think its just one analysis.

What a friggin roller coaster! But like the article says, not the first time. I just hope a significant number of people will have had time to discover the benefits of Mastodon and aren’t solely controlled by EM’s actions.

given his tweets over the past couple days it's pretty easy to imagine he isn't serious. The deal won't close until October, and my understanding is that he can't say disparaging things about Twitter in that time-frame.

Does this count as market manipulation?

yeah, it's mostly an opinion piece, unfortunately. No concrete facts to back this up, but here's hoping world's edgiest edgelord gets bored and moves on.