Some Incomplete Thoughts on Elon Musk

Elon Musk

Elon Musk has reportedly completed his hostile takeover of Twitter. This joins companies like PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX that he has burrowed into, tick-like, to nourish himself off the product other people have previously built. But Twitter has a distinct character, an identity that makes it different than those other companies. Twitter doesn’t just provide a product or service; Twitter is a platform. Which opens very different implications.

PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX need customers to do business. If customers withhold their business, the business dwindles—though, admittedly, it’s rare for large businesses to dwindle to zero. Twitter doesn’t need customers; it needs content. Without users constantly creating content, and the lucrative controversy that content often provides, there’s no business, regardless of how many advertisers and daily viewers the site retains.

Social media networks essentially exist to resell user-created content to other users. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all exist to the exact extent that somebody keeps creating content, and if content creators start withholding their words and images, the business model dries up. Recall, advertisers kept pumping money into Friendster, Bebo, and MySpace for some time, but the business models all collapsed because ordinary people stopped creating content.

However, that content isn’t neutral. Musk has garnered right-wing support for his high-profile buyout by championing “free speech,” a coded term for loosening Twitter’s anti-hate speech rules. Likely beneficiaries of such loosening include Donald Trump, who used Twitter to incite violence; Jordan Peterson, who persists in aggressively deadnaming transgendered public figures; Alex Jones, who peddles lies for profit; and David Duke, banned for being David Duke.

As a free speech absolutist myself, I realize why being absolute is conditional. In my hometown, a bar owner needed to ban a handful of people for their language. They used hate speech, including the N-word, quite loudly, and picked needless arguments regarding politics. Any business owner knows that, if you don’t ban Klansmen and fascists early, other customers start avoiding your store; before long, you find yourself running a store for Klansmen and fascists.

Mark Zuckerberg

The same underlying principle drives social networks. Twitter and Facebook banned Donald Trump, not because his words were hateful and incited violence, but because they knew that if they didn’t, other users would leave. Content creators won’t create content if their content rubs elbows with Trumpist bullshit. And again, no matter how many code-writers or advertisers the parent company has, without content, there’s no company.

Serial entrepreneurs Alex Moazed and Nicholas Johnson describe Twitter, and similar businesses like Facebook and Etsy, as platform businesses. That is, these businesses don’t sell anything specific; they sell platforms users can utilize to tell stories, connect with friends, or simply air opinions. Moazed and Johnson regard these businesses as cash cows because they aren’t limited by warehouses or shelf space; given sufficient server storage, they’re hypothetically infinite.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Moazed and Johnson’s description sounds remarkably naïve. Even beyond knowing that social networks profit by selling customers’ metadata, and customer contacts’ metadata, the hypothetically infinite business isn’t infinite. Without people posting thoughts, pictures, and petty quarrels, social media has no business model. This gives users greater authority than standard business models—though that authority often isn’t readily visible.

Other business models favor gigantism and consolidation. Five publishing conglomerates now control the book industry, except they don’t really, because all five do fully half their business through one vendor, Amazon. That’s why boycotts seldom work, because they require such massive commitment by millions of people over vast amounts of time that they usually stall faster than a Model A. It’s hard to fight monopolies of that magnitude.

The same doesn’t apply to social media. Sure, there’s a similar monopolist impulse; Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has bought out so many other social properties, including Instagram and WhatsApp. But it’s much easier for smaller numbers of customers, working concertedly, to submarine the business model. It took only two years of Rupert Murdoch’s total mismanagement to transform MySpace from Earth’s biggest website, into the Mary Celeste of the whole internet.

Therefore, I contend, Elon Musk will reverse his entire course within weeks. The very “free speech” he purportedly supports, will become economically toxic if not subjected to certain minimum restraints. Sure, Twitter is sometimes morally toxic, encouraging petty squabbles and polarization, but Elon cares more about economic toxicity. The minute content creators start jumping ship to avoid being contaminated by fascist twaddle, he’ll become as authoritarian as anybody.

Because rules exist for a reason, even for the rich.