A yr in the past this week, when he accomplished the acquisition of Twitter for $44bn, Elon Musk tweeted “the hen is freed”. Billionaires like nothing greater than casting themselves as common liberators, however the acquisition fitted the sample of his ever-expanding empire.
Musk has colonised areas of the financial system from which public funding and regulation have been in retreat. His carmaker, Tesla, is shaping the way forward for transport; SpaceX, in the meantime, has in some ways changed Nasa on the ultimate frontier (thus far this yr it has launched 75 spacecraft).
Musk instructed himself and the world that he had acquired Twitter (now renamed X) to create “a typical digital city sq., the place a variety of beliefs will be debated in a wholesome method”. The subtext of that naive homily was: what’s the purpose in being the one in every of richest males on the planet for those who can’t nook the market in free speech?
One yr on, Musk has, step-by-step, reshaped his platform in his personal erratic picture. The standard knowledge of Twitter was: “Every day on Twitter there’s one fundamental character. The purpose is rarely to be it.” Musk has inverted that message. The positioning’s algorithm ensured that his voice is essentially the most distinguished each day (he has 160.5 million followers).
When he took over, the anxiousness was that he would take away the checks and balances that had been applied in response to the disaster in American democracy seen after the election of Donald Trump, and in populist governments the world over. Social media had accepted its culpability in cashing in on division.
Within the occasion Musk has, in plain sight – and to an typically sycophantic viewers, mesmerised by his billions – doubled down on that concern, restoring a platform for conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, personally amplifying assaults on what he delights in calling “legacy” (ie fact-checked) media and public servants, implementing methods that amplify the set of corrosive attitudes pushed by Trump and the American proper: the demonising of refugees, the imaginary “LGBT” agenda to sexualise youngsters, the “warfare on woke”.
Musk’s tweeting exercise options extra rocket launches than a North Korean propaganda movie however, learn collectively over the course of this yr, additionally delivers insights into the ever-hardening politics of a person whose unnerving ambition is to personal “the world’s consciousness”.
26 October 2022 ‘Let that sink in!’
Musk arrived at Twitter HQ in San Francisco carrying a rest room sink. The tech bro “joke” was that tech bro “jokes” and far else apart from have been now allowed on “liberated” Twitter. The implications of that new less-than-serious possession have been established a few days later when Musk replied to a submit by Hillary Clinton that expressed outrage at conspiracy theories surrounding the brutal assault on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the Home of Representatives. Musk intervened to amplify these theories, linking to an article on a infamous pretend information website, the Santa Monica Observer. How we chuckled.
20 November ‘The folks have spoken. Trump will likely be reinstated. Vox Populi, Vox Dei’
Musk started unbanning Twitter accounts that had been eliminated after the 6 January rebellion, starting, symbolically, with former president Trump’s. Throughout his first go to to Twitter HQ, he had insisted that there was no reality in rumours that he would lay off 75% of its 7,500 employees. He was true to his phrase. He laid off about 80%, together with the overwhelming majority of those that policed the location for hate speech and conspiracy. He additionally dissolved the belief and security council, an advisory group created in 2016 to deal with issues of kid exploitation, suicide and self-harm on the platform. Throughout that month’s elections in Brazil, by which misinformation fomented one other rebellion towards a democratic outcome, Musk was reportedly making advert hoc calls on guideline breaches himself.
12 December ‘The woke thoughts virus is both defeated or nothing else issues’
Till about 2020 Musk had supported Democratic causes: he donated cash to the Obama and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns. That unfastened conviction appears to have been undone by Covid restrictions. “That is fascist,” he mentioned. “This isn’t democratic. Give folks again their goddam freedom.” The rightward shift in his politics coincided with the truth that his eldest baby, Vivian, had come out as a trans girl (she modified her surname in 2022, saying in a courtroom submitting, “I now not want to be associated to my organic father in any manner, form or kind”). Musk blamed the breakdown of their relationship on “communist” indoctrination at a non-public college she attended in Los Angeles. Amongst paperwork disclosed throughout Musk’s acquisition of Twitter have been texts from his ex-wife, British actor Talulah Riley, which urged: “Please do one thing to battle woke-ism. I’ll do something to assist! xx.”
15 January 2023 ‘Instagram makes folks depressed & Twitter makes folks offended. Which is healthier?’
In his authorised biography, Walter Isaacson advised that that Musk had misunderstood Twitter. “He considered it as a expertise firm,” Isaacson wrote, “when in truth it’s an promoting medium based mostly on human feelings and relationships.” This tweet gestured towards that false impression. Musk, who identifies himself as having Asperger syndrome, struggles to grasp why the remainder of humanity doesn’t share his philosophy of infinite chance. The vitriol he monetises on Twitter seems a relentless problem to his $250bn optimism. One defence, because the Wall Road Journalsubsequently reported, was that Musk was self-medicating with ketamine, the horse-tranquilliser celebration drug, whose side-effects embody disassociation and hallucination. In response to the article, Musk tweeted that from what he’d seen with pals, “ketamine taken sometimes is a greater choice” than prescribed antidepressants. Eight million folks seen that endorsement.
3 February ‘ Beginning at the moment, Twitter will share advert income with creators for adverts that seem of their reply threads’
Amid reviews that Twitter was shedding $4m a day, Musk launched a plan to spice up promoting income by encouraging customers to subscribe and create content material with the intention to entry a minuscule share of earnings. This Uber-style mannequin of most income with minimal accountability uncovered the flaw of “citizen journalism”. Within the absence of any viable system of fact-checking or clear accountability, the mannequin appeared inevitably weighted in direction of the sort of excessive opinion and unhinged content material that assured essentially the most hits and likes.
