Months after Musk took over Twitter, Zuckerberg’s Meta hinted it was planning to launch its own text-based social media platform.
This combination of file photographs created on June 22, 2023, shows SpaceX, Twitter, and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his visit to the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023 (R) and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg testifying before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019. (Photo by Mandel NGAN and Alain JOCARD / AFP)
Tech titans Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are in a fierce business rivalry that has spilt over into a playground spat, with the two men offering to fight each other in a cage.
Musk has trolled Zuckerberg ever since with messages on Twitter, telling his fans this week: “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
Zuckerberg, who has followed the trend of tech bosses getting buff and posting martial arts videos, responded on Wednesday on his Instagram Stories with a screenshot of the message and a response: “Send me location.”
The exchange has provoked mirth on social media with plenty of fight predictions — Zuckerberg emerging as the clear favorite.
“Please god let this happen,” technology journalist Taylor Lorenz wrote on Twitter.
“The best Musk-Zuckerberg cage match is one in which two men enter and no men leave,” wrote podcaster Bennett Tomlin.
‘Sane’ Twitter jibe
The two men have baited each other for years with opposing views on everything from politics to artificial intelligence.
But their new business rivalry has supercharged the animosity.
Musk responded angrily to a recent claim by a Meta official that there was an appetite for a “sanely run” Twitter alternative.
The Tesla and SpaceX boss bought the social media firm for $44 billion before sacking much of its staff and allowing banned right-wing conspiracy theorists back onto the platform — sending advertisers fleeing.
Musk defended his handling of Twitter at an event in Paris last week, saying advertisers had come back and he had eliminated almost all bots.
In an interview earlier this month with US podcaster Lex Fridman, Zuckerberg was asked to say something positive about Musk’s handling of Twitter.
After an eight-second pause for thought, he said Musk had “led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner”, a move he said was good for the industry.
Zuckerberg announced thousands of job cuts at his firm months after Musk did so at Twitter.
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