makes it 9.2% of Twitter's total stake and is worth a whopping $2.9 billion. Shortly after, he was announced as the newest Twitter board member by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. 

Ever since he became the biggest shareholder in the company, Musk has been hinting toward possible changes on the platform, which he has been an avid critic of, conducting polls to analyse public consensus. Earlier, he shared a Twitter post urging his followers to vote if they wanted an 'edit button' on Twitter. Unsurprisingly, a vast majority of voters were overwhelmingly in favour of the feature. 

The Tesla CEO has often remained uncensored with his views on the social media platform and subsequently faced much backlash. In some instances, Musk was also forced to pull down his scandalous tweets. About a week ago, he launched a poll questioning company's fairness in "free speech principles". He asked, "Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?" Netizens are hoping that his position in the company paves the way to end political censorship on the platform.  

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