While it’s conceivable that Elon will soon appoint a new CEO of #Twitter and get back to focusing mostly on Tesla, I wouldn’t bet 2c on it. Elon is the ultimate poster child for an unhealthy addiction to social media and reveling in his status as “the main character” — frankly I don’t see any indication he’s ready to step away from the day-to-day.
If I were a major shareholder of Tesla, I too would be furious. Elon’s actions are not only damaging to the business of Tesla internally, but to the reputation of the company. Many people, myself included, have switched from viewing Tesla as an aspirational brand to regarding it as anathema. Major structural changes would need to happen at Tesla, including but not limited to firing Elon Musk and bringing on a new CEO, for any of this to turn around.
This isn’t actually an essay about Elon Musk. It’s about the fact that we keep trusting these people. And by “these people” I mean the people who look, talk, and behave like Elon Musk. Perhaps it’s time to bust the myth of the Silicon Valley-style boy genius once and for all, and instead look to egalitarian principles to ensure the health and safety of our digital future.
Alongside the “Great Resignation” of 2021-2022, we are witnessing the “Great Recognition” of the simple fact that the #openweb is the only digital space where you can leave a true legacy as a thinker and a writer.
Walled gardens like #Facebook, #Twitter, Medium, and many others have tried to capture words over the decades. They failed. 100 years from now, when people look back in time to witness What People Thought, they won’t be gleaning the highest wisdom and deepest insights from tweets and likes and shares.
It will be Articles. Essays. In other words, Blog Posts. (Before you say “what about Newspaper Columns?”—in this day and age they might as well just be considered Blog Posts because we typically consume them the exact same way.)
Medium-to-longform content, written by individuals, and largely posted on independent websites for all the world to see. Not trapped inside a social network, but freely accessible*. I’ve never been more bullish on the power of the #openweb to both contain and promote forward thinking than I am today.
* Rest assured I’m not making a case here against paywalls—even paywalled #writing can be “freely accessible” on the open web in the sense that you don’t need to join a Big Tech platform to make #payments in order to access the content.
This excellent tweet by Hector Martin sums up the bewildering lack of understanding many people—including the (likely) new owner of #Twitter, Elon Musk!—seem to have around the moderation of online speech.
Obviously I don’t want government goons arriving on your doorstep to haul you away if you’re just spouting off racist / homophobic / transphobic / misogynistic (etc.) garbage. You certainly have the right to be a trash human.However, you do not have the right to invade an online space I’ve chosen to participate in which purports to follow specific moderation rules. Twitter has been such a space as an independent company running an independent service on the web. If you don’t like it, well guess what? Run your own space! No one’s stopping you.
If Twitter is going to change its rules to make it “OK” to post hate speech on its service, then the people who are targets of that speech along with their allies will pack up and leave…which ironically results in less “free speech” on the platform in totality. “Let everyone express themselves freely in the public square” …and eventually you will find that the only people left in that square are the trolls.
Good luck with that.
Back to the #openweb I go. Not that I ever left it…but to be quite frank, it’s so easy to post and get immediate feeback on #Twitter that I spend most of my day-to-day “chit-chat energy” there and not on my own #website.
No longer! Now that Elon Musk is buying Twitter and taking it private, I’m done putting serious effort into creating content for walled gardens. Everything, and I mean everything I publish from here on out will start on my own properties and then get syndicated elsewhere.
I’m also in the process of switching from Revue (owned by Twitter) to ConvertKit for my email newsletter. In the meantime, feel free to email me to get in touch! 😃
