So Elon Musk has bought Twitter, and you may ask: What’s the big deal?
From a pure balance sheet point of view it does not make sense (now) to pour $44 billion into a venture that restricts its users to 280 characters at a time, and rips up a media frenzy more often than not. According to Data Reportal 2021, it is not even among the top 15 global social media platforms based on active users.
What does Musk do with a media company?
There are critics of Musk — and there are many of them — who while agreeing that he is a bold entrepreneur and has been instrumental in turning around the global automobile industry, say that the media business is different. Such critics are missing the woods for the trees. Twitter is not just a media company — it is a social media platform, and that’s a big difference. Even if Twitter is viewed as a pure media play, we live in an information overload era where the lines separating media and social media have long blurred. When the Grahams thought of selling the Washington Post, Donald Graham suggested Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’ name because of his expertise of the Internet (Bezos’ knowledge about the media business was zilch then).
Musk’s takeover of Twitter is yet another reinforcement of the power of social media platforms. The 16-year-old company might not have the legacy of a 145-year-old Washington Post, but what it has is valuation: In 2013, Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million; adjusted against inflation, it would be $308.5 million today — and that’s 43.7 billion less than what Musk is coughing up for Twitter.
What’s in it for Musk?
Bloomberg’s Matt Levine puts out the numbers on how Musk is likely to fund the buyout, and there are media reports of a $21 billion gap in Musk’s finances. But I am digressing here.
Rest assured, the world’s richest man will have the money for it — the question is: Why is Musk doing it?
The answer to this perhaps lies in an essay Ian Bremmer wrote for Foreign Affairs titled ‘The techopolar moment’. Writing on how global tech giants responded to the January 6 US Capitol rioters, Bremmer says: “States have been the primary actors in global affairs for nearly 400 years. This is starting to change, as a handful of large technology companies rival them in geopolitical influence….Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter are no longer merely large companies; they have taken control of aspects of society, the economy, and national security that were long the exclusive preserve of the state.”
It is this ‘change’ and ‘influence’ that has got people both excited and concerned about Musk’s next move. By buying Twitter, Musk exponentially increases his influence not just in the United States (which is Twitter’s primary revenue-generating market) but across the world. Among those excited are US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene whose personal account was suspended in January over “repeated violations” of Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. Thankfully former US President Donald Trump has refused to return to Twitter. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has warned about the dangers to democracy such takeovers can pose.
Musk’s Twitter coup leaves open unsettling questions and have left many in the dark — just like Twitter employees — about the future of the micro-blogging platform. Musk has used (or misused depending on how you view it) his Twitter handle to publicise Tesla, and his tweets have impacted the prices for crypto assets. There’s a plethora of similar instances where in the past Musk has showed daredevilry and his need for attention through his Twitter handle reaching out to a whopping 84.7 million followers, the latest being his involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
It’s one thing to break rules or dangerously skid on the margins and cause havoc at an individual capacity, it’s an entirely different ball game when you own the same platform. What will keep authorities, free speech proponents, and tech enthusiasts up is the unpredictability associated with Musk. Uncertainty over the next Tesla model is limited to those in the automobile sector, but when it comes to a platform that has the potential to influence millions, and has been censured by many governments around the world, there needs to be clarity.
Musk has the backing of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and that’s reassuring. Perhaps fears of Musk going haywire are misplaced. But at the moment it’s a grey area — and that should be discomforting, especially for governments around the world.
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