Elon Musk knows what he's doing at Twitter, and it's making activist journalists panic
Reports of Twitter's death appear to have been exaggerated
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}When it comes to coverage of the Elon Musk Twitter era, the headlines have ranged from hysterical to unhinged.
The New York Times: Chaos on Twitter Leads a Group of Journalists to Start an Alternative; Journa.host promises to be a new "reliable home for journalists."
CBS News: #RIP Twitter: Memes fly as users speculate on whether Twitter will live or die
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Politico: Elon Musk's clever plan to destroy Twitter and save us all
There are dozens of other examples, but you get the point: Many "journalists" are not happy that Musk has decided to overhaul the dysfunctional hellscape that is Twitter.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}New Twitter owner Elon Musk. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The progressive playground for years is no more, with Musk embracing this totally-foreign concept of free speech and not subscribing to the totalitarian tactics of the old Twitter, which resulted in censorship and suppression and the banning of accounts that is the norm in places like China and North Korea.
The most egregious example of this by a country mile, of course, was the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell via the New York Post that hit just weeks before the 2020 election. You know what happened from there: Twitter locked out any account that shared the story, including those of the Trump campaign. Huntergate was also immediately dubbed Russian disinformation, thanks to "reporters" who toed the line for the Biden campaign.
Joe Biden himself called the report "garbage" and a "Russian plant." Fifty-one former intelligence officers also penned a letter pushing the Russia angle, all without one actually having access to the evidence. And almost everyone in the political media bought it hook, line and sinker.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}One would think that journalists would look at this dark moment for the industry and condemn Twitter's actions in the strongest terms. But instead, given news organizations from the New York Times to CNN to CBS News to the Washington Post all suddenly found the time many, many months later to magically verify the laptop's contents after Biden was safely in office, the plan now is to pretend the cover-up and false portrayals never actually happened in October 2020.
And here's where things get positively amusing, and sad: These same journalists who embraced the way the Hunter laptop censorship went down are now posting dire warnings that the Elon Musk version of Twitter will be a place where disinformation will run rampant.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Twitter decimated the teams primarily responsible for keeping it free of election misinformation, potentially hobbling the company’s capabilities four days before Tuesday’s election," reads an NBC News report that somehow needed three reporters on it. No follow-up report came showing that "election misinformation" was not prevalent on Twitter when compared to recent elections... because following up would mean to step on a predetermined narrative marinated in fearmongering.
Elon Musk has made a dramatic series of changes to Twitter since he took over last month. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
'Musk's major changes, including his overhaul of the verification system, have already sent people fleeing the site for other social media platforms," NPR also recently reported.
'RIP TWITTER' AND OTHER CRAZYLIBERAL REACTIONS TO MUSK'S SOCIAL MEDIA SMACKDOWNS
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But who, exactly, is fleeing? Musk shared last week that the company just hit another all-time high in usage. The site looks and feels the same. There have been no major or even minor outages, as so many blue checks warned.
But most importantly, Twitter jail is as open as the U.S. border. The Babylon Bee is free to make folks laugh again. Kathy Griffin is back, for whatever that's worth. And former President Trump has been reinstated, but he'll likely stay on Truth Social for contractual reasons.
Musk has made Twitter what it always should have been: Free.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But he also has to make it profitable, something it has struggled to achieve for years. So just like we've seen with Amazon (10,000 layoffs) and Meta (11,000 layoffs), the layoffs have begun across Big Tech. That's unfortunate, but it's a common way of doing business after a takeover.
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What Musk is doing now is working off the 10/90 rule, which says 10 percent of the workforce does 90 percent of the work. The new owner is attempting to determine who falls into which category, and when the process is complete, rebuild the company around the competent, loyal 10 percent.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The resume is beyond impressive: Tesla, SpaceX. Elon Musk isn't perfect. He'll make some mistakes along the way in fixing Twitter. So did Steve Jobs at Apple, who even got fired from the very company he helped create, only to later save it.
Musk knows what he's doing. And the fact that so many journalists are doubting that just because they lost their safe space is all the evidence one needs that it's absolutely the truth.