Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter shows a disturbing lack of vision
In case you missed it, Elon Musk has bought Twitter. And as someone who shares much of his interests - technology, space flight, artificial intelligence - I get asked daily if I have any thoughts on it. Well, for what it’s worth, I do have at least some.
A total lack of a plan
Musk has shown in the past that he is good in laying out a vision, excite and motivate people about it and gradually develop a roadmap to get there. This was the case with Tesla, it was the case with SpaceX, both enormously ambitious projects hardly anyone took for real when they started. He has certainly proven himself as a brilliant engineer, a more than average entrepreneur and certainly a visionary.
What strikes me is that Musk’s takeover of Twitter lacks any vision at all.
What strikes me is that Musk’s takeover of Twitter lacks any vision at all. Apart from half joking tweets and dropped hints here and there, his grand plan for social media is confused and almost entirely based on trivialities.
One explanation is that Musk comes across isolated and alone in whatever his plan is: In fact he is a situation new to him. Unlike Tesla, SpaceX, or the Boring Company, Twitter is a big established company, not a startup yet-to-be-shaped. And he appears to struggle with that.
The “global town square”?
The thing is that Musk’s “global free speech town square” metaphor is at best naive, because that is simply not how it works. And let’s put aside that the romantic idea of the town square — where people come together to discuss opinions and listen to others — never existed in real life.
The idea — of course- is not new at all, it goes back to the early days of bulletin boards and the grandparent of social media, Indymedia. The idea implies that in the digital town square all are equal and, with reasonable discussion of various social and political opinions, that the better opinion will prevail. This is not only naive but delusional.
People are not taking part in the discussion on the same level, the means at their disposal vary widely: We have seen millions being poured into political campaigning on social media, organised disinformation campaigns and many cases where people have abused their prominence to influence decision making. To expand the metaphor: Musk (or someone like Trump) are taking part in the town square by bringing their own Led Zeppelin sized PA, but pretending everyone has equal say. It’s a concert, not an open-mic session.
“Free speech”, “collective, cybernetic super-intelligence”. Musk’s comments — and those of former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey — about social media are platitudes, nothing but technobabble and fortune cookie wisdom.
His repeated statements on “left vs right” show that he has — when it comes to “diverse viewpoints “ — not the faintest clue, or worse, he seems to locate himself in “the center” by self-definition. Suggesting anyone is a member of a partisan wing could be a very American-centric view of things, but it shows he wants to talk, to categorize, not listen.
It is painful because there was, and still is, of course much to improve on social media in general and Twitter in particular
So are are the big ideas?
All this is painful because there was, and still is, of course much to improve on social media in general and Twitter in particular: Twitter’s suggested content by topic is a mess ( The stuff I get suggested by Twitter on topics like “Science” or “Artificial Intelligence” is so bad that I had to turn it off), the trending algorithm (which recently showed me mRNA vaccines trending in the food category) often questionable.
What about privacy? What about deep fake detection, or at least detection of organised disinformation campaigns? Twitter has been unbelievably ignorant of the simplest coordinated campaigns.
And much can and should be said about in-transparent algorithms shoving certain opinions in front of you. Or spare a thought on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica? There is work to do but he is not talking about that.
Ironically Musk himself and his companies have been target of so much disinformation, deep fakes and organised campaigns of lies that he should know better. He will — of course — likely waive that aside, but he doesn’t seem to be aware that he is in a protected position to do this due to his prominence and wealth, and others are not. Disinformation will not ruin his live, but it has other’s.
Musk seems to be unable to actually express what — in his opinion — was wrong with Twitter and “free speech”.
Musk seems to be unable to actually express what — in his opinion - was wrong with Twitter and “free speech”. Twitter was certainly not a dystopian world of “woke” censorship so far. In a single day on twitter I normally encounter at least some angry socialists, conspiracy nutters, flat-earthers, raving racists, gleaming capitalists and crypto paradise fanatics. I am sharing a platform with many people I wouldn’t even want to live in the same street with. So what is Musk even talking about?
Profitability?
Over the last ten days since the takeover, Musk has weirdly shifted the discussion to Twitter’s profitability. Does the survival of the great open platform rely on £8/month to unlock some extra features?
And why the focus on “content creators”? The obsession that anyone who can cobble together a video can make a living by being fancied by an all-knowing clickbait loving algorithm has not done much good for Youtube. How is that even related to a broad, open and diverse discussion?
So what is all this about? Is there a devious masterplan, some dark political agenda, some misguided idea of technocracy? I don’t know, in the end Twitter, like any social media, will live or die by how useful it is to users. Facebook already had almost everyone on the planet on their platform, and look how irrelevant it is becoming.
If Musk is unhappy with the current user group of Twitter, so be it, but to take all sides along for the ride, he must probably do a bit more than handing out trivial slogans. So far that is all he has done.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1507777261654605828
[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586059953311137792
