“Throughout his career, Musk has had an almost pathological need to promise grand visions and make himself the center of attention,” says Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of Accountable Tech, an advocacy group. “He’s very Trumpian in his need to capture media attention with constantly-shifting promises, which everyone in the media covers, and then it never happens.”

A number of advertisers have pulled back from Twitter amid growing fear that misinformation and hate speech would be allowed to proliferate on the platform under Musk’s leadership. Companies ranging from Volkswagen to General Mills to REI confirmed that they would suspend advertising on Twitter, ultimately leaving the social media platform without some of its biggest sources of revenue.

“Some brands and companies are concerned about the direction he’s taking Twitter in, but they don’t want to come out and say that publicly because they’re terrified of what he’ll say on the platform,” Gill says.