28 March ‘Making an attempt my greatest for the people’
Musk seems to be pushed by a way, nurtured in a lifetime of video-game enjoying, that he alone can save the world from local weather change or AI disaster. On the centre of that perception is his Mars mission and the dream of a “multiplanet civilisation”. One mantra that emerges from Isaacson’s guide is: “If I don’t make choices, we die.” Hundreds of trustworthy followers on Twitter love nothing greater than reinforcing these cultish fantasies. This tweet got here in response to a message describing Musk as “some of the selfless of people”. Isaacson believes that Musk needed to purchase Twitter as a result of he had been bullied as a child each by his father and at college and “now he might personal the playground”.
9 April ‘All information is to a point propaganda. Let folks resolve for themselves’
Musk undermined the authority of unbiased information sources with the mission and assets to offer correct journalism – the BBC, NPR in America – by including the road “state-sponsored media” to their posts, grouping them with blatant propaganda from Russia At the moment and the Chinese language authorities. Although that coverage was revised after protest, the mission, it appeared, was to offer all data equal weight. How folks might “resolve for themselves” what was true from that avalanche of competing, unsourced information was not defined.
16 Could ‘Soros jogs my memory of Magneto’
By evaluating the investor George Soros, to Magneto, the supervillain in X-Males comedian books, Musk referred to the antisemitic tropes of the alt-right. When investigative journalist Brian Krassenstein argued that “Soros, a Holocaust survivor [like Magneto], will get attacked nonstop for his good intentions” Musk advised that Soros “hates humanity”. He didn’t disclose that Soros Fund Administration had the day earlier than bought its total stake in Tesla.
20 June ‘I’m up for a cage match if he’s lol’
When Fb’s Mark Zuckerberg launched a competitor to Twitter known as Threads, Musk challenged him to a cage battle. Zuckerberg, who reportedly spends his leisure time practising jiu-jitsu, accepted. Musk has thus far not provide you with a date for the battle, claiming a again damage. The juvenile trade was a reminder of the phrases Musk whispered into the ear of his first spouse Justine, by her account, at their wedding ceremony reception dance: “I’m the Alpha on this relationship.” If the cage battle ever does happen, it’s to be hoped that nobody wherever tunes in to the livestream.
23 July ‘X goes stay’
Musk has had a superstitious obsession with the letter X since he invested within the on-line financial institution X.com. The letter now options in all his corporations and is a part of the ludicrous title of his son with the artist Grimes: X Æ A-12. Rebranding Twitter – and dropping the blue hen which was among the many best symbols in company historical past – was, at greatest, an instance of his limitless religion in his personal instincts. The sinister X branding was claimed as step one towards his long-term purpose of making a common “the whole lot app” on which the world would talk, financial institution and store. If Musk had needed to appear like a real-life Bond villain, he might hardly have been extra express.
25 August ‘Subsequent-level’
Trump signalled his return to Twitter by posting the mugshot from his reserving at Fulton County Jail on fees of election interference. Musk retweeted that with the phrases “Subsequent-level”. To offer a flavour of Twitter within the coming election yr, he additionally closely promoted an interview between sacked Fox Information provocateur Tucker Carlson and Trump, which was mentioned to have had 265m views. Carlson has been interviewing a collection of far-right leaders for X, together with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Argentina’s excessive populist candidate Javier Milei. “You need to be ready and battle the tradition wars each day … ” Milei instructed him. “Very attention-grabbing speak that goes far past Argentina,” Musk tweeted.
29 September: ‘Went to Eagle Pass border crossing to see what’s really going on’
Pre-empting one other Trump marketing campaign, Musk spent a lot of September in a cowboy hat, concentrating the anxieties of his followers on the porous southern border, by livestreaming reviews of unlawful immigration at Eagle Move in Texas. His stilted vox pops with native sheriffs have been punctuated with frequent appeals to his display screen: “Is that this working?” The reviews advised that he actually needed to be a neighborhood radio reporter when he grew up, however nonetheless had a approach to go.
8 October ‘For following the warfare in real-time, @WarMonitors and @sentdefender are good’
Simply how a lot Musk needed to find out about information was proven by this since-deleted tweet after the 7 October Hamas atrocities. The beneficial websites have been each rapidly proven to have unfold pretend information and @WarMonitors had made antisemitic feedback. Within the following days, X was flooded with unverifiable content material, which overwhelmed its new “neighborhood notes” characteristic, (by which an accepted group of customers provides fact-checked commentary to unreliable tweets).
Musk was decreased to posting lame threats to websites he had promoted: “Please use maximally correct phrases or I have to withdraw my advice to observe your account.”
The warfare sharpened concentrate on the EU’s new Digital Companies Act, which has powers to carry social media to account for failure to take steps to stop the unfold of misinformation. In contrast to Fb and Google, Musk has refused to signal X as much as the code of apply, however that won’t defend it from enormous fines or a possible blackout. On Wednesday, Thierry Breton, the commissioner accountable for the act, contacted Musk, demanding that he contact Europol to clarify the breaches.
The entrepreneur was in any other case engaged selling his favorite new T-shirt, which requested: “What would Orwell suppose?”
Little question he would have seen Musk coming.
