Elon Musk is a victim of his own misfortune. Having made mistake, after mistake at Twitter, he asked users whether he should continue as chief executive. The verdict was unequivocal.
Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2022
Advertisers had fled with Musk’s unwinding of Twitter. His championing of almost anything that goes led to people with liberal values leaving in disgust. The extreme right, the racists and misogynists have rubbed their hands will glee.
Twitter, never profitable, has been looking into the abyss since Musk took it over. There is now hope that Twitter will survive and thrive.
Aside for its social uses, Twitter is essential for journalists and politicians. Probably every MP has a twitter account and our Lib Dem MPs use it as a way of getting out information on their opinions and what they have been doing. Journalists use to it gather news and promote articles they have written.
Musk was never suited to running a social media company. He acted by impulse and by instinct, except his instinct was too often wrong. He sacked staff. Rehired some. Some of the most talented simply walked away. He banned journalists and unblocked them. He was a maverick before he was told he could not withdraw his bid for Twitter and was forced to take it over. He has been a maverick ever since.
Not everything Musk has done at Twitter is a disaster but he has proved ill-suited to turning around a long established company, rather than building his own from scratch which arguably he has done well. Musk has achieved nothing that will make Twitter more profitable.
But hey! Musk has outlasted Liz Truss by lasting 53 days as the person in charge.
His reign over Twitter will come to an end but he still owns the company. There is still potential for him to create havoc.
Except.
Shares in Tesla have plummeted. Elon Musk is no longer the richest man in the world. Perhaps he has realised that he needs to concentrate on his core businesses, even though they be Boring.
Social media companies need to be managed sociably. Responsibly. They are replacing the established media. For many people, especially younger people, that transition has already happened.
* Andy Boddington is a Lib Dem councillor in Shropshire. He blogs at andybodders.co.uk.
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10 Comments
This article is another example of the strange genre of free speech as far right value and Twitter as some sort of lovely liberal paradise before Musk bought it – as opposed to somewhere that has always been a pretty toxic environment and with deeply arbitrary moderation policies. Beyond Twitter Blue, pretty much the only thing that has changed since he took over is that child porn hash tags are no longer allowed. He should step back from a CEO role though, it’s clearly not good for him, nor for users if it seems as though public debate online is beholden to the whims of billionaires.
I agree with John LD that this new phenomenon of viewing free speech as a far right value is very strange.
For “progressive” movements (marxist, socialist, social democrat, or whatever) there is no intrinsic value of free speech. You can find these movements championing free speech, but only when they benefit from it because of their weakness. A similar example of supporting a cause because they benefit from it, not because they intrinsically value it, is political financing in the US. For decades limiting political donations was a top level cause for the Democrats. But since the 2010s, Democrats have become a much bigger benefactor of political donations than the Republican party, this issue has slipped away, and is now totally absent. Something similar is happening with free speech now that “progressive” narratives are in the ascendancy against “conservative” platforms.
Liberalism, on the other hand, holds free speech (warts and all) as a core tenet, because of what liberalism is, and how it is different from “progressivism”. It is therefore very worrying to see liberals mouthing the “progressives’ ‘ talking points, when these talking points are in direct contradiction to liberalism.
We are rapidly moving into a situation where so many people who call themselves “liberals” are anything but liberal (hostile to freedom of speech, in the thrall of identity politics). Similar to countries that have the word “Democratic” in their name are invariably anything but democratic.
I agree with both the above comments.
The one thing that Musk has done which has been long needed is removing the child sex abuse images which the previous regime completely failed to do. These are real children being abused. They were allowed to remain under previous management. That was unconscionable. It was also completely ignored by many people who are now having hissy fits. It seems it took Musk a mere 48 hours to remove the hashtags being employed by abusers.
I’m no fan of Mr Musk. His brand of hyper-libertarianism really doesn’t appeal to me. But on Twitter? Well, it appears to me that all he’s done so far is show it up to be the cesspit that it always was.
In other news it is now being reported that even Yoel Roth was concerned about what the FBI were asking him to do as he had concerns that they were engaging in illegal domestic operations – but apparently did it anyway! If this is true this should scare any liberal.
Right-wing so-called “libertarians” who claim to believe in “free speech” are not exactly consistent in their application of the principle either, especially by their flawed definition of “free speech” which to them means “freedom from criticism” and “freedom from the consequences of their speech”. In general, they confuse liberty with licence, which is why a more appropriate term for their philosophy is “licentialism”.
Elon Musk has shown his thin skin by deleting criticism and banning critics from Twitter, despite letting back in Donald Trump. His latest move is to ban links to other social networks. Ironically this (editorial) rule most likely turns Twitter into a publisher, rather than a platform, thus making it directly liable for content posted on it.
Who cares if Musk stays or goes? Twitter is a platform filled with stuff no right thinking Liberal would want any thing to do with. No, really. What difference will it make? Twitter will ultimately go bankrupt, probably sooner rather than later. In my view it is not a platform we LibDems should use and our departure will hasten its demise. Elon Musk has been foist with his own petard and we should not take the slightest bit of notice.
Mick Taylor: For what it’s worth you echo my sentiments entirely !
Those shouting loudest for free speech are also those closing down the freedom to protest. Don’t look at what they say, concentrate on what they do.
I find that when someone is complaining about ‘free speech’ it usually means they are demanding that someone else (twitter, the BBC etc) provide them with a platform. That’s not the same thing, and it’s almost never the case that anyone is being prevented from speaking their mind to those who chose to seek out those views (eg start your own online blog if you think twitter is censoring you).
But a private company is under no obligation to amplify your, my or anyone else’s opinions. And none of us are under any obligation to consume content from any given source.
I remain hopeful that Liz Truss doesn’t become a quick and easy punchline. Rishi Sunak is doing as bad a job just in much quieter more dignified way; Cameron, May, Boris were all equally as bad if not worse because they were more responsible for the spiral down into world where Truss could become a PM.
Nick Baird:
Without disagreeing with you, it should nevertheless be acknowledged that some platforms, such as LDV (from its very name), do have wider obligations when they purport to be representative of a wider group. I would contend that the obligations of the BBC are not the same as those of a private blog.
Moreover there are more general obligations not to misrepresent information and identity in accord with the harm principle as it applies to the actions of individuals on other individuals, to groups in society as well as the society at large.