It is important not to go off on tangents in the examination of Elon Musk’s purchase of twitter and his current restructuring and realignment of it.
The main conflict appears to be, and probably in fact is, that his claim to be serving a civic duty and opening up the world to real discussion and debate and not restricting social media to the view of the democratic left, only, is countered with the opposite view that his claim to be opening up free speech is simply a veil for transforming the social media platform into a voice for the radical right, de-amplifying the liberal voice, and giving himself a God Box on a rocket launcher at a metaphoric speaker’s corner in Hyde Park, to expound his many views, which range from an apparent lack of sympathy for his transgender child, which some interpret as transphobia, to anti-vax views, to anti Democrat views and beliefs, supported by a release of internal files from twitter, re: an FBI conspiracy to strangle any anti-vaccination ideologies during Covid, amongst other things.
Some of the mainstream media appear to give some credence to some of his twitter file views, but there appears to be no huge following of his views (outside his 125m followers), which some might view as eccentric, paranoid, inciting, and even downright irresponsible.
Going into an examination of his views would be a complex task, to really examine them. The twitter files, as they have come to be known, seem mainly to be being released through twitter, which takes away from their validity a little, and there appears to be little support for new twitter in the mainstream, except from the radical right. Which is a reasonably large cohort in some senses, certainly.
So, to reiterate, the opposing side argue he is being inflammatory, dangerously provocative and incendiary. Or basically irresponsible in terms of the current world situation. That said, one report from him of Biden having an EV conference at the White House where he not only did not invite him but gave pride of place to GM, whose EV market inroads are tiny, seemed to have some validity.
But this is all by the by. Advertisers have left the platform in droves, and whatever arguments EM makes about security and safety on the platform, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out if you fire most of your safety and security programmers and managers, the likelihood of the platform becoming more dangerous is quite high. He has had to do this, he argues, because of daily losses, and these cut backs continue on a daily basis.
But - and yes, I am re-emphasising - opening up the portal to – in his view – balanced debate – in the view of others – open extreme political chaos – and reducing your safety and security staff – has, in the view of many commentators, created a dangerous forum. Replacement income from selling blue ticks does not really seem to be the kind of thing that will save the forum, so what is going to happen?
Musk is certainly in no mood to reduce his political stance. Some days it disappears, only to return with a vengeance. Advertisers do not appear to be returning. The buy out has left the platform with a very high debt to equity ratio. Or money owed contrasted to the value of the investment, whereby the value of twitter has dropped, while it owes perhaps almost as much as it is worth, if not more. With no opportunities really looking feasible to borrow more, and any re offering to the public of the shares looking likely to result in a severe blow, it seems that Musk is immune to any criticism, but the reality is that unless he is planning to run the whole show and burn his own money, something has to give.
Allowing the radical right a new prominence, in the name of rebalancing and fairness, doesn’t really appear to be something that the market will accept without radical new safety measures, and Musk doesn’t want to reduce his debate to that which might be allowed to occur in a kindergarten, and even compromise does not seem something that will create any huge new bout of market confidence.
Of course Musk could turn about and make it a subscription only service (making it safe pretty much over night as all accounts get verified via a bank account), or surrender and bring in a horde of real humans to meticulously check the platform for hate, on the back of a new (1, 2, 3, 4, 5?) billion dollar loan, but no one can really see that happening.
So. Will it collapse or won’t it? I don’t know. But it doesn’t look good. Does it?