Money talks: the deep ties between Twitter and Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s investment in Twitter increased its influence in Silicon Valley while being used at home to shut down critics of the regimeAli al-Ahmed didn’t think that Elon Musk was responsible for the decline and fall of Twitter. Musk was another face representing an old regime. And its sins began well before Musk bumbled into Twitter HQ, in October 2022, carrying a porcelain sink. (In an attempt at humour, Musk posted a video of himself arriving at the Twitter offices carrying a sink with the caption “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”)Ahmed was a Saudi journalist and analyst living in the Washington DC area. He was a founder of the Institute for Gulf Affairs (formerly the Saudi Institute), a Saudi-focused thinktank with an emphasis on human rights reporting, and was the kind of expert – passionate, principled, always glad to hop on the phone – that journalists loved having in their digital Rolodex. Continue reading…Technology | The GuardianRead More