When Canada declared a state of emergency to drive protesters out of downtown Ottawa in February, an angry netizen posted an Adolf Hitler meme on Twitter1. “STOP COMPARING ME WITH TRUDEAU”, lamented the führer. “I HAD A BUDGET. »
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Normally, we would have rolled our eyes thinking “another troll”, before moving on to the next tweet. This time, however, it wasn’t just any troll.
It was Elon Musk. The richest man on the planet. The inscrutable billionaire, boss of Tesla and SpaceX, who seems to enjoy nothing more than stirring up controversy on Twitter.
He likes it so much he bought the company…
IMAGE FROM TWITTER
Elon Musk’s tweet about Justin Trudeau
His 83 million subscribers revere him. Before attacking Justin Trudeau, he had attacked a British speleologist who had had the misfortune to tell him, in July 2018, that his rescue operation for children stuck in a cave in Thailand was doomed to failure. Furious, Elon Musk had called the poor man a pedophile, without the slightest proof.
No matter: the dogs were unleashed.
Again on Friday, Elon Musk posted an unflattering photo of Bill Gates. “In case you want to lose an erection fast,” he wrote. A proof, if you still doubted it, that having money does not guarantee good manners.
After two weeks of suspense punctuated by twists and turns, the news therefore fell on Monday afternoon: yes, the chief troll has paid well for Twitter, for the tidy sum of 44 billion US dollars.
Already, the businessman promises to release the blue bird from its cage and make Twitter a paradise for freedom of expression. Freedom without limits, without surveillance, without censorship.
And that’s not good news.
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Elon Musk hints he will dismantle Twitter’s content monitoring program. He is convinced that everyone should be able to say anything, even the worst nonsense, on the platform, he who does not hesitate to do so.
“Freedom of expression is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital public square where issues vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said at the time of the interview. ‘announcement.
He added that he wanted to “make Twitter better than ever”.
That remains to be seen. In the meantime, it’s good to remember that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to make the world a better place, “more open and more connected”, when he created Facebook in a Harvard University dorm in 2004.
Facebook did that well. But… not only that.
The platform has also become a gigantic dumping ground for hate and misinformation around the world. It provoked uprisings, riots, massacres. She made real victims2 : Muslims killed in Nigeria, young people beaten to death in Mexico, men lynched in India…
In Burma, Facebook played a “determining role” in the crisis that led to the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, according to the United Nations.
In his college dorm, Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t have known he was creating a monster that neither he nor the governments of the planet would be able to fully control.
But 18 years later, we know.
We know that we cannot let anyone say anything, by anyone, on a social network. We know that words are not without consequences.
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For two years, the pandemic has reminded us of how bad online misinformation is. Governments are pressuring Twitter and Facebook to find a way to stamp out the fake COVID-19 news they are plagued with. With more or less success.
All the same: Twitter has closed thousands of accounts, including that of Donald J. Trump.
It remains to be seen whether the new king of Twitter will grant his pardon to the former president.
While Twitter tried as best they could to stem the flow of disinformation, Elon Musk fumed against the sanitary measures, which he described as “fascist”.
He kept downplaying the severity of the pandemic. He supported protesters who paralyzed downtown Ottawa. “Canadian Truckers Rule,” he tweeted before comparing Trudeau to Hitler.
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It is therefore in the hands of one man – that man – that one of the most formidable communication tools in the world is found.
An unpredictable billionaire, prone to mood swings. A man of phenomenal wealth, who will be accountable to no one but himself.
Will he use Twitter for his own purposes? To attack his enemies? In any case, he would not be the first rich man to pay for a media outlet to promote his interests. “Elon Musk is a digital Citizen Kane3 “wrote the New York Times, in reference to the classic of the cinema which is inspired by the magnate of the press William Randolph Hearst.
Compared to a traditional newspaper, the nuisance power of the social network is increased tenfold. It could go wrong. When there will be calls for violence on Twitter. Or when an autocrat will use the platform to crush a revolt.
So, like Citizen Kane, Elon Musk risks feeling very alone at the top.