For all practical purposes, Elon Musk has successfully bought Twitter for an insane $44 billion. Beyond rockets and cars, the poster boy of tech-fuelled innovation for over two decades has taken yet another herculean challenge of not so much as saving humanity but aiming to preserve what tech naturally enables all humans to do — communicate in a free and fair manner all around the world.
Is Elon Musk’s unbridled idealism to champion the cause of free speech on Twitter nothing but a fool’s hope or is the promised land within reach through some out-of-the-box radical thinking? In Twitter's purchase, has Elon Musk overreached and grossly miscalculated or can he elevate the social platform into a unique global public square? The more I think about this event I can't help but wonder if Elon Musk has bitten off more than he can chew. Allow me to explain…
After becoming the richest person in the world, on the back of disrupting complex industries, Elon Musk has definitely proved he’s a modern-day genius. Chris Anderson of TED described him best back in 2013, “Elon Musk has an ability to think at a system level of design that pulls together design, technology and business, and synthesize it in a way that very few people can, feel so damn confident that he takes crazy risks.” Nine years later, this description of Elon Musk has stood the test of time.
In many ways, Elon Musk seems to be cut from the same cloth as the late Steve Jobs, possessing a prescient ability to look into the future with immense success. But compared to building rockets or electric cars, turning around Twitter or re-inventing a social media platform for the “greater good” may actually be a lot tougher than Elon Musk’s current reckoning.
Does Twitter even need fixing? Sure, Elon Musk thinks it can do better in terms of promoting free speech and not unnecessarily censoring speech that’s actually protected by law. But does he not get the irony of taking Twitter private and dictating other people’s right to free speech? Is free speech a ruse to take control of a platform to silence critics and favour yes men? Musk’s heart may be in the right place, but the optics of his Twitter purchase has something more than meets the eye. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Also Read: Elon Musk finally takes ownership of Twitter for a staggering $44 billion
Elon Musk can be several things to several people, but he definitely can’t be accused of being stupid. At best, he’s either trying to pull off an elaborate social media experiment for reasons best known to him, like an inside joke for only his sense of humour. At worst, he’s going to clear the deck and re-invent the game in his favour. Why? Because he’s clearly super active on Twitter, in case you’ve been living under a rock. He’s a Twitter super user who’s irked enough to buy it off to fix something he didn’t like – if anyone’s capable of doing that in this crazy world of ours, it’s Elon Musk.
Let me pause a bit to emphasize that I don’t have anything against Elon Musk. If anything, I’ve admired him for showing vulnerability that borders on how he feels about certain things (like seeking validation from industry pioneers, among other things) in the past. Funnily enough, there may even be a tiny grain of truth in his whole freedom of speech excuse to buy Twitter. Elon Musk knows how to play to the gallery and whip up support for whatever he sets his mind on. Making Twitter more profitable is going to be a lot easier than championing the cause of free speech online – purely because online speech is incredibly complex and nuanced, restricted or censored by national borders, and deep down Elon Musk knows this. So what is he playing at?
What Elon Musk will be doing with Twitter is anyone’s guess – a lot of people in the US are worried he might revoke Donald Trump’s ban. It’ll be foolish to write him off, no doubt. But in his own words, in response to Chris Anderson in April 2022’s TED interview, Elon says, “I don’t want to blow your mind but I’m not always right.” Another prescient insight or dose of sobering reality? I’ll let you decide.
Also Read: Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal will receive a whopping $40 million pay-out if terminated