Twitter owner Elon Musk says CEOs and politicians should take a leaf out of his book and be more authentic on social media

• Elon Musk says other CEOs and leaders should run their own social media accounts.
• Musk is famed for his frequently wacky tweets and has sometimes gotten into trouble over his posts.

Twitter owner Elon Musk, who is known for being outspoken on the platform, has encouraged other leaders to run their own social media accounts, and be authentic in their messaging.

Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai on Wednesday, the billionaire said he encourages CEOs, legislators, ministers, and other leaders to "speak authentically" on social media.

"I think it's good for people to speak in their voice, as opposed to how they think they should speak," he said. "It ends up sounding somewhat stiff and not real."

Musk pointed out that press releases from corporations can often "sound like propaganda." He would encourage leaders to write their own tweets and convey their message "directly," he said.

Musk, who has often run into trouble over his tweets, said getting criticism is "really not that bad."

"I'm constantly attacked on Twitter and I don't mind," he said. "You have to be somewhat thick-skinned at times because they will really try to twist the knife."

Musk, the CEO of five different companies, has over 128 million followers on Twitter. He is known for his unconventional and unfiltered tweeting style — which usually includes a mixture of company announcements, conspiracy theories, memes, and sometimes picking fights with other high-profile figures.

During the intense legal battle over buying Twitter last year, Musk responded brazenly to former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal's tweet about why his strategy to identify the number of bots on the platform was flawed, with a smiling poop emoji.

Musk also gained attention for using Twitter to spread his anti-lockdown views and share misleading information about COVID-19, calling panic around the virus "dumb" in March 2020. He went on to make the unfounded claim that doctors were misattributing deaths to COVID-19 rather than other causes.

Most recently, Musk faced an intense legal battle over his "funding secured" tweet from 2018 in which he claimed he had secured backing to take Tesla private. The deal never happened and investors sued him saying that he had manipulated Tesla's share price. Musk was eventually cleared by a federal jury which found that his tweet had not harmed investors.

Musk made light of the situation by briefly changing his Twitter username to "Mr. Tweet" after an attorney accidentally called him by this name during the shareholder trial.