Elon Musk Is Profitable – The Atlantic
Let’s face it, Twitter isn’t going wherever anytime quickly. The platform is rather a lot like a cockroach. It’s ugly, skittering, repulsive, and extremely tough—regardless of many efforts—to kill. Elon Musk bought the community in late 2022, handled its energy customers with disdain, haphazardly fired a lot of its workforce, alienated its advertisers, insisted on calling it X, and turned it right into a car for an edgelordian political challenge. Folks left in droves. And but someway, at this second in 2024, X has the juice.
It’s nonetheless a rat’s nest of reckless hypothesis, offended partisans, and toxicity, but it surely’s additionally alive in a means that’s onerous to quantify. Joe Biden’s stunning efficiency on the presidential debate in late June set my timeline ablaze in a means it hadn’t been since 2021. When a gunman shot at Donald Trump eight days in the past, the platform did what it does finest, providing a mixture of conspiracy theorizing, up-to-the second hard-news reporting, and, maybe most important, a notion of communal spectating (which, regardless of the awfulness, is genuinely addictive). The previous three weeks have been terribly chaotic, filled with the type of infighting, violence, and spectacle that X was constructed to assist doc and even gas. All of that culminated this afternoon when Biden introduced that he was withdrawing from the presidential race with a sequence of posts on the platform. X has at all times been within the doomscrolling enterprise, and enterprise is booming.
When you step again, although, you could discover how awkward this example is: Joe Biden selected to make one of many largest bulletins in presidential historical past on a social-media web site owned and operated by one in every of his opponent’s largest donors and most vocal supporters. Musk reacted to the information by posting about how his “smartest associates” are voting for Trump and by compulsively replying “Trump/Vance LFG!!” to folks on X.
Biden’s workers posted the information on X as a result of they will need to have understood that, for higher or worse, it’s the quickest, least mediated solution to inject data into the bloodstream of political and cultural discourse. (As Musk remarked in regards to the mainstream media this afternoon: “They’re so gradual.”) That X is again to its outdated methods means journalists, pundits, consultants, lawmakers, and hyper-engaged political hobbyists have all settled again into the acquainted sample of refreshing the app to eat information within the 24-second information cycle. “Amongst different issues this must be the second that brings all of the liberal exiles again to Twitter/X,” the New York Instances columnist Ross Douthat posted shortly after Biden’s announcement. “No person’s ever escaping this platform now.”
Though I don’t think about that Musk’s platform goes to see a historic inflow of latest customers, Douthat’s level about inescapability feels proper. For people who find themselves hooked on political mayhem or want to watch or report on it for the following 4 months, avoiding X goes to be extraordinarily tough.
When Musk acquired Twitter, my favourite rationalization for what he purchased got here from The Verge’s Nilay Patel, who argued that the platform’s biggest asset wasn’t its know-how, however the addled “politicians, reporters, celebrities, and different individuals who ought to know higher however maintain posting anyway.” No person match this description higher than Musk, an inveterate poster. Patel, writing as if he was talking to Musk, concluded: “You simply purchased your self for $44 billion.”
That is nonetheless true, however with hindsight it’s additionally clear that he bought the flexibility to transform the platform pretty dramatically in his picture. Arguably, he went too far. In the course of the first 18 months of his tenure, the platform appeared to revolve round Musk’s personal posts and character. This was partly algorithmic—Musk reportedly requested engineers to spice up his posts—and partly cultural. Musk grew to become Twitter’s proprietor and perpetual most important character. The platform’s “For You” advice feed felt, at occasions, virtually curated by Musk, filled with the identical stale memes, Reddit-flavored viral slop, and edgelord humor that the billionaire shared through his personal account.
However Musk’s stewardship may additionally have shifted the Overton window, particularly amongst his friends in Silicon Valley—specifically, enterprise capitalists reminiscent of Marc Andreessen, who has flirted with the suitable by railing in opposition to “wokism” on the platform for years. Musk has used his account to assist launch Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential marketing campaign in addition to to reinstate the banned accounts of conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, trolls, and, after all, Trump himself; Musk’s resolution to make use of X to explicitly advance the Trumpist political challenge has pushed the social community much more to the suitable, in line with one Pew Analysis Heart report. Amongst pundits who spend a variety of time on the platform, the vibe has clearly modified. It is sensible that, as Musk’s affect shifts the platform to the suitable, his contemporaries really feel comfy following swimsuit. Because the enterprise capitalist Ben Horowitz mentioned on his podcast final week: “The way forward for our enterprise, the way forward for know-how, new know-how, and the way forward for America is actually at stake … We expect Donald Trump is definitely the suitable alternative. Sorry, Mother.”
Silicon Valley enterprise capitalists should not, outdoors fundraising, a key electoral demographic—and maybe this “masks off” second has merely revealed sentiments that have been there all alongside. Nonetheless, any consideration of Musk’s position highlights the reality about what he actually purchased: a still-important communication channel that, whereas open to all, could also be influenced by his personal grudges and ideologies in each refined and really direct methods.
Rich and highly effective males have lengthy owned influential media properties and used them in explicitly political methods, however Musk’s sole executorship of X is barely totally different. The location has at all times felt extra like an informational commons than an precise journalistic arm. Now reinvigorated customers should wrestle with a tough query: Ought to we proceed to outsource the liveliest elements of our political dialog to a platform owned by a far-right activist?
In an ideal world, the reply could be an easy no. However those that oppose Musk and Trump have causes to remain. There’s the argument that ceding X’s political battleground to the suitable could be silly—that staying and waging an ideological combat is each noble and politically savvy. One other line of pondering I’ve heard amongst journalist friends is that it’s unwise to surrender the massive audiences that many have constructed on the platform. If the aim is to tell, you need the most important megaphone.
However staying has its dangers. It offers Musk that rather more affect over the political discourse, to be performed on a platform whose algorithms privilege the very rage-bait and reductive engagement that led Musk to turn into its most well-known and well-followed person.
Whether or not you’re involved about Musk’s possession at this level most likely will depend on your ideology or your viewpoint on Twitter’s relevance. Immediately, as Trump supporters struggled to make sense of a brand new marketing campaign panorama, one far-right influencer in my feed issued an all-caps plea: “GET TRUMP BACK ON X NOW!” It was one more admission that this comparatively small platform nonetheless feels prefer it issues. However there’s one other solution to interpret right-wing shitposters begging for a Trump return: If X really issues, if it strikes the political needle, why is it that the largest character in American politics—the one that cemented the web site’s standing within the firmament of political discourse—doesn’t publish? The reply is that Trump now has his personal platform, Fact Social, which he started posting on after Twitter briefly banned him after January 6. Trump’s account has technically been reactivated on X, however the one factor he’s posted since 2021 is his personal mugshot to advertise his web site.
Musk purchased a considerable quantity of affect for $44 billion. However his political idol is, for now, nonetheless his competitor.