Elon Musk, billionaire and acclaimed “genius,” bought Twitter about a month ago for about $44 billion.
Musk made the acquisition official by walking into the building with a sink then posting a video to Twitter with the caption, “Let that sink in.”
Unfortunately, this wasn’t going to be the worst or cringiest thing to happen with Twitter in the following weeks after his purchase.
Musk says he purchased Twitter for the sole purpose to “help humanity, whom he loves” and “not to make money,” according to an Oct. 27 Twitter post.
However, in the same tweet specifically addressed to advertisers, Musk promises that he will keep Twitter a safe space for them and thinks ads can “delight, entertain and inform.”
He finishes his statement by reassuring advertisers, not humanity, that “fundamentally Twitter aspires to be one of the most respected advertising platforms in the world.”
Putting aside the cringy pomp,circumstance and nice words, Musk buying Twitter is detrimental to both collective action and freedom of speech, and it is already causing more harm than good.
Before his purchase of Twitter, the blue check mark system was used to denote active, notable and authentic official accounts for companies, politicians and users, according to the Twitter website.
After the purchase, Musk decided to sell blue check marks for $8 a month as a great “equalizer.”
This beautiful idea from the big brain himself was shortly followed by shitposts of Nintendo’s Mario flipping the bird, George Bush calling for the death of Iraqis and an announcement for free insulin, all with a blue verified check mark next to them.
Other notable shitposts included the banana company, Chiquita, announcing they had “overthrown the Brazilian government” and O.J. Simpson “refused” to lie and said he did “it,” according to a Nov. 14 Washington Post article.
The greatest effect from all this was Elli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company selling insulin, lost billions of dollars in market cap valuation as its stock dropped 4% after tweets from a parody account announcing that its insulin would be free, according to the Washington Post article.
Musk continues to fail to recognize, amid the entirety of Twitter making fun of him, that he doesn’t know how to run a social media company.
Twitter at its base has always made money off of its users.
There is an axiom that is prevalent in the social media space that goes, “If you aren't paying for the product, then you are the product.”
At the same time, how many other companies can say they were paramount in toppling authoritarian governments in the case of the Arab Spring?
The Arab Spring was a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that took place in the Middle East and North Africa beginning in 2010 and 2011, challenging some of the region’s entrenched authoritarian regimes, according to Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
Social movements and mass protests like the Arab Spring, the hashtag #MeToo, the Black Lives Matter movements and current human rights protests throughout Iran are all cited as being galvanized and organized on Twitter, according to a Nov. 22 NPR article.
People found a resource to organize and be heard, which turned out to be an effective means for political action and change.
This resource happened to be Twitter – I’m as surprised as everyone else – but nevertheless, it allowed people to hold power in their phone and change their world.
There is a chance that Twitter could continue to be a place for organization and change, but with the veracity of profiles in question and Musk’s clear attention toward advertisers over users, I find it hard to believe that Twitter has much longer on the app market.
