Elon Musk has over 80 million Twitter followers, so why does he must personal the platform? (AP Picture/Eric Risberg)
Pundits, lecturers and members of the general public have criticized Elon Musk’s profitable bid to accumulate Twitter. Some Twitter customers have even thought-about leaving the platform.
For these critics and anxious customers, Musk’s bid for the social media is a danger to the liberty of expression probably the most vital communication venues within the data financial system.
CBC’s The Nationwide asks whether or not or not Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will have an effect on free speech.
Whereas the development to bypass the media has been rising in current a long time due to entry to data and communication applied sciences (ICTs), Musk’s proposed takeover doesn’t appear to make sense.
What could possibly be the actual motivation behind his takeover of Twitter?
Media barons
Musk’s plan to accumulate Twitter has a number of historic precedents the place the wealthy and the highly effective tried to regulate their very own media to succeed in the general public with out different intermediaries.
In 2006, Twitter was created at Odeo Tasks as a aspect challenge providing a short-messaging system (SMS) to taxi drivers. The challenge took off, and shortly Twitter was spun off into its personal entity.
In 2013, Twitter turned a public firm traded on the New York Inventory Trade.
In April 2022, Musk reached a deal to accumulate the platform after going through preliminary constraints and a rebuff by the corporate’s board.
Capital funding within the media just isn’t new. For instance, journalist Henry Jarvis Raymond and banker George Jones based the New York Instances. Immediately, industrialists and entrepreneurs personal most media venues, reminiscent of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos’s buy of the Washington Publish in 2013.
Very similar to Mark Zuckerberg’s Fb, Musk’s Twitter turns into a natively grown media group; meaning in contrast to conventional media, each platforms allow sharing between customers, as an alternative of pushing content material at audiences.
Robber barons
The time period “robber baron” was used to explain Nineteenth-century American industrialists and financiers in an unflattering method. They’re portrayed as grasping businessmen who seize management over industries and privatized utilities by unethical enterprise practices.
The historical past of robber barons is full of the epic and sensational depictions of enterprise leaders reminiscent of Charles Tyson Yerkes, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould and John D. Rockefeller by the media. Usually, robber barons develop into the subject of debate and gossip — critics denounce them within the media.
Early critics usually drew comparisons between robber barons and medieval feudal lords who unfairly maintained management over primary requirements and sources of their societies.
A lot of the criticism in opposition to Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg — and different Silicon Valley entrepreneurs like Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Web page — is eerily paying homage to the criticisms levelled in opposition to Nineteenth-century robber barons.
The platforms exploited by Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Brin and Web page have develop into essential public utilities within the data financial system, and these media barons exploit folks’s information for their very own private acquire.
Some can understand their wealth and affect over the media as harmful for democracy. Whereas democratic considerations are authentic, one other perspective could assist us perceive Musk’s US$44 billion buy of Twitter.
Robber barons are males who made their fortunes by unethical enterprise practices that positioned them answerable for industries.
(Samuel Ehrhardt, Puck Journal, Nov. 6, 1889)
Artistic destruction
Authorized scholar Tim Wu writes that the enlargement and contraction of knowledge platforms results in disruptive innovation when a number of platforms compete with each other, and consolidation when rising dominant gamers try to claim their maintain over data.
Very similar to Italy earlier than the First World Battle, Twitter just isn’t highly effective sufficient to problem the powers of its day — Google, Apple, Fb, Amazon and Microsoft. However it’s too huge to be ignored or swallowed by them.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter provides the platform to his eclectic assortment of disruptive industries: Tesla Motors, Neuralink, SolarCity and SpaceX. Nevertheless, in contrast to Musk’s earlier initiatives, which he purchased both early of their growth or based, Twitter just isn’t a disruptive know-how, whereas the contents of its customers might be. Musk could declare that he desires to disrupt information and permit for higher freedom of expression, however he didn’t must buy Twitter for that.
Learn extra:
Elon Musk and the oligarchs of the ‘Second Gilded Age’ cannot solely sway the general public — they’ll exploit their information, too
Musk wants direct entry to customers’ consideration to make use of Twitter because the cement that may propel all of his different ventures additional. Fears that Musk will make the social media platform pleasant to far-right conservatives are exaggerated.
Musk wants to draw customers who’re innovators and early adopters to persuade the plenty that his ventures are worthwhile. Nevertheless, far-right conservatives don’t are typically innovators or early adopters of recent applied sciences. Moderately, they are typically a part of the late majority and laggards.
Metaverses and cryptocurencies
The individuals who concern Musk’s maintain over Twitter at this time are sometimes a part of essentially the most fascinating demographic promoters of recent applied sciences search. To grasp Musk’s buy of Twitter, one should suppose as he does — strategically and tactically.
Musk wants Twitter to propel the following phases of his enterprise ventures that embrace cryptocurrencies. He may be getting ready to begin a metaverse of his personal and tackle Fb’s model by becoming a member of Twitter to the mind interfaces developed by Neuralink.
Twitter already has a wealthy variety of customers from varied demographics, together with the innovators and early adopters that make or break new data platforms. They’ve a stake in sustaining their presence on Twitter due to years of publishing and creating their identities on the platform. The community connections and entry supplied by Twitter is a profit to many customers.
If Twitter is vital to the following phases of Musk’s enterprise ventures, probably the most vital duties he has is to persuade uncertain customers that he’s extra of a benevolent ruler than a despicable robber baron. He should persuade them that it’s enterprise as ordinary whereas he continues to develop the platform’s consumer base.
Hervé Saint-Louis receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Analysis Council (Canada).
