Elon Musk Reveals Why He Bought Twitter
Elon Musk Reveals Why He Bought Twitter
You may believe Elon in his stated intentions or you may not, but regardless, the stated intentions are exactly what our world needs right now: less censorship and more dialogue.
Yesterday Musk closed the $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Quickly, he fired Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, and chief financial officer Ned Segal. He also let go of the woman responsible for permanently deleting Donald Trump, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and safety.
In a short sentence, Musk stated on Twitter that his reason for buying Twitter is to help humanity by breaking down echo chambers and creating a public square. Hoping to repair meaningful dialogue, the intention seems to be that Twitter will no longer censor or delete views that go against mainstream conjecture. Something that has become a problem on major internet platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube.
Below is what Musk wrote on Twitter explaining his intentions:
I will state openly as I write this that I deeply resonate with this concept. Being a CEO of a media organization who has seen 10 years of my work in building a useful and profitable platform be erased by censorship is crushing. We were once a multi-million dollar business capable of responsibly reaching 10's of millions of people a month, but with the flip of a switch we were cast off Google and deeply censored on Facebook, reducing 10 years of hard work to a struggling business.
Meanwhile, mainstream media gets to make mistakes, share limited points of view and can be wrong time and time again, never seeing their reach or revenues unfairly taken away. This is a big part of what's wrong with our information landscape. There are double standards everywhere.
I break this down deeply in the re-release of the Collective Evolution podcast. Two of nine foundational episodes have been released and I highly encourage anyone to check them out as they lay out a framework and set of concepts to explore our currently chaotic world with a sense of clarity and embodiment - exploring the meta crisis behind what's happening today.
Check out the latest episodes here.
It is one thing to have a platform, it is a whole other thing to have people truly listen to and respect each other in dialogue. A sense of wanting to 'win the debate' or uphold that 'my team is right' is rampant in our society today. Without bringing to awareness what is going on with this, and committing to improve how we communicate, will Musk's 'public square' truly work?
I don't think so, but it is a meaningful first step and should be seen that way in my opinion. For those that wish to explore how we can better make sense of our world together, and dialogue more deeply and effectively, I encourage you to check out a workshop called The Physiology of Sensemaking and our course called Overcoming Bias & Improving Critical Thinking. They are both available in our membership called The Explorer Lounge.
I also made a video exploring how the Musk purchase is being interpreted by different people. In the video I explore how everyone feels they are the victim of the elite all while their opponents are not. Yet another way in which we cannot seem to see signal in each of our viewpoints, but only focus on our differences.