The Tantalizing Twitter Trainwreck
Like many others, I’ve been watching the train wreck known as Twitter as it unfolds, seemingly in slow motion. Well, slow motion for an actual train wreck but very quickly for a high-flying tech company.
Years ago, a colleague was having a discussion with someone, when he turned to me and said, “Bob’s in high tech. Let’s ask him. What do you think of Twitter?” “What’s Twitter” I replied. A few years later, someone asked my opinion of Twitter’s business model. I replied, “What business model?” I was unaware that Twitter had a business model.
When I wrote my third novel, in 2012, I read that Twitter was the way to promote it. So I joined Twitter for the first time. For about a year, I tweeted every day, sometimes more. I encouraged friends to sign up. I even paid for followers. I tweeted out likes and replies to everyone who messaged me. Within that year, I was able to build up to almost 1,000 followers. My sales remained flat at, well let’s just say a very low number. Since then, my followers now total almost 1,010.
Everyone on Twitter was talking and no one was listening. How could they? In the time it took for me to read a tweet, I was shown 10 more. I hear that celebrities read their tweets and respond, but where do they get the time. Doesn’t Kim Kardashian need some time to do whatever it is she does? Howey Mandell hosts like two dozen TV shows, yet he claims to read his fans’ tweets and respond. President Trump tweeted 24/7 to insult whoever had just tweeted an insult against him. Didn’t he have to run his megabillion dollar empire? Or at least run the country?
So I tweeted, and still do, but rarely actually logged into Twitter to read anything. Until recently.
When Elon Musk tweeted that he was going to buy Twitter, my conservative friends cheered. When he subsequently announced he had changed his mind, my conservative friends cheered. I’m not a lawyer, but I am a professional expert witness, having worked on over 250 cases, so I’ve seen a lot of contractual agreements go bad. I’ve also been a consultant for 40 years, with about 500 contracted clients over that period. I like to say I’ve seen more contracts than anyone on the planet. I told my friends that Musk couldn’t simply back out because he changed his mind. They said he could do whatever he wanted. I said it would go to court quickly. They said Musk could delay the case for years. I said the court would force him to buy the company. They said that a court can’t do that.
Now that Musk owns Twitter, I’m fascinated. My friends say that Musk can do whatever he wants with the company, including running it into the ground, because he owns it. Not really. He has a legal fiduciary duty to his lenders, his advertisers, and his employees. Here are my other observations.
As I’ve made clear and public, I’ve never been a fan of Elon Musk. He’s a con artist who has taken billions of dollars from taxpayers to build his companies and continues to do so. He claims to be saving the planet from climate change when he needs liberal governments to give him cash, but he claims to be a fighter for capitalism and free speech when he needs to stop government handouts to his competitors.
He’s rude and insulting. He’s an egotist who takes credit for others’ accomplishments. He’s irresponsible. He has conned governments and individuals out of an incredible amount of money so that he can buy other people’s companies. Yes, he’s grown those companies, like Tesla, SpaceX, and the Boring Company, but much of the financial growth is from promised but nonexistent and potentially dangerous technologies like fully self-driving automobiles or the high-capacity Vegas Loop. P.T. Barnum would have an extreme case of Musk envy.
On the other hand, I like the confusion and fear that Musk’s takeover of Twitter has initiated. Progressives previously loved the platform and promoted “influencers” who were often simply bored or talentless teens and movie stars. But now they are leaving in droves. How will a person with no skills but the time and ability to type endlessly make a living now?
More importantly, Musk is unmasking the progressive bias and censorship that conservatives knew of for years but that the lefties denied. I’ve been censored, but my progressive friends swore that there was no censorship. At least with Musk’s exposure of the purposeful concealment by Twitter management of the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which no doubt affected the 2020 presidential election and might have even swung it from Trump to Biden, and with a new Republican-led House of Representatives, they’ll be hearing a lot more about it.
On the other hand (let’s assume I’m an octopus for reasons of literary license), Musk is absolutely not a proponent of free speech. He’s a dictator who allows his own free speech but not those of ordinary citizens. Alex Berenson, a great conservative journalist who has outspokenly challenged the progressive narratives on marijuana, COVID-19, and the First Amendment was recently blocked on Twitter after criticizing Musk. Conservatives in particular should want Twitter to be a democratic platform for free speech, but like most humans, they unfortunately prefer a benevolent dictator. It’s just that Musk is not benevolent.
On yet another hand, it concerns me that so many “liberals” claim they defend free speech “except when that speech hurts someone.” I can’t count the number of friends who have said that to me. In earnest. We grew up in the 1960s when the U.S. Constitution was taught in school. When we understood the principle “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” These same people have been brainwashed into a new principle, “I disagree with what you say, and therefore I will shut you up because otherwise I would need to defend my position, and shutting you up is easier.” Even my generally clear-thinking liberal friend, Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen has announced that his office is disconnecting its Twitter account because Musk’s takeover has resulted in an “explosion of hate speech.”
First, the District Attorney’s office should instead start paying closer attention to Twitter because it will help them find extremists who are planning crimes. Without an open Twitter, extremism will go back to the Dark Web to plan assaults. Second, a district attorney should support free speech because… it’s an American value. Only speech that directly incites violence or that harms impressionable children should be prohibited. Third, Musk is exposing the use of Twitter to manipulate media and government agencies at the highest levels to influence national elections. This must be investigated by law enforcing agencies, not ignored.
On the final hand, Twitter is in its death throes. At Musk’s other companies, there were multiple divisions run by multiple stages of management that isolated those on the manufacturing floors from Musk’s mercurial temperament. At least the quitting and firing of managers at Tesla took place in large numbers but at a relatively slow burn. But pure software companies like Twitter have fewer levels of management. Also, Musk’s public disparagement of Twitter, its executives, and its employees over the years have led to a mass exodus of those he hasn’t already fired.
You may believe that all these people need to be out of Twitter. And maybe that’s so. But it won’t be easy to hire replacements on quick notice, especially with such a volatile work environment. And it won’t be easy for new employees to come up to speed on how things work. I know firsthand from all my consulting at small and large companies over the last four decades, that few companies keep good records or detailed specifications for their products and operations. Despite all the advances in technology, each employee keeps some company trade secrets only in their heads and communicates them to their replacements on their way out. Or they get sued, and that’s when my forensics team and I get hired.
I’ve predicted for years that Tesla stock would drop and that Musk would eventually be demoted to ordinary billionaire, but I’ve been wrong. Now I think I’m right. Even Elon Musk can’t afford to throw away $44 billion as he’s doing with his investment in Twitter. His advertisers are already leaving. And his lenders will still want to see their money. And his progressive admirers will be angry at what he’s doing at Twitter by allowing everyone to speak. And his conservative admirers will be angry at him for suppressing conservative voices like Alex Berenson. And they will being looking more carefully at the balance sheets of SpaceX and Tesla, whose stock has dropped more than half this year already.
All around, I think Musk’s purchase of Twitter will lead to good things, but because of the disruption that is ensuing, in short time Twitter will be gone and Musk will be dethroned. In the meantime, I’m munching on popcorn and cringing while watching the slow motion trainwreck.