Batman buys Twitter

As of late last month, Musk is Twitter’s largest individual shareholder and an active member of its Board. His recent history on the microblogging platform has been chequered at best. He has used his Twitter account — Musk has over 80 million followers — to question pandemic measures, call an explorer a “pedo” and perhaps most significantly, involve himself in disputes with US regulators over his tweets being used to raise the price of Tesla stock. To be fair, Musk is also an activist about larger issues. But more often than not, his activism seems self-serving: The last major political conflict he was engaged in was about billionaires being over-taxed.

Till recently, Musk was threatening to start his own social media platform — a la Trump — perhaps as a way to escape the criticism he has been facing. But why build when you can buy? Since his purchase of Twitter stock, he has floated polls on whether Twitter is biased and whether tweets should come with an “edit” option — the latter is reportedly being rolled out by the company. Some of these actions and updates may indeed be welcome. But the problem with Batman, even when he does catch the criminal, is that wealthy vigilantes can always make sure that the rules don’t apply to them.