Elon Musk has broken ranks with the other Big Tech companies that own major social media platforms. Zuckerberg et al are not making any effort to monitor or curate their “content.” But Musk has taken it a step further and is flooding X with his own posts, many of which are deepfakes, falsehoods or memes. See this story in today’s NYTimes.
He is also using it to promote Donald Trump as president, is a campaign donor to Trump, and is angling to take a job in the new Trump administration as head of a super agency that will examine the whole government for wasteful spending. We can just guess what Musk would find wasteful.
Owners of major newspapers have sometimes gone on crusades for their causes but it happens very rarely. The mainstream media has a tradition of at least attempting to maintain a balanced view. But Musk is overtly using X to achieve his own goals. There is no law that can force him to sell. But it is revealing to note that X today is worth only 20 percent of what it was when Musk bought Twitter. His platform could be collapsing because no one trusts it or him. That would be just desserts.
