Why Elon Musk’s Twitter move is supercharging the Big Tech debate

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Elon Musk grabs Twitter board seat as liberals worry

'MediaBuzz' host Howard Kurtz discusses the billionaire's surprise move on 'Special Report.'

When it comes to influencing the national conversation, driving news coverage and letting people beat up on each other, Twitter punches way above its weight.

I used to say Twitter was the new AP, but that’s far too limited a description. The loudest voices on the social media network may be liberal elites and other activists, but it is, as a certain richest man in the world says, the new public square.

And that’s why the ideologically charged debate over Twitter’s obvious shortcomings is so crucial. The stakes are enormous.

My own feelings on the addictive app–it’s vital, it’s fun, and too often a toxic sewer–pale in comparison to the conservative anger against the Big Tech outlet. And many on the Right are downright excited that Elon Musk just bought himself a seat on the board.

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In becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder by buying 9 percent of its stock, for under $3 billion, Musk even got the CEO to praise him as the company’s "intense critic." What management is hoping, of course, is that he doesn’t mount a takeover bid. 

SpaceX founder Elon Musk reacts at a post-launch news conference after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., March 2, 2019. (REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo)

Former chief executive Jack Dorsey has admitted that the staff is left-leaning, and it isn’t hard to decipher why conservatives feel dissed and shadow-banned. 

Exhibit A, above all, is the permanent ban on Donald Trump. Congressional Republicans such as Lauren Boebert are already urging Musk to reinstate Trump, though at the moment he doesn’t have the power to do so.

And then there’s the outrageous decision in 2020 to ban any sharing of the New York Post report on Hunter Biden’s laptop–which Dorsey admitted was a mistake. The story has now belatedly been confirmed by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Now it’s deemed kosher for public discussion.

Conservatives, and others, also admire Musk as the entrepreneur who founded both Tesla and SpaceX.

Politico’s Jack Shafer calls Musk "the anti-media media mogul. Most vanity press moguls praise the media. Musk mostly damns." Indeed, he loves to wage online warfare, but he also has a Trumpian knack for tweeting all kinds of thoughts, such as comparing Justin Trudeau to a certain 1930s German dictator, then adding, "An evolutionary asymmetry helpful to survive, but counterproductive when survival is not at stake." 

Elon Musk declared he’s "not perverted enough to be on CNN" as the liberal network struggles through a series of embarrassing scandals.  (REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo)

The other night, acting like he’s already in charge, Musk posted a poll asking users whether Twitter should allow them to edit their messages, which is now verboten. 

Musk, who has 80 million followers, is promising big changes, and just last week he said Twitter is "failing to adhere to free speech principles," which "undermines democracy." He’s also asked, "Why is the ‘traditional’ media such a relentless hatestream"?

That brings us to the key 280 characters or so. The liberal view, as reflected in a Washington Post news story, is that "some inside Twitter worry Musk may push Twitter in a libertarian direction, away from blocking or restricting accounts that cause social harm."

The conundrum, which Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg also regularly faces, is that many on the Left want more active content moderation to block lies, harassment and bullying. But many others–and not only left-wingers–fear this leads to censorship and blatant bias based on amorphous standards.

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For my money, Musk is the most interesting CEO–and maybe the most interesting dude–on the planet. Who else is talking about living on Mars, challenged Vladimir Putin to physical combat over Ukraine, smoked dope with Joe Rogan, announced on "SNL" that he has Asperger’s, and is the world’s richest person to boot? Not to mention that his girlfriend is Grimes, who drew flak for telling Vanity Fair that at times he "lives below the poverty line" and wouldn’t buy her a new mattress. 

FILE PHOTO: Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk speaks in Hawthorne, California, U.S. December 18, 2018.  (Robyn Beck/Pool via REUTERS//File Photo)

There may well be a personal motive in the Twitter move as well. Four years ago, Musk settled fraud charges with the SEC after tweeting that he was thinking of taking Tesla private–he claimed it was a joke–and had to step down as chairman and obtain advance approval for tweets. Last month he went to court to scrap the settlement. 

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If you want to get a sense of Musk’s political leanings, try this, from a (real) interview with the Babylon Bee:

"At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue."

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No wonder the anti-wokesters are rooting for the mercurial Musk.