The world’s richest man has
bought one of the world’s most popular
social media platforms. Elon Musk, CEO of
Tesla, is currently worth
about $210 billion, and in November 2021
he was worth nearly $300 billion—an
unheard-of figure for any individual in
human history. Not only does his wealth
bode ill for democracy, considering the
financial influence that he has over
politics, but his acquisition of Twitter,
a powerful opinion platform, as a private
company also further cements his power.
To put his money into perspective, if Musk
wanted to gift every single Twitter user
$800, (given that Twitter has about 238 million regular users) he
would still have about $20 billion left
over to play with and never ever want for
money. Musk’s greed is the central fact to
keep in mind when attempting to predict
what his ownership of Twitter means.
Musk has shrewdly fostered a reputation
for being a genius,
deserving of his obscene wealth. But his private texts during
Twitter deal negotiations, recently
revealed in court documents during legal
wrangling over the sale, paint a picture
of a simple mind unable to come to terms
with his excess. His idea of “fun” is
having “huge amounts of money” to play
with.
And, he has an outsized opinion of
himself. Billionaires like Musk see
themselves as being the only ones capable
of unleashing greatness in the world. He
said as much in his letter to the
Twitter board saying, “Twitter has
extraordinary potential,” and adding, “I
will unlock it.” Such hubris is only
natural when one wields more financial
power than the human brain is capable of
coming to terms with.
Musk has also been adept at cultivating a
reputation for having a purist approach to
free speech, and diverting attention away
from his wealth. Former president Donald
Trump, who repeatedly violated Twitter’s
standards before eventually being banned,
said he’s
“very happy that Twitter is now in sane
hands.” Indeed, there is rampant
speculation that Musk will reinstate Trump’s
account.
But, Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and
director of Digital Justice and Civil
Rights at Free Press, said in
an interview earlier
this year that Musk is not as much of a free speech absolutist as he is
“kind of an anything-goes-for-Twitter
future CEO.”
She adds, “I
think that vision
is one in which he imagines social media
moderation of content will just happen.
But it doesn’t just happen by magic alone.
It must have guardrails.”
The guardrails that Twitter has had so far
did not work well enough. It took the
company four years of Trump’s violent and inciteful tweets, and a full-scale attack on the
U.S. Capitol, to finally ban him from the
platform. In the week after Trump and
several of his allies were banned, misinformation dropped by a
whopping 73 percent on the platform.
Twitter delayed action on Trump’s tweets
only because its prime goal is to generate
profits, not foster free speech. These are
Musk’s goals too, and all indications
suggest he will weaken protections, not
strengthen them.
According to Benavidez, “His
imagined future that Twitter will somehow
be an open and accepting square—that has
to happen very carefully through a number
of things that will increase better
moderation and enforcement on the
company’s service.” Musk appears utterly
incapable of thinking about such things.
Instead, his plans include ideas like
charging users $20 a monthto have a
verification badge next to their names—a
clear nod to his worldview that money
ought to determine what is true or who
holds power.
Benavidez explains that
“because it has helped their bottom
lines,” companies like Twitter are
“fueling and fanning the flames for the
most incendiary content,” such as tweets
by former Twitter user Trump and his ilk,
incitements to violence, and the promotion
of conspiracy theories.
There is much at stake given that Twitter
has a strong influence on political
discourse. For example, Black Twitter, one
of the most important phenomena to emerge
from social media, is a loosely organized
community of thousands of vocal Black
commentators who use the platform to issue
powerful and pithy opinions on social and
racial justice, pop culture, electoral
politics, and more. Black Twitter played a
critical role in
helping organize and spreading news about
protests during the 2020 uprising sparked
by George Floyd’s murder at the hands of
Minneapolis police.
But within days of Musk’s purchase of
Twitter, thousands of anonymous accounts
began bombarding feeds with racist content, tossing
around the N-word, leaving members of
Black Twitter aghast and traumatized. Yoel
Roth, the company’s head of safety and
integrity—who apparently still retains his
job—tweeted that
“More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using
a particular slur came from just 300
accounts,” suggesting this was an
organized and coordinated attack.
Whether or not Musk’s buyout of Twitter
will actually succeed in making history’s
richest man even richer by rolling out the
welcome mat to racist trolls is not clear.
Already, numerous celebrities with large
followings have closed their Twitter accounts.
Hollywood’s top Black TV showrunner,
Shonda Rhimes posted her last tweet, saying,
“Not hanging around for whatever Elon has
planned. Bye.”
Twitter also impacts journalism. According
to a Pew Research study, 94
percent of all journalists in the U.S. use
Twitter in their job. Younger journalists
favor it the most of all age groups.
Journalists covering the automotive
industry are worried about
whether criticism of Tesla will be
tolerated on the platform. And, Reporters
Without Borders warned Musk that
“Journalism must not be a collateral
victim” of his management.
Misinformation and distrust in government
lead to apathy and a weakening of
democracy. This is good for billionaires
like Musk, who has made very clear that he
vehemently opposes a wealth
tax of the sort that Democrats are
backing. Indeed, he has used his untaxed wealth to help
buy the platform. If Twitter is capable of
influencing public opinion in order to
help elect anti-tax politicians, why
wouldn’t Musk pursue such a strategy?
Musk has made it clear that he will not be
a hands-off owner. He set to work as soon
as the deal was cemented by firing
Twitter’s top executives and the entire board. As a privately owned company, Twitter
will now answer to Musk and his
underlings, not to shareholders.
Benavidez summarizes one of the most
important lessons that Musk’s purchase
offers: “It can’t simply be that this
company or that company is owned and at
the whim of a single individual who might
be bored and want to take on a side
project.”
This
commentary
was produced by Economy for All, a
project of the Independent Media
Institute.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Sonali Kolhatkar
is the host and producer of Uprising, a
popular, daily, drive-time program on
KPFK, Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles
and co-director of the Afghan Women's
Mission, a US-based non-profit
organization that works with the
Revolutionary Association of the Women
of Afghanistan (RAWA).