Can Elon Musk manage Twitter?

Whatever happened to nice, geeky Musk?

Jason Godfrey The Star, Malaysia

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk bought Twitter for US$44 billion (S$60.7 billion) recently.

And he did it in typical outlandish Musk style, carrying a kitchen sink into the Twitter office – to “let that sink in”? I guess. It was definitely Mr Musk declaring victory in purchasing the social media network, and sure enough, he tweeted, “The bird is freed”.

Mr Musk is Twitter’s saviour. Or at least that’s the picture he’s painting. But remember, he didn’t want to actually buy the company. He offered to buy Twitter earlier in 2021 and then flip-flopped about it, and Twitter sued Mr Musk to make him honour his commitment to, basically, overpay. So Mr Musk buying Twitter isn’t a win, it’s a big loss for him.

Now he’s scrambling to figure out how to make money from Twitter. The platform is very good at spreading news and information in real time but no one has really figured out how to monetise it.

Mr Musk’s first idea was to get users to pay for their blue verification ticks. Eight US bucks a month. Now there’s talk that eventually Mr Musk wants to put all of Twitter behind a paywall.

Doesn’t sound like an open public square. Sounds more like a money grab by someone. And yes, Mr Musk is one of the world’s richest people, but that’s mostly tied up in the stock of his electric vehicle company, Tesla. To buy Twitter, he needed help from American banks and the Saudis. And be certain that everyone who gave him money is going to want that money back at some point.

But who knows, maybe Mr Musk’s plans to charge for the blue tick and put Twitter behind a paywall will work. After all, Mr Musk built Tesla. Helped build PayPal back in the infancy of the Internet.

But let’s be clear about one thing: ego trumps intelligence. And I know ego.

And that’s what I smell all over Mr Musk. Does he have a plan? I’m sure he does, but remember, all that intelligence is useless if he has let his ego take control.

What if Mr Musk’s priorities aren’t innovation and business as much as they are attention-seeking to make up for all those years of having to earn the spotlight? If that’s the case, the Mr Musk who owns Twitter is a very different Mr Musk than the one who got him there.

Vigilante superhero. It’s terrible news.

Shaer Reaz The Daily Star, Bangladesh

One of the most common tropes in the comic book universes of Marvel, DC Comics, Image and what have you is that of the billionaire superhero – individuals who can make a real difference and deliver justice when all other institutions fail.

And in 2022, we have a new entry to that list – a very real parody of a comic book billionaire superhero named Elon.

(But) filthy rich or not, he’s still human.

Prophetic overlord of SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Company and now Twitter, Mr Elon Musk is from an industry that is dominated by an adherence to the cult of personality – you don’t actually need to be able to do things or even know things, as long as you hold a position of power.

Your patience, and your tolerance for perceived stupidity is so low as to be legendary, and you are seen as the all-knowing being who will pull engineers, developers, business analysts and product managers out of the squalor of ineptitude and onto the path of glory.

It matters little that the man taking the credit for electrifying the world’s roads and building the rockets that will ultimately whisk us away to safety once we’re done killing this planet has very little engineering excellence to back up his claims to prophethood.

Mr Musk’s most successful ventures to date are valuable purely because of speculation.

So when he undertakes an aggressive takeover of Twitter and brands it as him “saving” the platform and upholding the values of free speech that he believes in, one has to ask, what actually makes him qualified for the role?

Given the disastrous results of getting users to pay US$8 for a “verified” blue tick stunt that he spearheaded right after taking charge of Twitter, the answer to Mr Musk’s qualifications seems to be clear.

Advertisers pulled away from the volatile mess and hotbed of memes that Twitter was quickly devolving into, yet Mr Musk’s ego made sure to put a positive spin to his house burning down by marvelling at the number of people who showed up to watch it go down in flames.

It’s equally funny and sad that the tech guru doesn’t know the tech stack of the company he’s trying to “save”, but the fun runs out when a bit of light digging reveals that Mr Musk immediately fired the engineer(s) who had responded to him and challenged his ego. Let’s not even go into the hypocritical nature of Mr Musk and how the retaliatory firing of employees for speaking their minds simply goes against the “free speech” mandate he wants to be championing.

