LibLink: Ed Davey on Elon Musk and his malign powers

Ed Davey has written an article for The Guardian under the headline “Elon Musk has shown his hand. If politicians like me won’t curb his malign powers, who will?

He writes:

Much of the coverage of Musk centres on his bizarre actions and declarations, and the controversies that have followed. It’s easy to tune it all out as the dronings of a bore. But he’s so much worse than that. He’s already one of the most powerful people on the planet. He’s the world’s wealthiest man, with a fortune of more than $400bn. And despite turning millions of people away from Twitter with his damaging changes to the platform (not least trying to rebrand it as X), he still controls what hundreds of millions of people around the globe see on their feeds.

As a liberal, I am instinctively deeply alarmed by the concentration of so much power in the hands of one individual. Even if I liked Musk, I’d say it was dangerous. I see it as the fundamental purpose of liberals – whether capital L members of the Liberal Democrats, or like-minded people beyond our party and around the world – to hold the powerful to account and put real power in the hands of ordinary people.

He writes about the dangers of unmonitored social media:

Social media are helping to fuel a mental health crisis among our children and young people, and exposing them to the risk of sexual exploitation. Whether it’s the proliferation of self-harm material or the prevalence of grooming and abuse, X has become a much more dangerous place for children since Musk took over and slashed the platform’s child-safety teams.

And concludes:

So, when it comes to social media and AI, it is vital that our own government steps up and leads – in partnership with others, including the EU. Only if we show that leadership and approach both Musk and Trump from a position of strength will we be able to influence them in the right direction.

As Ed reiterated in a mailing to members:

I see it as our job as Liberal Democrats to put real power in the hands of ordinary people, and hold the already powerful properly to account. Donald Trump might want to turn the US into an oligarchy, but we can’t let it happen here.

* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.

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2 Comments

  • Alexander Jones 23rd Jan '25 - 11:55pm

    I would like to urge all members, officers, councillors and MPs in the Liberal Democrats to join Bluesky, the alternative to X (Twitter) and to even leave Twitter (X). As a member of the Liberal Democrats I terminated all my accounts on X when Donald Trump was elected. Not only did I find X to be toxic, and generally right wing in nature, it had become a useless platform to post to, as changes meant that unless you paid for a subscription, nobody read your posts, and you were largely invisible. It has always been in the power of the individual by removing their support of those and the platforms that are toxic and changing to alternative positive platforms such as Bluesky. The benefit of Bluesky is that it is created based on the AT Protocol, which means the user has control of their content and no corporate or rich individual can control it.

  • David Garlick 24th Jan '25 - 12:43pm

    I agree wholeheartedly with Ed.

    @Alexander. Join and use blue-sky. Retain the X account to challenge Musk and others on ‘their ‘ platform. They will pay little attention to posts on blue-sky. It will also keep them on our page and also annoy them greatly.

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