Tweeting with a pile of Saudi money

Over 10 years later, skepticism toward Saudi money still exists. “Shove it’’ is fewer than 140 characters, and that’s what some users of Twitter are saying in the wake of the prince’s $300 million investment in the site. To hear them tell it, bin Talal is aiming for global domination through control of free speech. Throw in a few hashtags, and the whole controversy creates nostalgia for Giuliani’s visceral bluntness.

The Saudi multibillionaire’s relationship with the micro-blogging site happened to become even more of an issue during bin Talal’s visit. This week, Twitter announced it would enable country-specific censorship of content on its site. This will allow governments, presumably ones that aren’t so much into their populations expressing themselves, to selectively block tweets just as the company seeks to expand into new countries.

The social media response to the announcement, found at hashtag #TwitterBlackout, was swift and damning. One would think that Twitter, the agent of change for the Arab Spring and democratic uprisings, had just sold its soul to the Saudis. “You’d be naive to not see a connection,’’ declared one tweet.

But that’s more a conspiracy theory than reality. In fact, many of the protests against the new policy were from Saudi Arabia itself, proving just how ironic social media can be: The anger about Twitter policy was the most visible sign of a democratic uprising that country has seen since most of its neighbors broke out in revolt last year.

Granted, bin Talal has global influence, but he owns just 3 percent of Twitter. It’s unlikely that Twitter would sell its soul for anything less than a majority stake, especially since social media hasn’t been lacking for interested investors. The likeliest explanation for bin Talal’s investment is that he simply wanted to make money.