Wall Street Journal | April 13, 2011 | Yoree Koh
This much is clear: Masayoshi Son has been an angry man these past few days.
While Japan’s richest man has recently used Twitter to share news of his philanthropic activities in the post-quake relief efforts, the strong-willed founder of SoftBank Corp. is now using the micro-blogging service to make another point. Mr. Son has taken a self-imposed vow of silence of sorts on Twitter in protest at a legislative bill recently submitted to parliament that he says may hurt freedom of speech online. But the effect of the wily chief executive’s decision to go mute is murky.
Normally a serial user of Twitter, Mr. Son, the head of third-largest mobile carrier in Japan by subscribers, wrote in English on his Twitter account Monday, “I will stop my tweet for next 3 days. Japanese government has passed the law to damage freedom of speech over internet.” He composed a similar message in Japanese and has not uttered a chirp since.
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