Life in its own way is difficult when you are Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man or thereabouts. His been-there-done-that air of ushering in the planet’s electric mobility revolution is kind of behind him, and he is only 51 years old.
As it happens, the Tesla founder is now dancing with/on/about Twitter in an on-off-on takeover drama, because, as I have repeatedly argued, it is the world’s new parliament, just as Facebook is the new cafe. Twitter’s executives and Musk himself have likened it to a digital age town square. That makes the $44-billion attempted buyout sound like a recipe for world domination.
In a lookback piece on the microblogging platform in 2018, I even discussed how Musk was using it to seek attention, much before he stepped in to acquire and turn it around before backing out and then returning to try again amid a confounding court case in which he has been sued for reneging on a done deal.
Gee! It’s fun to be a Drama King on the world’s elite attention-seeking platform with 200-plus active monthly users (Instagram/Facebook/TikTok are for the masses). It is even more fun when you want to own and run it.
Control. Power. Prominence. Controversy. Mr. Musk loves it all.
Released court documents reveal there are plenty of influential, rich people cheering him in sycophantic excess telling him he is right, why he is right and what he should do.
This is why it is remarkable how Indian-born Parag Agrawal, Twitter Inc’s CEO, has stood up remarkably to Musk’s bullying style, like a modern-day Asterix fighting Julius Caesar’s Roman Empire. Or like an ancient Indian Porus telling the world-beating Alexander : “Treat me like a king would a king” . Agrawal told Musk in an early e-mail exchanged that he wanted Musk to see him as a fellow engineer, not CEO. And then they fell out as Agrawal found Musk to be an unwanted distraction.
It is time for us to take an additional Indian view of Twitter because the social media site is a global, not an American platform.
As a journalist and citizen, I do not like attempts by the Indian government to control or regulate social media if it smells of an ideological crackdown or an intrusion into the freedom of the press. At the same time, I worry about Musk cheerleaders who moan about “censorship” on Twitter — a code word to counter any attempt to red flag hate speech, fake news or vicious propaganda.
At the same time, as an Indian, I know geopolitics can take its toll when a global social media platform assumes an Uncle Sam tone for America. In a recent appearance before the US Congress, former Twitter security head Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, described as a whistleblower, alleged that the platform was vulnerable to exploitation by “foreign agents.”
Excuse me? Is Twitter global or American? If it is going to be primarily policed with US security interests in mind, those who regard it as a worldwide social media platform have legitimate concerns.
Also, the Musk intervention has repeatedly seen attempts to increase the profitability of Twitter and turn it into a successful commercial entity. That sounds great, but will that erode the platform’s public character, I wonder.
I had sensed early that Twitter has a global, social orientation and advocated nine years ago that governments and civil society organisations worldwide should subscribe to its initial public offer (IPO) of shares to maintain its character as a public good. I saw Twitter as some kind of a UN General Assembly in perpetual digital motion.
If Twitter is American and profit-driven, it will take some of the charm of the conversational platform. Its relatively small user base is essentially all about it being a public good for thinking people to engage in meaningful sharing of ideas and views. Instead, if it is going to be policed by the US Congress, and by extension, the American security establishment, Asians may want to worry.
You can be liberal and democratic and yet be wary of a US cyber empire, with memories of Julian Assange still on our minds. The WikiLeaks founder is in a London prison since 2019, and is facing extradition to the US.
In such a backdrop, Twitter and Musk definitely signal a watch-out message for many of us. A digital-age global media baron with a surfeit of attention-seeking behaviour is not what the doctor ordered for Twitter.
(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)
