Acquiring Twitter: An egregiously bad project by Elon.
Recently Elon Musk, a multi-billionaire known for his antiques, has bought out the social media application Twitter, a project which he claims is to supposedly protect “free speech”.
A new era for Twitter has begun, as multi-billionaire Elon Musk has bought out the social media app for 44 billion dollars to allow free speech on the platform. Disregarding the fact that the acquirement of this company looked much more like a hostile takeover, the “selfless” act of allowing free speech on a private platform is, to put it simply, an utterly cheap facade to the actual reasons one might want to own Twitter. Why? Because free speech platforms such as Gab and Truth already exist, and yet Twitter is put on blast for having stricter limitations than the other two, giving people what they could already have by simply changing platforms is not selfless, its deceitful. So what can be the true motive behind Elon Musk’s “altruistic” act?
First of all, we need to understand that Twitter has been, for the most part, a loss-making company up showing profits only in 2018 and 2019, and has been able to stay afloat living off of its investors and cash reserves. An overly expensive project with seemingly little to gain enacted by a well-known con man covering it up with a facade, cannot hold an actual bright future for the platform. Especially since Elon has no definite changes to enact unto the platform which might make it generously profitable outside its advertisement revenue. The biggest talking point of the billionaire has been its edit button which he has been shilling since before acquiring Twitter, and from his interview with Chris Anderson, we realize that there is no conceptualization of the idea and, from what he explains, is simply a faster way to delete and “retweet”, changing absolutely nothing. Other than that, he pushes the idea of increasing more user-based revenue by having a much more reasonable subscription rate for Twitter blue, forgetting that the main reason why people use Twitter is that it’s free.
Another reason why Elon Musk owning Twitter is terrifying is that many Billionaires and multi-Billion dollar corporations use social media platforms as a means of massive data collection for future usage on projects and targeted advertising. It’s only been a few years since Mark Zuckerberg went to trial due to data collection, and it can also come as no surprise that Google does the same. And Twitter being a platform specifically made for people to share their thoughts, Elon has a pool of data that he can utilize for his gain. Not only that, a huge social media platform such as Twitter also opens ground for information and data manipulation based on gain, which Elon is not privy to, and has allegedly manipulated the market before. Even with him pushing the open-source idea, it’s not enough to ensure that he won’t do anything. He has already used Twitter to manipulate stock market shares and has even had a huge hand in cryptocurrency values, way before even thinking to become the owner of Twitter. Besides, making Twitter open-source will not change anything, as only a few people will understand what’s written, or most will probably not care enough to leave the platform, giving Elon a sense of honesty while he can manipulate as he chooses.
Lastly, we need to point out the most important factor in all of this, which is: Elon Musk does not support free speech. Rather he has been actively against it and has a history of retaliating against critics. The best example of this comes before his claim to internet fame, during the Tham Luang cave rescue when children were stuck in a cave and were saved by a diver, who would criticize Elon’s idea of a “kid-sized” submarine to save the children as a public relations effort with no chance of success, and the response to this would be Elon Musk calling him a pedophile. And if that wasn’t enough, Elon would win the defamation case launched against him by the diver, claiming it was a joke. Another example is the fact that Musk’s company Tesla, denies his workers the right of speech in many instances. The company NDA has a segment that states “You agree not to disparage Tesla, the Company’s products, or the Company’s officers, directors, employees, shareholders and agents, affiliates and subsidiaries in any manner likely to be harmful to them or their business, business reputation or personal reputation.”, essentially denying any right to complain to anyone, and also denying a worker’s union to form and help the employees. So we can’t expect a true absolutist free speech stance from Musk, much less one that will allow all free speech to pass.
Through the facade put on by Elon Musk, we should be able to see the back-end benefits of owning Twitter, which will help him promote his company investment and his public image. Nevertheless, even with all this information, Twitter users will most probably continue to use the platform, as we won’t see any other media platforms rising to replace Twitter any day soon. With many people rejoining the platform hoping that something has changed, they will meet the same platform, but this time conforming to a con artist’s demand rather than a corporation, one might argue that essentially nothing has changed.
So under Musk’s reign, users will need to bear all the egregious implications that come with the social network and deal with it.
