What makes a great bond villain? Well, they possess many sociopathic similarities including eccentric personalities, a diabolical plan, and a deep-seated desire to take over the world. One of the most lauded of Bond’s nemeses is Scaramanga, an evil sharpshooter with no moral compass who is in the world domination game for nothing more than bragging rights.
Now, who do we know that seems to be trying to take over the world?
Step forward Elon Musk.
A love him or loathe him character, the quirky south African has built up a portfolio of businesses that cover lots of aspects of our civilisation. He’s been trying to conquer roads (Tesla), the skies (SpaceX), the underground (The Boring Company) and minds (Neuralink). I guess the missing puzzle piece would be a mainstream media organisation so it makes total sense for Musk to have recently completed his acquisition of Twitter.
But what does this mean for the platform?
For years now Elon Musk has been utilising Twitter as his very own soapbox to comment on politics, speculate on the crypto market and further his business agenda. He has a great knack for commenting on current affairs in a way that, more often or not, makes him a 24 hour viral sensation. On this occasion, his Twitter takeover might just play out longer and will undoubtedly revolutionise the platform – but not all revolutions are peaceful.
Musk’s first port of call on taking over the business was to fire the boss Para Agrawal, the Finance Director Ned Segal and Legal Policy Chief Vijaya Gadde. I think that’s a great insight into where Musk intends to take things.
It appears ‘free speech’ is highest on his agenda and rumours quickly circulated that Donald Trump, the much maligned former President of the United States, will leave his Twitter purgatory and have his account reinstated. That move alone, coupled with the sacking of Gadde, sends a huge message. As a self-labelled ‘Free Speech Absolutist’ Musk has said he hopes to build a ‘digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner’. The concern is he will build a hellscape where all manners of hate speech are deemed acceptable under the guise of ‘free speech’.
There’s also a reason Elon Musk is the words richest man, so sacking your in-situ Finance Director probably hints that he isn’t too happy with how the platform has been monetised. Musk himself has surmised that upon taking over he may introduce a charge to commercial organisations and media outlets to own accounts or even introduce a nominal subscription to users to make Twitter an ‘ad free’ experience. Further to that, he has looked at ways to expand the platform’s digital capabilities for everyday things such as sending money, food delivery and ordering a taxi – which is odd because I’m sure apps for that already exist.
Finally, Musk, like someone running for social media presidency, has a third and final pillar to his takeover campaign. The reduction of ‘bots’ on the platform. This is something that we can all get behind as over the years the platform has become flooded with user handles like @John01911882 trying to push a new crypto currency you ‘just can’t afford to miss’.
It will be really interesting to see how this all plays out, particularly if Musk introduces a subscription for the social media platform.
In his own words, Musk says he’s doing all of this to ‘help humanity’ but isn’t that just something a real life Bond villain would say? Just let that sink in.
