Elon Musk Wants You To Leave Twitter

Don’t let the bros seize this ground. The unopposed damage they can do is yet another existential threat to democracy.

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – This week, Elon Musk decided to reinstate all of the accounts that were suspended under the Jack Dorsey regime. It happened the same way he chose to reinstate Donald Trump: a shoddy, unscientific, bot infested Twitter poll, which indicates to me that he had always planned to do it and just needed a way to make it seem as though “the people” decided. 3.1 million votes in his sham-poll, and I’d wager three million of those votes weren’t people.

Musk has two possible motives for pulling the trigger on this amnesty nonsense.

First, he desperately wants to increase the number of active users on the platform. He figures the more users there are, the more he can charge advertisers – revenue he desperately needs. And what’s the best way to do that quickly? Release all the inmates from Blackgate Prison, like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises: “We give it back to you, the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere, do as you please.”

Second, and most importantly, Musk wants to drive away all Normals.

Releasing the worst a-holes and disinformers back into the bloodstream of the site is a great way to force regular people, liberals, moderates, and so forth to flee for better, less abusive platforms. 

From the start, this appears to have been the central goal of Musk’s investment. With Normals out of the way, it leaves this massive communications hub to the Republicans, Trump fanboys, fascists, weirdos, bros, and other terrible people who Musk considers to be fans and allies, just in time for the 2024 presidential election. For instance, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his $1.9 billion stake in Twitter would love a Republican back in the Oval Office.

More specifically, Musk outright begged “all judgy hall monitors” to leave the site as soon as possible. By this he means the news media and anyone else who believes in traditional journalism. 

Instead, Musk would prefer to see information dispensed by “citizen journalists,” a term almost as ludicrous as citizen fighter pilots or citizen surgeons. Musk doesn’t realize that journalism is a profession in which writers are guardrailed by well-tested and defined procedures for gathering and reporting the news; where editors, proofreaders, red teams, and producers vet what’s being reported for accuracy and newsworthiness. He doesn’t understand this because he’s the world’s wealthiest dilettante who believes any amateur with the Twitter app can report the news. No. They can’t. No more so than anyone with a Twitter app can diagnose lymphoma.

Either way, it’s another institution he’d like to run off, making way for endless geysers of disinformation.

And if you think this isn’t a partisan effort, the numbers don’t lie. Since Musk’s first day as the tinpot dictator of Twitter, Democratic lawmakers lost thousands of followers, while Republican lawmakers gained thousands.

The Washington Post reported this week:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) all lost about 100,000 Twitter followers in the first three weeks of Musk’s ownership of Twitter, while Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio) gained more than 300,000 each.

Musk’s erratic behavior and support for both Republicans and libertarian bros has driven countless liberals away, while Red Hat users have become more active. Plus, it’s obvious that without any staff, scammer controls, or content moderation, it’s easier than ever to game Twitter’s algorithms to boost the reach of Republican accounts, which could also factor into the Post’s numbers.

This absolutely puts Democrats at a disadvantage on the site, and it’ll only get worse. While Facebook is more effective at driving traffic to non-affiliated sites, Twitter is where the first draft of history is written in the 21st Century. It’s where political messaging resonates at lightspeed, it’s where candidates conduct outreach with supporters, and it’s where news is disseminated. But if its population is deliberately knocked off plumb, with countless more Republicans than Democrats, which party inherits the world’s most powerful bathroom wall? And just in time for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

The upshot: don’t leave Twitter yet. There may come a time to bail, but at least for now we all need to maintain a presence there, even as we experiment with startups like Mastodon, Post, and Counter Social. Don’t let the bros seize this ground. The unopposed damage they can do is yet another existential threat to democracy.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into all this and Musk is nothing more than an ungainly billionaire chaos-agent shaking up the ant farm to watch us all freak out. But $44 billion is a lot of money to spend on an ant farm. And not all of that money was his. So, his plan seems like it’s materializing along these lines: scare you and me away, while handing Twitter over to the fascists, bros, and trolls on a silver platter. “None shall interfere, do as you please.”

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