To be sincere, I nonetheless can’t imagine this occurred. Earlier at present, Twitter accepted Elon Musk’s provide of $44 billion to purchase the corporate and take it personal. In one of many largest and weirdest tech acquisitions in latest reminiscence, Musk fought off preliminary opposition and a poison-pill menace to purchase the social-media service.
Information of the deal has polarized Twitter customers and staff. How will Musk remodel the social community whereas remaining chief government of Tesla and SpaceX? Will his guarantees to guard free speech additionally improve misinformation and abuse on the platform? And, um, is Donald Trump coming again?
Listed below are some completely unstructured solutions to these questions, whose randomness I hope adequately captures the bafflement I nonetheless really feel about this information.
1. No one is aware of Musk’s true motivation.
Within the greatest image, what occurred is {that a} car-and-rockets government who made his title in digital funds purchased an internet site the place individuals scream at each other concerning the information. Anyone who’s extraordinarily assured about precisely how that is going to work out doesn’t know what they’re speaking about.
Musk is a superb government. Certainly one of his firms technologically outpaced NASA on the identical time that his different mission turned essentially the most worthwhile automotive firm on the earth. However fixing Twitter—unlocking the worth of its content material, opening the free-speech spigot, clamping down on abuse, all whereas making heavy customers on each the far left and the far proper concurrently joyful—is a totally completely different problem. A tough-tech CEO selecting to put in himself as head of a chaotic social-media scrum is just like the world’s most proficient lion tamer paying to lock himself inside a shark tank with an important white. Why would anybody do that to themselves? Wait, no, possibly he’s truly acquired this? Or possibly the shark eats him instantly? All the things is in play right here.
2. Let’s be sincere: Musk shopping for Twitter may be good for Twitter.
Inside Media Twitter, there may be little social punishment for being relentlessly unfavourable about all the pieces. (While you’re paid to comply with a information cycle that ping-pongs amongst authoritarianism, pandemic, and struggle, “relentless negativity” comes moderately naturally from merely paying consideration.) However this glum bias can prejudice journalists in opposition to seeing how, typically, not all the pieces seems maximally dangerous. So, whereas my complete Twitter timeline is full of individuals predicting calamity and threatening to depart the service in protest, I wish to spend a little bit of time outlining why I feel Musk shopping for Twitter may truly be good.
Twitter is among the most necessary merchandise within the house of knowledge. Within the information discourse, Twitter may be very typically the straw that stirs the drink. However it’s a horrible enterprise, which has misplaced $861 million as a public agency and reported a revenue in lower than half of its earnings calls since going public in 2013. It’s additionally bafflingly turgid at innovation. The direct-message performance has up to date sluggishly. The Trending Matters part is the strangest piece of actual property on the web, the place pile-ons jockey for house with bizarrely insistent makes an attempt to get me to study extra about Zendaya’s red-carpet look.
Why is it such a foul enterprise? I’m undecided, precisely. However take into account the truth that, on the board-of-directors degree, Twitter is principally run by a bunch of people that by no means use Twitter. If I instructed you {that a} restaurant was run by cooks who by no means style the meals, you may say one thing like “It sounds just like the meals may need a variety of issues,” or “I’ll guess the diners consistently complain about it,” or “I think that repeated requests to vary the menu are met with relative indifference,” and guess what, all of that is kind of true with Twitter.
I don’t wish to counsel that zero Twitter engineers and product managers are on Twitter. Many are, and I do know a few of them personally, and so they’re improbable. My level is that company management issues, and it is likely to be good to have anyone who cares lovingly for Twitter to be answerable for Twitter—if for no different purpose than to do one thing about that infernal Trending Matters field. Musk’s love of Twitter is past doubt. His capacity to transmute that love into nifty app updates for energy customers is much less sure.
3. The political results of Musk taking up Twitter are going to be actually fascinating.
When Twitter banned then-President Donald Trump in January 2021, it was unprecedented. Listed below are some huge questions on Trump and a Musk-controlled Twitter:
What if Donald Trump is allowed again on Twitter? Does that give him a bonus in 2024, by having the ability to purchase extra shares of our consideration? Or does Trump’s presence make his awfulness extra outstanding within the minds of moderates, pushing extra individuals away from the Republican Celebration?
And what if Donald Trump is invited again to Twitter however refuses to return? Does that make Musk and Trump enemies? What if conservatives returning to Twitter implode the worth of Trump’s media SPAC? Does a Musk-Trump rivalry instantly code the anti-woke Musk as a liberal? If Trump sees Musk’s Twitter as a menace to his SPAC, will he lead conservatives in opposition to Musk’s complete company portfolio? Would that scale back demand for electrical autos amongst conservatives?
You get the purpose. To run a social-media firm in 2022 is to ask metric tons of scorn to be heaped upon you each minute of your waking life. Musk could have invited an inconvenient quantity of political scrutiny, for a man who has labored, and continues to work with, the federal authorities.
4. After which there’s the abuse problem.
My optimistic outlook for Twitter principally comes all the way down to this. Twitter might be lots higher: There’s extra low-hanging fruit than you suppose. And Elon Musk truly makes use of and likes Twitter, which makes him an excellent candidate to repair these issues.
My pessimistic outlook for Twitter principally comes all the way down to this: I’m undecided what Musk’s plans for “light-touch content material moderation” will appear like. However operating a social-media web site seems to be one thing like tending to a backyard, besides the backyard is the scale of Australia, and there are alien weeds that develop one foot per second all over the place you look.
I don’t know what Musk will do to vary the norms round extremist speech and abuse. However I do suppose that extremism and abuse will grow to be much more salient underneath Musk’s management, given his popularity. In consequence, whether or not Twitter truly cuts down on abuse, I feel we are going to within the subsequent few months hear extra concerning the abuse that’s at all times been there. Put in a different way: Plenty of individuals actually hate Elon Musk, and so they’re going to be vocally crucial of simply how terrible Twitter is turning into—or at all times was.
5. People are unattainable.
Elon Musk has proved himself to be a rare entrepreneur and businessman within the domains of digital funds, electrical autos, and house flight. However social media is actually, actually completely different from these issues. With PayPal, the product is cash. With Tesla, the product is automobiles. With SpaceX, the product is rockets. However with Twitter, the product is individuals.
Cash transfers, automobiles, and rockets are attentive to engineering prowess. Persons are unattainable. Persons are horrible, and sensible, and unusual, and nasty, and intelligent, and conniving. Folks chunk again in a approach that software program and {hardware} don’t. So though my religion in Musk as a strategic government is nonpareil, I predict that Elon Musk will fail as Twitter proprietor. Ten years from now, after I think about he’ll not be Twitter’s chief, the narrative of Twenty first-century know-how will shift from “Software program is straightforward; {hardware} is tough” to “Software program is straightforward, {hardware} is tougher, and people are unattainable.”
