In 2022, Elon Musk was already one of the most famous people in the world. With his enormous fortune, built on bets that were considered very risky at the time, he was a visionary for some and an unscrupulous businessman for others. Two years later, Musk has become a person with direct influence on almost the entire planet. Capable of generating political crises out of nowhere in countries with progressive governments, such as Brazil, or of aggravating those caused by the extreme right, as in the United Kingdom.
What happened in those two years was Twitter, renamed X by the tycoon. An absolutely ruinous operation from an economic point of view: the social network is now worth about a third of the $44 billion that Musk paid in 2022, according to several investment funds whose analyses have reached similar conclusions. And their business will get worse, since the pressure on advertisers will continue to worsen.
This is according to a Kantar survey, which found that 26% of companies that chose “Marketers’ trust in ads on X” Only 4% believe that ads on X ensure brand safety (contrary to Google, which ranks first in brand safety at 39%).
But this disastrous financial operation offers the richest man in the world an extraordinary return in terms of public image and global influence. To the point of being appointed “financial and performance auditor” of the American administration in the event of Donald Trump’s victory in the November elections. A position that gives carte blanche to undertake “drastic reforms” throughout the state apparatus, based on his own criteria and for which Musk himself had offered himself weeks before.
“When Musk walks into a room as the head of Tesla, he’s one more. If Ford walks in, he’s on the same level as him. But when the person who walks in owns Twitter, you get more attention,” says Kara Swisher, one of the oldest technology journalists in the United States.
The social network that once ignited online public debate and profoundly transformed the way politics is done is now serving the interests of the billionaire. “I had hoped that Musk, with his personality of I don’t care“His infinite wealth and deep interest in transforming media, could be the owner who will help Twitter realize its potential,” Swisher, who had personal contact with Musk for years, writes in her autobiography. “In hindsight, I was clearly and completely wrong,” she acknowledges.
A global media
like a Citizen Kane Today, Musk has turned Twitter into a means of spreading his ideology, generating conflict with those who disagree with him, and endorsing Trump long before he was appointed “auditor” of his government. “I have never materially participated in politics before, but this time I believe civilization as we know it is at stake. If we are to preserve liberty and meritocracy in America, then Trump must win,” he posted Thursday before the nomination.
But unlike tycoons like William Randolph Hearst, X allows Musk not only to set the agenda, but also to define what the red lines of the debate are. He has the key to the algorithm that decides what each user sees, to the red marker that marks the line between what is blocked and what is not, or to the fuse in the cannon that makes some content go viral and not others.
In this sense, one of the first decisions of the tycoon was to allow people blocked by the previous management to return to the platform for spreading hate speech or inciting violence. Some of those pardoned then used this social network to encourage xenophobic riots in the United Kingdom and spread disinformation about them. An action that Musk crowned with a comment in which he claimed that the country was “on the brink of civil war” because of immigration.
Another of Musk’s tactics that users have reported in recent weeks has been to increase the visibility of his own posts, which have become the first thing they see when opening the app. One of the most talked about topics was the publication of an AI-generated image showing Kamala Harris wearing a communist uniform. In the EU, the law requires platforms to mark any content generated with AI as artificial content, but Musk’s comment did not warn against this.
Musk has actually become a hotbed for spreading misinformation. He often propagates pseudoscientific theories that are racist or sexist, as when he recently described “interesting“, an anonymous 4chan user’s comment that only “high testosterone alpha males” and “neurodivergent” people have the ability to “think freely.”
“We can’t fit all this into the classic theory of influence on public opinion, it’s a completely new screen. A platform in which platforms exercise a level of power similar to that of governments, but being entities that no one has elected,” explains Carmela Ríos, a journalist specialized in Twitter and professor at several universities.
“The problem that democracies are facing right now is brutal. How do we stop this? The old solutions are no longer valid, we are on a new screen,” he continues in a conversation with this media outlet: “We have to ask ourselves whether disinformation will end up redrawing the contours of the world order.”
X is X and business is business
While Musk’s personality transcends all of his companies, the mogul uses different playbooks for each. Only with X does he seem willing to sacrifice economic performance in favor of his political agenda.
This fact was evident with the process that led to the closure of X in Brazil. Musk refused to collaborate with the country’s justice and block a series of social media accounts that Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes, a symbol of the defense of democracy, accuses of spreading disinformation, while in India he accepted identical requests. His rejection caused the suspension of the platform’s service in Brazil, one of its largest markets in the world. The businessman considers both decisions unfair.
However, when this order to block X reached Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite internet company, it complied without question. Even though the Brazilian judge directly implicated it in the proceedings against X by freezing all its financial assets. “This order is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be liable for the fines unconstitutionally imposed against X. It was issued in secret and without granting Starlink any legal process,” the company complained.
“Regardless of Starlink’s illegal treatment in freezing our assets, we will comply with the order to block access to X in Brazil,” the company confirmed, demonstrating that Musk is X and business is business. The tycoon is willing to sacrifice the social network for political purposes, but not his entire business empire.
