ELON - THE TWITTER MUSKETEER

 

I am no fan of Elon Musk. The disruptionist that he is, and the wealth that he flaunts, in no way makes him a messiah of free speech, that he claims to be and is his reason behind his hostile takeover of Twitter. But in the same breath I am no fan of the left and left of centre liberals who had of late made Twitter their intellectual highway, out of bounds for the right of centre uncultured nationalists. The notion that anything the right utters is hate speech, Islamophobia, white supremist and loathsome is simply not true but Twitter propagated this idea throughout the world.

 

Mr. Musk said that he wanted Twitter to adhere more closely to the principles of free speech, which remained the bedrock of a functioning democracy. Twitter, he said is the “digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” So naturally the discourse here cannot be one sided. According to Mr. Musk this is his reason of buying Twitter, but is this the only reason?  Twitter doesn’t make that much money compared to Facebook and other social-media companies. It’s not that big a company in terms of market cap. Though it has enormous power in shaping world opinion but that does not automatically make its advertisement model powerful and translate into big money for the company. So Twitter is a hugely successful and influential product but doing lacklustre business. But it is an active platform and owning it gives Mr. Musk and his electric car company Tesla direct access to a wide audience. Both electric car and free speech are good for the future of humanity and Mr. Musk enjoys spending his big dollars in a manner that shows him larger than life and caring for the humanity. I won’t be surprised if this is his plan to zoom into the orbit of American Presidency in the coming days.

 

Twitter is a platform, and that is what it should remain. If it becomes the censor board and starts deciding what sort of views are acceptable and what amounts to Twitter blasphemy then there is a problem. Adherence to decency, intolerance of abusive language and respect of the law are all acceptable but when they are used to blackout the contrarian point of view then again there is a problem. When the cocooned cultural elites gang up against someone who is critical of their ideology and who challenges their point of view then again there is a problem. Turning Twitter into a hyper-censored and extremely partisan echo chamber which has no room for dissent is a problem. 

 

So will Elon Musk, the Disruptionist in Chief of social media, throw out the Twitter algorithms which were designed against climate skeptics, transphobics, xenophobic and make Twitter an even playing field, free for all once again. Even if he does that and brings Trump back with all his vitriol, will that be acceptable by all governments and will it be good for the world? Cacophony of conflicting views is certainly acceptable but some ethical no go zones too need to be defined.

 

Mr. Musk will soon realize that shelling out $44 billion to buy Twitter was the easiest part of this deal. To keep its 217 million active users satisfied and to be acceptable by governments across the world will be a far more challenging thing. If tomorrow he has to open a new electric car company outlet of Tesla in China and his version of ‘free speech’ is not acceptable to the Chinese Prime Minister, whose interests is he going to sacrifice Twitter’s or Tesla’s?

 

But if he can make Mr. Parag Agarwal or the new team understand it is the ethically impermissible that has to be censored and not the politically inconvenient then I will say that his money was really well spent. I may even start following him.