NY Times claims Elon Musk ‘damaged’ Twitter, ‘eroded trust’ despite longstanding problems

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Can Elon Musk be forced to buy Twitter?

'The Five' co-hosts discuss whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk can be forced to buy Twitter after he announced he was pulling out of $44 billion deal.

The New York Times published a report Monday that blamed Elon Musk for damaging and eroding trust in Twitter while spreading "misinformation" about the company. 

The report, written by Kate Conger and Mike Isaac, described Musk as someone who "disparaged Twitter’s executives, ridiculed its content policies, complained about the product and confused its more than 7,000 employees with his pronouncements."

"With each needling tweet and public taunt, Mr. Musk has eroded trust in the social media company, walloped employee morale, spooked potential advertisers, emphasized its financial difficulties and spread misinformation about how Twitter operates," The Times article continued.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The Times lamented Musk's comedic expression regarding the fallout of the Twitter deal. "On Sunday, the billionaire, who has cited the number of fake accounts on Twitter’s platform as the reason that he cannot buy the company, tweeted a picture of himself laughing at the situation," they reported. The tweet referenced received over 1 million likes. 

"Of all the wreckage Mr. Musk is leaving at Twitter, the most prominent may be how brutally he exposed the company’s waning financial and business prospects. Twitter has operated at a loss for seven of the nine years it has been a public company," they continued.

"In recent months, Twitter’s business has deteriorated. Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief executive, said in a memo to employees in May that the company had not lived up to its business and financial goals," according to The Times.

Agrawal previously declared Twitter "is not to be bound by the first amendment" and tweeted that all white people are racist. 

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The Times, however, continued to blame Musk for declining trust in Twitter. "His barbs about fake accounts have weakened trust in Twitter, just as the company prepares to moderate heated political discussions about an upcoming election in Brazil and the midterm elections this fall in the United States," they wrote, quoting unnamed "misinformation experts."

FILE - Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the opening of the Tesla factory Berlin Brandenburg in Gruenheide, Germany on March 22, 2022. Musk has sold 4.4 million shares of Tesla stock worth roughly $4 billion, most likely to help fund his purchase of Twitter. (Patrick Pleul/Pool Photo via AP, File)

The Times also wrote that Musk promising to bring former President Donald Trump back to Twitter "riled up right-wing users, who have long accused the company of censoring them, and renewed questions about how Twitter should handle debates over the limits of free speech."

Meanwhile, it was reported, "Inside the company, employee morale has been battered, leading to infighting and attrition, according to six current and former employees."

Despite The Times' framing, concerns about trust, especially regarding Twitter's censorship policies, are longstanding. Twitter's history of arbitrary censorship policies includes the suspension of then sitting President Trump while simultaneously permitting Chinese Communist Party propagandists, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and others to remain on the platform. 

Infamously, comedian Kathy Griffin, who tweeted a picture of a bloody and beheaded Trump twice was not suspended and her tweet simulating the assassination of Trump still has not been removed by Twitter.

Accusations of political bias has led to many conservative users leaving or migrating to other social media platforms. 

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Musk recently backed out of his bid to purchase Twitter, citing bots and worsening financial conditions for the company. Twitter has since filed a lawsuit to attempt to force Musk to complete the transaction.