KATE THOMPSON DAVY: Forget the rumours. Zoom out for what’s really at stake with Musk leading Twitter

There were no treats in sight for Twitter staff and users this Halloween as some of the first big shifts of Chief Twit (his words, not mine!) Elon Musk began to take shape.

Last week, Musk’s takeover of the social networking company was finally confirmed, complete with Musk staging a dramatic entrance at Twitter headquarters carrying a bathroom sink — presumably to support the clunky joke in his tweet of the photo op: “Let that sink in.” 

But rampant dad jokes are not the consequences of this takeover that have critics — and me — concerned. The funny thing about covering this tale, twist-by-twist, since the second quarter of the year is that you can get bogged down in the exasperated “what happened this week?” of it.

Approaching it this way was often necessary. Especially since Musk himself has been flip-flopping like an Olympic gymnast and the rest of the parties — I’m looking squarely at the Twitter board here — it hasn’t been entirely innocent of flip-floppery either.

Let’s remember that this is the same bunch who initially tried to poison-pill the deal, and a few months later were off to court to enforce it.

I probably shouldn’t be too harsh on the Twitter board though. After all, Musk has newly decided their governance is no longer needed. Also on the chopping block were CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and two top legal executives. A few other senior staff have confirmed their resignations since.

Hopefully Musk has new key people in mind, because he is now the guiding light for Tesla, Space X, Starlink and Twitter — something investors reportedly fear leaves him a bit stretched. Who he moves into those top spots will hopefully give us a sense of his priorities for the platform, since his words on the topic — his tweets, to be specific — are prolific but inconsistent.

On October 27, Musk tweeted a love letter to advertisers in which he reiterated the notion of Twitter as the common digital town square, and implied that his acquisition would somehow protect social media from splintering into echo chambers that further divide us.

Twitter has been losing advertising dollars at pace since Musk’s acquisition campaign kicked off, then kicked the bucket, then came round kicking.  So, having trashed the platform for months he will now have to be its greatest cheerleader to win back those he scared off.

In the same post he stated that he didn’t buy Twitter “to make more money” but to “help humanity, whom I love”. He said this, in a tweet titled “dear twitter advertisers”. He went on to critique traditional media for what he called their “relentless pursuit of clicks” which, he says, shuts down dialogue. The clicks media are chasing, it must be said, are a product of how advertising shaped digital media in the early days of news heading online.

The subtext of this message was “advertisers come back”. Twitter, he said, “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences” and hinted at the idea of some future iteration of Twitter where the user experience is about choice similar to picking movies or games. I wonder what the advisory warning on a Kanye West and Trump-led Twitterverse might be? “Parental guidance: contains sexism, anti-Semitism and strong-but-wrong language”. I wonder who (besides Ye and Trump) would want to advertise on that one?

He wrapped up this convoluted discourse with a promise.  “Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

But there I go again. This, exactly this, is the news and minutiae that so easily distract. There are more rumours than a Fleetwood Mac album, with publications such as Wired and The New York Times reporting that Musk intends to cut 25% of the headcount, double the cost of the Twitter Blue service, link the coveted verified profiles to subscription, and end the ad-free experience for Blue users. For now, these are unconfirmed.

The zoomed out big picture I am trying to keep front and centre right now is to see what Musk’s hot air about “free speech” will boil down to now that he has the reins. He’s promised to appoint a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints”, but no specifics yet. This has been his style all year, in fact. Media, even the social sort, is not like car manufacturing, software development or even the daring work of satellites and spaceships. It’s softer and more slippery.

Only this week Musk praised Twitter for enabling citizen journalism, which he says is free of establishment bias. True, but it’s certainly not free of personal bias. Citizen journalism can be amazing, but there are also pitfalls in operating without the “pesky constraints” of editors, subeditors, industry bodies, watchdog organisations or press codes.

Of course, people do die when a self-driving car or rocket has fundamental flaws, but the media shape elections and economies. Pinning down who is to blame and how to fix it is a Sisyphean task.

Additionally, Musk is, in a word, unaccountable. This is something people of great wealth and power (and often the former conveys the latter) get away with repeatedly. He will say what is convenient, and changes when it’s no longer useful. Then he will gaslight you about whether he ever said otherwise, as he did in the matter of the elusive number of bots on the platform.

It’s like fighting with your garden variety racist in the Facebook comments. They never tire, always deflect, and cannot give you a straight answer to a simple question. They will say many things to keep you shadowboxing, then say more to keep shifting the conversation whenever cornered.

So, #askingforafriend, where are you going if Twitter transforms into “a free-for-all hellscape”?

• Thompson Davy, a freelance journalist, is an impactAFRICA fellow and WanaData member.