For technologies to truly reshape the world and our communities in a meaningful, impactful way, we must move away from false idolatry and worshipping the cult of personality.

Technological advancements have the possibility to bring net good to society and may hold the tools to ensure the continued survival of humans as a species, but it is absolutely vital that we look to community building and ensuring our institutions are functional and accountable, instead of replacing them with so-called individual superheroes.

Free speech for sale: US$8 only

Raphael A. Pangalangan Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippines

What’s all this hullabaloo over a blue check mark?

If you’ve ever been on Twitter – the social media platform well known for its bite-sized, 280-character “tweets” – chances are you would have noticed a blue check mark associated with certain accounts. From household personalities to government officials like Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr (@bongbongmarcos), and even institutional accounts such as that of the University of the Philippines (@upsystem) and of the Senate of the Philippines (@senatePH) – right next to their handle, that is, username, an innocuous tick, no different from an emoji, would immediately follow.

To those who haven’t been following the recent developments at the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, California: As at Oct 27, Mr Elon Musk officially owns Twitter.

As “Chief Twit”, Mr Musk wasted no time in changing the company inside out. He hit the ground running, fast-tracking changes to Twitter’s home page and giving the company’s leadership a sudden makeover. But among this string of controversial decisions, Mr Musk’s latest announcement is the one (thus far) that trickles downstream, closest to home.

On the afternoon of Nov 1, Mr Musk announced that Twitter account holders will need to cough up US$96 a year for the verification badge. Initially, it was pegged at US$240 a year, but was eventually brought down thanks to a tweet by legendary storyteller Stephen King.

This most recent announcement has been met with waves of mixed feelings. Among those who support it (also known as the “Musketeers”), some would claim that the badge-for-a-fee set-up is pro-democratic. They see money as the great leveller and the subscription fee as their weapon of choice against the tyranny of “lords” over “peasants”.

I take a different view. This is not the end of tyranny. It is its beginning.

You see, Mr Musk and his supporters appear to think that the blue check mark is some sort of status symbol. And that by tacking the blue badge of verification next to their name, the badged “lord” was effectively signalling their moral or intellectual superiority over us non-badged “peasants”. In gist, the Musketeers associate Twitter’s verification check with merit.

But the Musketeers are mistaken. The blue tick on Twitter is not meant to signify excellence but authenticity. But here’s the rub: Though the primary function of the verification badge is to simply verify, it has over time been associated with so much more.

The issue is not the price, but the tag. It’s the fact that, at this point in history where the world lays witness and is helpless to the destructive power of deceit, the richest man in the world decided to make a quick buck by putting a price tag on truth.

Musk bears heavy responsibility for Twitter

Editorial The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan

Mr Elon Musk, chief executive of leading United States electric vehicle maker Tesla, purchased social media platform Twitter for US$44 billion. Twitter has become an important piece of infrastructure used by politicians and celebrities to disseminate information. The number of daily Twitter users is said to exceed 200 million. Transparency and integrity are essential to its operations.

Mr Musk has emphasised that the purpose of the purchase is to protect “free speech”. Twitter has been deleting harmful posts such as those with disinformation and slander or freezing accounts that make such posts, but Mr Musk is reportedly dissatisfied with such processes because he sees them as a violation of free speech.

However, free speech does not mean allowing any content to be posted. If harmful information is rampant, it can amplify social unrest and division.

In the US and Japan, delineating whether information on social media is harmful or not is, in principle, left up to the judgment of operators. Mr Musk should be aware of the weight of his responsibility as the operator of a major social media platform.

He has reinstated former US president Donald Trump’s account, which had been permanently suspended after the storming of Capitol Hill in 2021. Mr Musk said he followed the results of a survey conducted on Twitter. There has been criticism of the way he made that decision.

He also reportedly fired more than half of the approximately 7,500 Twitter employees. Monitoring posts takes a lot of manpower. It is not good if monitoring is neglected due to streamlining.

Mr Musk himself has repeatedly made freewheeling posts on Twitter.

Mr Musk needs to change this attitude and make efforts to gain the trust of Twitter users as well as business partners.