Some people are overjoyed, some are appalled.
An emboldened cast of anonymous trolls spewed racist slurs and Nazi memes onto Twitter in the hours after billionaire industrialist Elon Musk took over the social network, raising fears that his pledge of unrestricted free speech could fuel a new wave of online hate. [WaPo]
Me? It’s the most primitive of the social media platforms that I’ve seen, and seems to be built to inculcate addiction, just like all new sports and television shows. Musk claims this:
On Thursday, Musk tried to assuage advertiser worries in a tweeted letter in which he promised that the site would not become a “hellscape” or a “free-for-all” and pledged that the app would remain “warm and welcoming to all.”
Motivated trolls, desperate to satisfy their employers, their own egos, or both, will prove to be exceedingly difficult to control if Musk does, in fact, try to follow through on his stated intention of 1st Amendment absolutism. It’s the way it goes.
My guess on the future? He caves on the absolutism, or his $44 billion investment, which he tellingly tried to escape, will shrink in value to $44 million as advertisers and users walk away. But that’s a weak prediction, because the addictive, narcissistic power of Followers and Likes and All That Garbage is catnip to anyone who was not the Prom King or Queen.
Hey, I’ve been there. Uh, no, not Prom Royalty. The other thing.
So it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. I think he’ll institute a set of rules to keep the trolls in check, wrapped in new clothes in order to claim he’s nothing like the C-suite folks he just fired. But social media addiction, the horrible anchor so many drag behind them, could save Musk.
