Elon Musk, Twitter, and the Value of Fuck You Money
Currents
As social media continues to play an increasingly larger role in how society communicates, consumes information, and exchanges ideas, the ways in which these platforms operate have become political issues. These are private sector companies, free to do as they please within the confines of the law, and yet their services are so ubiquitously used, even relied upon, that their business operations have become a legitimate matter of public interest. No one can deny the corrosive effect social media has had on politics, mental health, societal tensions, and institutional trust. These corporations are exercising their rights, and we the consumers are exercising ours. Everything seems, on the surface, to be a voluntary arrangement running as it should. And yet, we are all miserable and dissatisfied with the results.
There’s no shortage of proposed reforms, from technology ethicists like Tristan Harris or social scientists like Jonathan Haidt. I’ve discussed a few myself. Scaling back the attention-hooks that keep users glued to their screens for hours on end. Adjusting the algorithms that promote the most incendiary, conspiratorial, or outrageous content. Smarter and more fairly-enforced rules that better facilitate open and free expression. The problem isn’t a lack of ideas, it’s that nobody seriously expects the government or the platforms themselves to make any meaningful changes. But Elon Musk might.
The richest man in history purchased Twitter, and it’s been microwaving people’s brains across the political spectrum. Heads first exploded when Musk, a vocal critic of Twitter and the culture it has cultivated, purchased $2.89 billion in Twitter stock in early April, enough for 9.2% of the shares. As Bloomberg journalist Conrad Quilty-Harper noted, the cost to Musk, as a percentage of his net worth, is equivalent to the median American buying a MacBook Pro. Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao unironically took to the pages of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post to trash Musk and warn about the dangers of “Rich people controlling our channels of communication.” Thanks for the heads up. Days later, Musk placed a bid to purchase Twitter outright for $43 billion dollars with the intention of taking the company private, causing further meltdowns.
The board put up a resistance to Musk, announcing a defensive tactic known as a “poison pill” that would be activated if he expanded his stake to 15%, offering Twitter shares at a discount to all other shareholders in an effort to water him down. It only delayed the inevitable. Musk’s bottomless pockets uniquely positioned him to surmount any obstacles thrown in his path, and in the end, he made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. After a months-long back and forth, the deal was finally consummated in October 2022.
The tech mogul has become an intensely polarizing figure. Reviled in many left-of-center circles for his wealth and irreverence toward woke sensibilities, despite having advanced the ball on environmental causes more than most of his detractors combined, Musk also has legions of adoring fans whose adulation verges on the rapturous. Elon’s every 110 million-follower tweet produces its own ecosystem and cottage industries, replete with parasitic epigones sycophantically mining for likes and validation in His divine glow, alongside clout-chasing haters eager to gain prestige by launching blistering excoriations.
Musk’s persona as an anti-woke shitposting psuedo-libertarian and self-described “free speech absolutist” has everyone shouting, either in horror or exaltation, about what he might do as the owner of Twitter. Critics and fans alike are panicked/elated about the same thing: the prospect of a totally unmoderated Wild West platform where virtually anything goes. There is little indication that this would be the case. Some of Musk’s proposed changes include revising Twitter’s algorithm, less content moderation (but also less spam, somehow), and an edit button for posts. He has also directly stated his opposition to extremism, tweeting “A social media platform’s policies are good if the most extreme 10% on left and right are equally unhappy.”
Beyond that, we already have a number of “free speech absolutist” alternatives, such as Gab, Parler, Gettr, and Donald Trump’s Truth Social — all of which are spectacularly unpopular despite the allure of unfettered “freedom”. It turns out that most people don’t particularly enjoy wading through cesspools of unhinged conspiracies and rampant racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-LGBT bigotry. Nobody wants to huff what Christopher Hitchens once called “The exhaust fumes of democracy”. And that’s precisely what a completely unregulated platform becomes: a haven for the Internet’s crackpots and rejects. It strains credulity to imagine someone of Musk’s obvious competence setting tens of billions of his own dollars on fire just to turn Twitter into another abandoned wasteland. If the goal was to burn it all down, it would be more direct (and hilarious) if his endgame in buying Twitter was simply to turn around and delete it.
One side of the political spectrum complains that Twitter is too censorious, and they have a point. Twitter too often errs on the side of heavy-handedness, and enforces its rules in a way that penalizes people right-of-center more than their counterparts across the aisle — all while permitting Chinese, Russian, and even Taliban propaganda to be spread by official accounts. But to act like Big Tech is imposing some kind of tyranny or taking away free speech is a load of hyperbolic bilge. There are examples around the globe of societies without free speech — societies whose inhabitants would kill to enjoy the freedoms many Westerners melodramatically call tyranny. A little nuance and perspective goes a long way.
Here’s the dilemma. The mechanisms that make social media detrimental for society are also what generate the most revenue. Most of the largest companies are publicly-traded, rendering them unable to rein these excesses in, absent government action (an oxymoronic phrase in the modern era). Corporations go public because it’s financially beneficial, but it comes at the cost of autonomy. Once a business is in the hands of shareholders, it becomes a mindless growth machine incapable of making any decision that does not promise the maximum possible profit. Purchasing a publicly-traded company and taking it private transfers power to an owner or owners — in Twitter’s case, to Elon Musk. A business owner has vastly more freedom to make decisions based on their values, even if it loses them money, and Musk has already said that his goal in acquiring Twitter isn’t to make a profit off of it. This is an encouraging sign, because it may be the only viable path to change.
We shouldn’t lose sight of a fundamental truth. In a free market, nobody is forced to use any given platform, or consume any given media. The human element is both essential and ineradicable. Mistakes will always be made. Bias will always be present. Emotion will occasionally get the better of people — even those in positions of responsibility. That’s why the answer lies in variety and competition. Critics decry the supposedly hegemonic control of Big Tech, and while a few companies have ballooned in size, such as Meta (formerly Facebook) and Google, we are not in monopoly territory. If you want an example of a truly repressive digital environment, then consider China, who bans foreign platforms they dislike, and exerts authoritarian influence over the rest. In liberal democracies, if consumers dislike one service, they are free to use another, and there’s no lack of choices.
The impulse to paint everything as life or death is tempting — indeed, it’s algorithmically encouraged, which is part of the whole problem! — but it’s worth keeping in mind that whatever happens with Twitter is not the end of the world, or the be-all and end-all of public discourse.
Nobody ultimately knows if Musk will improve Twitter. What we do know is that Twitter’s prior leadership wouldn't have. They had neither the interest, incentive, or autonomy to do so. No one was satisfied with the status quo. We all complain about Twitter — it’s one of the rare points of universal agreement these days. Changes have been long overdue. Elon Musk isn’t the monster his critics fear, nor the savior his fans imagine. But he might be just what Twitter needs right now.
Published Apr 25, 2022
Updated Oct 27, 2022
