Breitbart News reports that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was mercilessly trolled on social media after he wondered aloud if fellow billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter could potentially give the Chinese government leverage over free speech.
Following news that Twitter agreed to Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company and take it private, Bezos retweeted a post from New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe citing Musk’s multitude of not-so-secret dealings in China.
“Apropos of something: Tesla’s second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US). Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s EVs. After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform. That may have just changed,” tweeted Forsythe.
Bezos re-tweeted this and replied, “Interesting question. Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?”
Considering that Amazon censored critical reviews of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s book and that a Foxconn factory in China was using child labor for manufacturing Echo and Kindle devices, critics pounced on his hypocrisy.
“Bezos is obviously just bitter to be upstaged once again,” read one tweet.
“Almost everything on your website is crap from China,” read another.
Vivek Ramaswamy tweeted to Bezos, “Interesting that you ask this question about Twitter but haven’t said a peep about your concerns about Chinese influence over, say, BlackRock… or countless other companies. I wonder why.”