For all the furor about how Elon Musk might tilt U.S. political discourse after getting the keys to Twitter Inc., his biggest challenges may emerge across the Pacific.
Asia, home to more than half the world’s population, is Twitter’s biggest growth opportunity and arguably a far thornier challenge. If the Tesla Inc. and SpaceX billionaire makes good on promises to scrap censorship, he’ll encounter a plethora of perplexing regulations — wielded by sometimes authoritarian governments and pushed to the limits by a horde of first-time internet users.
The numbers alone suggest Musk’s biggest headaches lie abroad. Twitter’s monetizable daily active users numbered 179 million internationally — dwarfing the 38 million in the U.S. in 2021 — according to its latest annual report.