What do the richest people on Earth buy these days? “Social media” is the answer given by Elon Musk, currently the wealthiest person in the world. On October 27, Musk completed the USD 44 billion acquisition of Twitter and took it private the next day. Since then, Twitter has officially entered the Musk Era.
Musk is a highly creative and unique entrepreneur in the technological industry. He successfully founded two technology companies, Tesla and SpaceX, spanning the two fields of new energy vehicles and aerospace. What makes him stand out is that he has always had a bad relationship with Wall Street, looking down on financiers and capital, while winning the game with Wall Street at that. His talents are not limited to business. In a world dominated by geopolitics, he seems to be able to navigate between opposing powers. Tesla has built the world's largest production capacity with the help of the Chinese government. At the same time, his SpaceX company has maintained close business cooperation with the U.S. military. Even with continuous U.S. sanctions and export controls imposed on China, Musk does not seem to have problems in dealing with both U.S. and China. During the war in Ukraine, his Starlink provided Ukraine with extremely critical space internet services. At the same time, he persuaded Ukraine to accept the reality that some of its territories are occupied by Russia.
Musk, while seemingly wild and unpredictable, has far outdone ordinary entrepreneurs. By successfully building his momentum in the information age, he can control information and capital to a considerable extent, something that no ordinary businessperson could do. His successful deal with Twitter is obviously not a typical company merger and acquisition.
A few hours before the announcement of the acquisition, Musk released an open letter to Twitter advertisers. “The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” the tech giant said. He also stated that he did not buy Twitter to make more money.
What can surpass an entrepreneur's desire and ambition to make money? It is either a higher level of self-realization, or influence that can change society, government, and even the world in some way. In the real world, one thing that comes close to the latter is political power.
Musk's acquisition of Twitter has attracted the attention of the West. Some Western media commented that the acquisition of Twitter will give Musk political capital of great influence. This implies a somewhat disturbing fact, that tech firms’ CEOs have become the most important political gatekeepers in our modern media history. Now they are not running for office, which was a cliché of the wealthy elite but using social media ownership as a proxy for political influence.
It is actually a trend for business practitioners to gain influence through supporting media in the information age.
From political donations by former Facebook executives like Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan, to the Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel's metapolitics, tech giants have long influenced politics through internal or external means. Recent developments, including Donald Trump's investment in Twitter clone Truth Social and Kanye West's investment in the social network Parler, these are clear indications of the importance of such new technologies in politics. Social networking platforms are not only communication tools but have also become a new political arena. Trump seems to have understood this trend long ago. He and Musk appear to have one thing in common; both are investing in social media companies that they intend to use to change politics and society.
Worth mentioning is Peter Thiel, a lucrative venture capitalist in social media, who funds "ideas that save the world" and “take civilization to the next level”. Thiel believes that almost all problems in the world, such as flaws in government institutions and educational systems, financial turmoil, market bubbles, energy crises, and wars over resources, stem from the stagnation of technological innovation. The only way to save it, according to him, is via drastic scientific breakthroughs. Some of Thiel's ideas are similar to those of Musk, and both hope that technological innovation can affect society and politics.
The late right-wing American activist Andrew Breitbart remarked that “politics is downstream from culture”, while this is true, culture itself is downstream of information infrastructure. In the Age of the Internet, having an influential social network platform actually controls and influences cultural formation to some extent.
From such a perspective, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is a practical action to actively influence public opinion and information dissemination, as well as to shape political influence. His motives and the impact of the matter can be seen in several pieces of information after he completed the acquisition. First of all, after the takeover on October 27, Musk tweeted that "the bird is free", which not only indicates that the acquisition has been completed but also symbolizes the purpose of the deal. Then, he also immediately fired Twitter's CEO, CFO, and other executives. Among them, CEO Parag Agrawal and legal head Vijaya Gadde were the most controversial during their tenure. The American right has criticized the policy of censorship of right-wing political speech, and Gadde was one of the main officials who decided to kick Trump out of Twitter. On October 28, former U.S. President Trump, who was previously banned by Twitter, wrote on Truth Social, “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs that truly hate our country”.
Musk's takeover of Twitter has drawn the attention of political personalities around the world. Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia and the current vice chairman of the Russian Security Council, tweeted “good luck @elonmusk in overcoming political bias and ideological dictatorship on Twitter. And quit that Starlink in Ukraine business”. Thierry Breton, the Commissioner for the Internal Market, in responding to Musk’s “the bird is free” statement, tweeted that “in Europe, the bird will fly by our rules”. Former Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, a member of the European Parliament, also tweeted, “so one man @elonmusk now owns the biggest debate in the world… The need for rules and accountability is bigger than ever! Self-regulation in social media has never worked… even with lesser characters than his”. There was also news at one point in the market that the U.S. government might conduct a national security inspection of Musk’s acquisition, though White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre denied it.
Just as Musk has made waves in industrial and financial circles in the past, he now has greater political influence in the Age of the Internet by acquiring ownership of the social networking platform. There have been theories that as Musk was born in South Africa, he cannot possibly run for the presidency of the United States, yet he can participate in and even influence American politics in another way. By completing the acquisition of Twitter, an influential public opinion platform, he now possesses a new political capital in the information age.
Final analysis conclusion:
In this era of emerging new technologies, it has become extremely convenient to create and disseminate information, both true and fake. The world that is connected to each other through the internet, has gradually become "real-time" and "uniform" in information acquisition, with the exception of countries and regions that implement closed internet access. The ubiquity of information also makes crowd-gathering social networking platforms a carrier of political power. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is the latest development in the transformation of political activities in the Age of the Internet. It remains to be seen what its subsequent impact will be.
