Why I’m staying with Twitter, despite the new owner
There is considerable discussion (mostly on Twitter) about the implications of a very wealthy person, Elon Musk, buying Twitter. The deal has yet to be completed and it will take a good while for Musk to start to have an impact on the way the Company is run.
Musk has a controversial reputation, and workforce relations at his Tesla company are part of that. Perhaps there are very wealthy people whose reputations are unsullied but I tend to think the nature of the status suggests issues.
Aditya Chakrabortty is appropriately scathing about Musk here:
Musk clearly has some ideas about what to do with Twitter. He will not be accountable in any serious sense for what happens if he manages to implement them, but then the previous very wealthy owners were in exactly the same place ( a point Musk has frequently made).
Of course it would be much better if the left not only had its own independent media, but one which had anything like the reach of Twitter. Twitter itself does not refresh all the areas and sections of society that others don’t either, as I reflect frequently in looking for effective ways to communicate in my professional capacity as a union officer.
In the meantime I’ll be sticking with twitter and hoping that pressure leads to effective and democratic regulation of social media that puts some constraints on whoever owns it.
In addition this may be only one part of a longer story. Musk may be a very wealthy person but as the Financial Times notes his $44bn bid for Twitter does not represent him buying it as such. It is financed by debt to banks, other equity (in essence investment Musk has lined up) and a loan secured against the value of Tesla. At the moment financing all that may not be a big issue for Musk but it could become so, in which case Twitter might end up for sale again…
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