Elon is the guy everyone loves to hate.
Sometimes he makes my blood boil and I want to throw a small brick at his face in protest. But other times he sends chills down my spine.
Every time he launches one of those big-daddy rockets of his, I get all hot and bothered. Through solar panels, electric cars/trucks, space exploration and robots, he’s taking humanity forward in giant leaps. The purchase of Twitter is his latest project.
It’s pissed a lot of people off and they’ve missed the point of this amazing opportunity for all of us.
How we got to this point (quick and dirty)
Let’s not make this story longer than it needs to be.
Papa Elon originally got asked to join the Twitter board. He said yes. All the tech bros high-fived each other. Elon changes his mind and decides not to join the board.
In a bold power move Elon says “I’m buying the whole damn company, doncha know.”
Twitter celebrates with a roar. It’s heaven on earth.
Elon then accuses Twitter of having too many bots pretending to be humans. He cancels the deal and risks a huge billion-dollar penalty.
Smart people aren’t fooled. Yolo Elon just got buyer’s remorse because all stocks (including Twitter) crashed. No good billionaire wants to overpay.
Fair is fair.
The matter is scheduled to get heard in court. Weeks before the hearing Elon says “okay, you scoundrels, I’ll buy your company for the original stinking price.” Nice.
The scandalous text messages that most people misunderstand
As part of the whole legal battle Elon’s texts get leaked.
This is the first time us normies get a peak behind the scenes. It’s juicy. Big-time cats like Joe-Bro-Rogan approached Elon. Their intentions often looked selfish and like they were sucking up to the head of the schoolyard.
Joe said “Are you going to liberate … [the platform] from the censorship-happy mob?”
This is where things get interesting.
Love it or not, the current model of social media blocks free speech. If you say something the naughty boys running Silicon Valley don’t like, you could get banned or your content could get deleted. Soz.
The most embarrassing thing is when they leave your content up, limit its reach, and then label it with “misinformation” to make you look like a moron.
Former co-founder of the little birdy platform, Jack Dorsey, knows this all too well. He’s a smart dude. The text messages between Elon and Jack reveal a lot (Elon calls him Jack Jack — cute).
It starts with this message early on.
Screenshot from leak
Then Jack reveals the real reason he departed…
“Yes, a new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. This is why I left.”
Elon asks what a new platform should look like.
“Open-source but encrypted, like the Signal messaging platform, and should run without ads. The platform started as a protocol. It should have never been a company. That was the original sin.”
As I read through more of the texts from the court case, it became clear the biggest problem with the little birdy app was all the advertising and political pressure, that came every time a big user on the platform said something controversial.
One leaked text hinted at the future: “There is no throat to choke, so free speech is guaranteed.”
It’s clear Elon has a similar vision.
“My Plan B is a blockchain-based version of the app, where the ‘tweets’ are embedded in the transaction of comments.”
How can society progress if ideas can’t be traded back and forth in the town square to reach consensus?
It can’t.
The point of Elon’s purchase
Let’s get to the juicy bit.
Elon’s purchase and the leaked texts clearly show that the smartest people in the world have figured out social media needs to be decentralized.
The idea that blue ticks for people who post tweets are only given to the elite is a disaster. The idea a tech bro can ban someone they don’t like from talking is absurd.
How we lived with broken media for this long is beyond me.
But thanks to Elon’s purchase of the little birdy app it’s clear humanity will course-correct.
Compared to sending rockets to space and building electric cars, this problem should be a walk in the park for Elon and his team to solve.
Someone has to do it. We can’t live like this.
We must be able to share our thoughts online with freedom of speech.
In the future, your identity on social media will be anonymous, you’ll be able to send digital money anywhere in the world in real time via the app, and you’ll own your audience if you create content.
This is a future I look forward to. It’s about bloody time.
Stop the canceling. Start the conversation back up.
