Buying Twitter is financially onerous, too, but compared with buying a bank, it’s pretty simple stuff. Social media companies, conversely, are a place where people tweet poop emojis and exchange cat GIFs. Congress isn’t blind to the legal vacuum in which large social media companies operate. But while politicians squabble, social media continues to shape society in ways that may only become apparent years later. In a tweet later that day, the Tesla chief said that buying Twitter would accelerate the creation of X, an "everything app."

---