No one, however brilliant or hardworking, is worth a billion dollars.
To my mind, the notion that billionaires should not exist is not radical. A person should not be able to hold a billion dollars (or multiples of billions) while 34 million people live in poverty in the United States alone.
This is no more ground-breaking than to say that cereal comes before the almond milk. Or that ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ needed to call it quits after season 6. Or that trucker hats are a fad that will die out before this summer’s end.
To put it in context, (because the average non-billionaire brain short circuits when trying to contextualize that sum of money) – if someone gave you $1,000 every single day and you didn’t spend a cent, it would take you 3 years to save a million dollars. If you wanted to save a billion, you’d be waiting around 2,740 years.
If you’re one of those people who thinks that putting a cap on astronomical wealth is quashing the American dream, I’d say that the wealth of billionaires cannot be made through hard work alone. The American dream, to me, would be regulating exploitative labor practices, tax breaks, and loopholes that are beyond the reach of “ordinary” people (and all of what make billionaires, billionaires)! Call me Bernie Sanders, but dismantling a couple of the systems that uphold the rich get richer aphorism might be like, positive for the world at large?
To put it plainly, it is impossible to have that much money without profiting off other people’s lack thereof. And on that uplifting note, I’d like to talk about the richest man in the world and his recent $500 million purchase of Twitter.
The nuts and bolts because I don’t want to listen to your political opinion (fair):
- Elon Musk (the richest person in the world) is now the largest shareholder of Twitter.
- He bought a 9.2% stake in the company.
- The stock spiked 27.1% upon the news of his purchase
- (Must be nice for those of you who had invested in Twitter).
- (Also must be nice for Elon, he made another $1 billion in just a few weeks).
- Musk turned down the offer to become one of 12 Twitter board members
—> There was a 14.9% ownership limit included in the board membership agreement - He is now in a position to acquire a much heftier stake in Twitter (hostile takeover anyone?)
- Musk is a self-described “free speech absolutist”
- Political conservatives are flooding social media with calls for the return of Donald Trump.
Why this is already a nightmare:
Reason 1:
My basic model of how Twitter works is that everyone who works at the company hates the product and its users, which creates a healthy tension. Twitter users push Twitter to be more Twitter-like (to appeal to the weirdest and most addicted tendencies of its users). But Twitter employees and executives push it to be less Twitter-like (because they’re old and don’t use the platform, so it ends up being just Twitter-like enough). If you put Twitter’s most addicted users in charge, it would be an unusable nightmare of harassment and weirdness.
Twitter’s most addicted user is now in charge.
Reason 2:
Musk’s offer to join the Twitter board was celebrated by several Republicans who have accused the company of political bias and censoring right-wing voices. I guess the politically incorrect thing to say here would be “some of those voices really should be censored” (ahem, Rudy Giuliani). So, I’m definitely not going to say that. Far be it for me to be politically incorrect.
Why unfettered free speech feels problematic:
I am all for free speech. I love it. I love walking down the street and catcalling my catcallers. I love telling a stranger that those jeans look good on her in the vintage store dressing room. I love pretending my best friend is my lesbian lover at the bar. However, as with all things regarding human beings and social media – it tends to go 100 steps too far.
Unfettered free speech on platforms like Facebook and Twitter have enabled the spread of misinformation and divisive content.
For example, our man of the hour himself has long used Twitter in the same way a 12-year-old boy would bully the girl he likes. This is to say, in a juvenile and misguided fashion. Musk consistently trolls short sellers of Tesla and insults his critics. He spread inaccurate information about the pandemic, during the pandemic. He also mused about taking Tesla private in a tweet in 2018 and inaccurately claimed he had secured funding for the transaction, for which he was fined $40 million by the S.E.C. This last one wouldn’t be so problematic if not for his gross ability to manipulate the stock market with a single Tweet.
The vision of the “free speech absolutist”:
Mr. Musk, Mr. Dorsey (former Twitter CEO) and Mr. Agrawal (current Twitter CEO) all fall into the pro-unfettered free speech camp.
Musk has criticized Twitter for moderating its platform too restrictively and has said more speech should be allowed. On March 25th he wrote, “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy”.
Dorsey grappled with the decision to boot former President Donald J. Trump off the service last year, saying he did not “celebrate or feel pride” in the move.
Mr. Agrawal has said that public conversation provides an inherent good for society. (True. This man is clearly the most mild of the bunch).
What a decentralized platform looks like:
- The vision of decentralization challenges the way that social media platforms are created.
- Core technologies would be built publicly and transparently, with oversight and input from coders around the world.
- Users could then customize their social media feeds and establish their own rules about what kinds of speech are acceptable.
- (This is sort of cool – in a way, you are your own algorithm)
- Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram currently operate with said companies dictating what posts can stay up and what should be removed.
Shifting the power in social networking to users and away from behemoth companies all feels very fight-the-power, my-Instagram-my-choice, free-the-nipple energy. Which obviously, if you have not garnered from my tone, I love. But there is still that nagging little problem called extremism that we kind of have to deal with…
Kicking people off social platforms isn’t about free speech:
I don’t know if you recall that adorable period of time where violent extremists raided the US Capitol after Trump made an alarming speech and tweeted allegations of voter fraud. Within days of the insurrection, his social media accounts were suspended across all of platforms, including namely, the man’s pride and joy (no, not his son Eric), his Twitter account.
It should come as news to no one that radical extremists across the political spectrum use social media to spread their messaging. Deplatforming those extremists makes it harder for them to recruit. It has also been proven to decrease their influence, and if you don’t believe me then you should probably read this 2016 study of ISIS deplatforming, because it really messed with their mojo.
The harder it is to access an extremist’s social media hub; the less likely mainstream internet users are to stumble across the group and be drawn into its rhetoric. Major platforms like Twitter act as gateways for casual users; from there, they move into the smaller, more niche platforms where extremists might congregate. If extremists are banned from major platforms, the majority of would-be recruits won’t find their way to those smaller niche platforms.
And so goes the danger of unfettered free speech on the internet. Who, in this decentralized vision for the future, moderates extremism? This is rhetorical.
This article is already too long, and it is 5:00 on a Friday.
David Kaye, a man with an extensive resume who is far more qualified than me to speak on this subject, warned that Mr. Musk’s vision for free speech could conflict with Twitter’s policies, which are intended to govern conversations around the globe:
“The risk is that his individual and personal business preferences, which are sometimes idiosyncratic, are going to influence rule-making and enforcement in a way that is inappropriate for a company that, in his words, is a version of a public square”.