It was a clown move, by a clown.
It was practically a meme how every week Elon would come up with some crazy new scheme to back out of buying Twitter. I think Elon's original offer was even a weed joke on Twitter that was taken seriously, although I may be wrong about that. What happened is that, for possibly the first time in his life, his actions had consequences he was forced to accept.
Now the narrative is that it was all some 5D chess move we mere mortals still struggle to comprehend. Like no, he never wanted Twitter, and now that he has it, he's just fucking around.
Here is an article about Musk's plans for "Twitter 2.0" now, I think, called the X application.
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Elon-Musk-Shares-Roadm...
2. He thought advertisers/power users were locked into the platform but didn't pay enough - Judging by the fact that he had to hire a new executive from traditional media whose job is to likely negotiate with advertisers he was likely very wrong on what he though the power balance between twitter and ads was.
3. He thought the platform lacked core products - Since there are still no tangible new products at Twitter not sure how to grade him.
Overall, this is basically what a PE buyout of a shit company looks like. Except this company's product is used by basically everyone(on the free tier) and we get to watch the turnaround/last breath from the first row.
As to why he made the offer in the first place, who knows? But whatever the reason, it's fairly obvious that he regretted it almost as soon as the ink was dry.
The takeaway I get is that he got stuck buying an overpriced tool, without understanding how it works, or how to use it, and is slowly starting to break it with his mishandling of it.
Reality must seem a lot different to someone with more money than anyone. With my finances I can only afford to eff up so much. He can afford a lot more than me.
https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/18/23687125/elon-musk-...
Same was reported about Zuckerberg and Meta
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-dreams-buildi...
Let it be a lesson to anyone who puts their faith in a private platform. These people don't care about you - they just get paid to pretend to.
A combination of basic human competition and desire to have more influence over public perception.
As for my own take, twitter addiction seems to warp you, in ways that send you more reactionary. See Jordan Peterson's recent output there for example. It's like your own Overton Window gets shifted by the people you interact with.
I don't know but I can guess. If I were as wealthy as him and I operated a few companies like SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, etc... and I wanted a way to promote them I would look at buying Alphabet, Meta, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft. Twitter was probably in the most likely position for acquisition of those but I am just guessing.
Whoever controls the media can adjust the public perception of reality. This could be beneficial for a myriad of reasons. Consolidation of media occurred with physical media, then radio and television. It worked well for them. Perhaps it is a stretch for me to compare Elon to the likes of Rupert Murdoch but Elon could be the governments next golden child. Let's see if he buys more social media companies. Is Mastodon gGmbH immune to acquisition?
Imho this was the main reason. He wants to control the narrative. The old model is reporters ask questions and give (if they are not advancing an agenda) a pretty factual account of events. When you control the public perception, you basically write the news yourself. you influence the consensual reality. Rather than spinning, the spin is the "report." and for a guy who is amongst the richest on the planet, with fingers in the biggest pies, and shall we say a very specific editorial viewpoint about the world, he doesn't want to have to deal with a narrative that just relates facts. He wants to tell the story we tell each other about things.