Money talks: the deep ties between Twitter and Saudi Arabia

金钱为证:推特与沙特阿拉伯的深厚联系

The Audio Long Read

2025-11-21

31 分钟
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Saudi Arabia’s investment in Twitter increased its influence in Silicon Valley while being used at home to shut down critics of the regime By Jacob Silverman. Read by Nezar Alderazi. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod
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  • This is The Guardian.

  • by Jacob Silverman, read by Nazar al-Darazi.

  • Ali al-Ahmed didn't think that Elon Musk was responsible for the decline in 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 humor,

  • 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 founder of the Institute of Gulf Affairs, formerly the Saudi Institute.

  • A Saudi-focused think tank with an emphasis on human rights reporting.

  • and was the kind of expert, passionate, principled, always glad to hop on the phone.

  • The journalists loved having in their digital Rolodex.

  • For Ahmed, who over the years had many family members imprisoned by the Saudi royal family,

  • the pursuit of human rights was a solemn task.

  • But he also had a kind of garrulousness,

  • breaking into a sides about his children or the talking gadget he'd invented to remind them to wash their hands.

  • that reminded one of the deeper human stakes.

  • Twitter is no different from Boeing or those military companies, Ahmed told me.