By Sophie Foster
Opinion Editor
Businessman Elon Musk purchased popular social media site Twitter in October 2022 in a contentious deal with site founder Jack Dorsey. Now, Twitter is X, Dorsey is heading Bluesky Social, and competitor conglomerate Meta is throwing its hat in the ring with Instagram offshoot Threads. All of this could — and should — have been avoided.
The truth about Musk is ultimately very simple: he is a greed-driven, technology-obsessed, self-ordained entrepreneur born into wealth and rarely met with a “no.” Because of this, he catapults himself into absurd business ventures with the sensibilities of a 15-year-old boy and little regard for his subsequent impact.
For example, when a Twitter-now-X user asked what Twitter Blue would be renamed to following the rebrand, Musk tactlessly said, “Balls. Just… Balls.”
He perpetually launches into campaigns and tirades rooted in little other than hubris. He announces shifts to X’s functioning without ensuring their certainty, such as the still-unenacted removal of the blocking feature, which, according to Forbes, would effectively ban Twitter from social app status under the Apple App Store’s terms that require social media apps offer a blocking feature for user protection.
Consistently, he attempts to follow through on plans he lacks the capability to complete. Despite what his radically large fanbase would insinuate, Musk himself has achieved very few of his intended accomplishments.
According to Time, Musk’s SpaceX venture, which was designed to send a starship to the moon, suffered mid-flight failure. Early in his career, he was ousted as Chief Executive Officer of PayPal after an attempt to rebrand it as X, too, according to The Washington Post. He also infamously launched an attack against a Tesla whistleblower, falling under speculation for spying and spreading misinformation, according to Bloomberg. All of these are markers of a self-obsessed man with very little evidence of the intelligence he claims to possess. What makes this incomparably dangerous, though, is the simultaneous, perfect-storm-blend of exorbitant wealth and eager followers.
The reality is that very few users have turned their backs on X, despite the major shifts the site has undergone and the apparent widespread belief that these alterations are, in fact, to the site’s detriment.
Nonetheless, what may have been competition in Threads quickly fizzled out, drawing little interest in migration from users of either Instagram or X past the initial launch’s interest. The Spectator reported that engagement on Threads has more than halved since its arrival to the social media sphere, with no indication of an increase in usage on the horizon. According to The Guardian, this is because the app is “vapid, boring, and destined to fail.”
Bluesky, meanwhile, is still in beta stages and operating on an invite-only basis, making competition with X a current impossibility regardless of comparable website structures.
The easiest way for this to be avoided would have been for Dorsey to back down from the sale in the first place. Beyond this, though, the real crisis rests in the simultaneous favoring of the wealthy and adoration of the famous.
If users want a navigable experience not only on social media platforms, but across the board technologically, the glamorization of celebrities, especially those in the business sector, needs to be addressed.
Musk does not respond well to calls for accountability, as suggested by his recent parade of social media tirades. However, that doesn’t mean X users — or, for that matter, Tesla drivers and others impacted by his rushed business prowess or lack thereof — cannot indicate disgruntlement by stepping back from Musk-backed financial commitments.
In other words, no, you do not need to pay for that verification check mark.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Elon Musk continues to be a massively controversial figure in public dialogues.