Navneet Alang: Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter feels like a rich man’s tantrum

The factor about being a billionaire is that when you find yourself confronted with an issue, you may simply throw cash at it.

So when Elon Musk this week made a bid for the possession of Twitter, it felt a bit like a wealthy man’s tantrum. Denied the chance to be on the board of the corporate, he as an alternative performed the function of a cartoonish wealthy man from cinema: “Properly I’ll simply purchase the rattling factor then!”

As of scripting this column, Musk’s bid continues to be up within the air, and Twitter’s board plans to struggle it — assuming, after all, that the bid itself isn’t simply one other publicity stunt or outburst from a notoriously unpredictable individual.

Ostensibly, nevertheless, Musk’s want to purchase Twitter stems from a want to rework the corporate and, in his phrases, “unlock its potential” by specializing in some imprecise, undefined thought of “free speech” and to innovate by taking the corporate personal.

Musk’s understanding of free speech, nevertheless, notably because it pertains to on-line networks, is sort of plainly infantile; on the net, unmoderated areas are profoundly unfree as a result of they refill with hate and harassment, silencing all however the loudest and strongest — amongst whom Musk is clearly each.

However even when Musk’s bid fails or is extra merely disingenuous, the truth that somebody may supply to purchase Twitter is itself exceptional. No firm that’s as important to the functioning of recent societies ought to even be ready to be snapped up by a billionaire — sure, even when he’s in reality the richest man on the earth.

It betrays a deep downside each at and with Twitter. Just lately, professor Scott Galloway put it succinctly in a blog post on Musk’s machinations: “Twitter is among the many most essential merchandise in historical past (real-time information supply, international communications platform), but it stays a lackluster funding.”

For the sake of argument, allow us to put apart the query of whether or not a worldwide communications platform ought to in reality be run by a single personal firm — and that, too, one clustered with all the opposite large tech corporations on America’s west coast.

As an alternative, Twitter’s failure to capitalize on its huge potential stems from a administration that appears to misconceive its personal product, whereas additionally taking far too lengthy to implement new options to make the service higher.

Galloway’s remark that Twitter is among the many most essential merchandise in historical past requires some context, nevertheless. At round 200 million customers, Twitter falls far shy of Fb’s large three billion plus person base or TikTok’s billion plus customers.

However Twitter’s import is far much less about being the place that everybody gathers than it’s a microcosm of public discourse. Though it has change into well-liked to repeat the mantra “Twitter isn’t actual life” — a reminder that Twitter isn’t broadly consultant of ‘the general public’ at massive — that phrase additionally misses that Twitter has a massively outsize affect on tradition at massive as a result of it’s the vector by way of which bulletins are made, debates are had, and the chattering courses hash out the problems of the day.

Its significance is thus a lot completely different from Fb, but in addition arguably not lesser.

However Twitter’s personal administration appears to undercut this significance. For one, those self same so-called chattering courses confer with Twitter as “the hellsite,” a nod to how mentally and emotionally draining the app will be to make use of. Acrimony is rife, harassment and drive-by insults are frequent, and the longer you employ the positioning the more severe it will get.

No, Twitter can not itself management the polarization and disagreement that signify a wholesome democracy — and nor ought to it. However it has been painfully gradual to implement options that reduce down on the bitterness on Twitter, whether or not the power to take away oneself from conversations, restrict who can reply to you, or who can see your tweets.

Equally, the capability of anybody with even a average following to forged a harsh gentle on a single outburst can encourage harassment and brigading, and the unwillingness of Twitter to permit for a simple strategy to delete tweets or create ephemeral ones solely makes issues worse.

Put extra merely, Twitter is a crucial however depressing place, and the corporate that runs it appears bent on doing as little as it could possibly to make it any higher.

In a dialog at TED on Thursday after his bid, Elon Musk revealed he has a surprisingly naive view of what would make Twitter higher, amounting to little greater than “folks ought to say no matter they need.”

It’s fairly plainly an insufficient, sophomoric understanding of the dynamics of on-line networks, spouted by a person who might have performed a lot for clear electrical vehicles however in any other case typically pollutes the general public sphere.

Sadly, Twitter’s personal administration seems little higher relating to making the social platform a greater place — and it’s why a know-nothing like Musk can no less than try to swoop in and declare to need to repair what’s nonetheless clearly damaged.

Navneet Alang is a Toronto-based freelance contributing technology columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @navalang

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