DAVID MARCUS: Musk isn't Darth Vader, he should be applauded
Musk isn’t Darth Vader. He wants to turn a nasty liberal echo chamber into a haven for free speech – and drag a business joke into the real world… that’s why, writes DAVID MARCUS, he should be applauded
It’s a strange thing to feel sorry for the richest man on earth. But these days, it seems like Elon Musk could really use a friend.
The master of electric cars and new-fangled spaceships has spent 44 billion dollars to buy Twitter which, as my 12-year-old pointed out, is a bit odd since it’s free in the app store.
But there’s something to that.
The promise of Twitter is that – with technology – nearly anyone on Earth can say their piece in the global town square. You don’t have to be the billionaire founder of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX to be heard.
Just ask the dissents in the streets of Iran, if social media is helpful.
Musk has promised to turn Twitter from a nasty liberal echo chamber into a true free speech haven. But so far, it’s been a bumpy ride.
Just hours after Musk took the helm of the Blue Bird General Motors announced it would suspend advertising on the platform.
Stunning? Brave? No, stupid.
This is the same General Motors that has Mark Tatum on its board of directors, he’s the Chief Operating Officer of the National Basketball Association, an organization that is in bed with the slave holding autocracy in China.
Will GM refuse to advertise on broadcasts of the NBA finals? Don’t hold your breath.
But they’re more than willing to hold Musk hostage, over potentially letting the bad Orange Man, Donald Trump back on the platform.
Musk has promised to turn Twitter from a nasty liberal echo chamber into a true free speech haven. But so far, it’s been a bumpy ride.
Priorities seem to be a bit mixed-up, no?
Meanwhile, those unsung heroes, celebrities and left leaning journalists are promising to exit Twitter en masse.
Of course, these are the same people who claimed they’d move to Canada if Trump became president, and they’re still here somehow.
Sadly, for Musk, reaction on the right hasn’t been all that much better.
Conservatives who were expecting an immediate parting of Red Sea through which banned accounts would do a Mardi Gras parade back into relevance were shocked and stymied by the billionaire’s announcement that he is creating a blue-ribbon content moderation panel before letting anyone back into their account.
Meanwhile, Musk is meeting with the usual lefty suspects such as the Anti Defamation League and its progressive mouthpiece Jonathan Greenblatt. Yoel Roth, who Musk has put in charge of this content moderation debate is himself a dyed in the wool progressive.
So, we can see why conservatives are feeling nervous despite a pledge to embrace viewpoint diversity.
Musk has also promised to fire half of the staff of Twitter which feels like a Darth Vader move, but let’s all take a breath.
Some see the layoffs as a tragedy, some see it as justice for employees who have curbed conservative speech for years while joking about it.
But Twitter was the joke — as a business enterprise.
It didn’t grow as other social media competitors did. Advertising revenue was always measly. They didn’t know how to monetize the platform.
Now that a true businessman and visionary is in charge, there’s gonna be change. That’s how the real world works.
Elon Musk’s primary task at Twitter is not to turn it from blue to red, but from in the red to in the black.
In fairness the often trolly entrepreneur has floated a lot of high-minded talk about saving society through a public commons that embraces free speech. So, he’s asked for the criticism he is getting.
But he still has to turn a profit.
It’s a strange thing to feel sorry for the richest man on earth. But these days, it seems like Elon Musk could really use a friend.
Musk has also promised to fire half of the staff of Twitter which feels like a Darth Vader move, but let’s all take a breath.
It’s been about two weeks since the final purchase of Twitter. Musk is only just finding out what exactly he bought. The inner workings of the site have always been murky, bathed in shadow from how many users are bots to what algorithms suppress or amplify speech. If he can fix it, he deserves a little more time to do so.
The central problem that Musk faces, as he well knows, is content moderation. It was his raison d’etre for buying the company in the first place.
But content moderation is not a tech problem, it’s not a software or engineering problem, it’s a philosophical and ethical problem.
The reason that Elon Musk just at the moment is pleasing none of the people none of the time is that he is seeking to tackle one of the most intractable problems not only of our time, but of all time.
How do you give free speech and the free exchange of ideas an open platform without allowing vile and dangerous voices a megaphone?
Musk didn’t help his effort any when he tweeted out a fake news story from a conspiracy laden website about the attack on Paul Pelosi this week. At least he eventually deleted it, but it was a serious mistake that should never be repeated for good of his company, not to say the good of the country.
But in the end, these are all side shows.
Elon Musk should be applauded for trying to put the world and its discourse on his shoulders. It’s a Herculean task.
For now, we should be patient. And we should also be active. Everyone has a role to play in figuring out the future of our society’s discourse. It’s an important conversation, one that Musk has offered to moderate at great personal expense.
Let’s give Elon Musk a chance. His heart is in the right place. That might not be enough, but it’s something.
As they say, when you make an omelette – you’re going to break some bird eggs.
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