Get ready for the ultimate billionaire bout - Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg!
Why do these two plutocrats hate each other?
In this corner, we have the tech wunderkind, Mark Zuckerberg! When he was only in college, his idea
for a dating website morphed into Facebook, and he and his partners launched the massive social media
network and changed the internet forever. His network has grown to include image-sharing site
Instagram, private message service Messenger, and international chat app WhatsApp. He’s fallen into
controversy for how his sites handle their user data, but it hasn’t stopped him from
becoming the 7th richest person in the world as of October 2021, with a net worth of 118 billion.
And in the other corner, we have entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk! Known for his love of
ambitious tech projects, he dominates the electric car market, founded the
infrastructure company The Boring Company and the private space travel company SpaceX,
and is involved in Brain interface research at Neurolink. He’s known as much for his eccentric
personality and his bizarre tweets as for his innovations and was once fined by the federal
government for tweets that caused a stock fluctuation, but it hasn’t stopped him from
currently being the richest person in the world - with an October 2021 net worth of 202 billion.
But why do they constantly seem ready to go to war?
The two didn’t intersect much, with Zuckerberg’s interests being primarily in the digital sphere
and Musk’s more in physical technology. But in 2016, they were about to collide - in a big way.
SpaceX was about to pull off a major rocket launch,
and it would be carrying an expensive payload - a $200 million satellite from Internet.org,
backed by Zuckerberg. The telecommunications satellite would be launched into space
by the rocket in one of the first major collaborations between the billionaires.
But it would never get off the ground - literally.
In September 2016, a major fire broke out on the rocket before it could launch,
and the rocket was destroyed - along with the satellite. It was a massive setback for SpaceX
and not the first after they had lost a rocket in a 2015 mishap. Musk was disappointed - but
Zuckerberg was angry, and took to Facebook to express his opinions. His language - The company
was “deeply disappointed” that “SpaceX’s launch failure destroyed our rocket” - left no doubt
about who Zuckerberg was holding responsible, and the first shot in the feud had been fired.
It would not be the last.
The two only got more powerful after this confrontation, and soon it would be
Zuckerberg’s turn in the barrel. After the controversial 2016 Presidential election,
attention turned to just how much misinformation there was on Facebook. You’ve probably seen
it - you’re looking at pictures of your friend’s vacation, and the next post is your Aunt’s second
husband talking about how aspirin is actually mind-control pills. But an investigation into
the company’s involvement in the election was brewing - and in 2018, it blew wide open.
Cambridge Analytica was about to enter the chat.
It turned out that the personal data of millions of Facebook users had been covertly collected by
the British data firm. It’s pretty easy to give away your data on Facebook - remember all those
quizzes about what Harry Potter character you’d be? They always ask you for some details about
yourself - and that data gets funneled back to the company. But the scandal here wasn’t just
that the data had been collected without permission, it was where it went - much
of it was used to gear political advertising towards Facebook users, making it easier for
campaigns and political action committees to misinform people about the candidates.
The reaction was swift - and angry.
It’s rare to see Republicans and Democrats agree on anything,
but they both wanted Mark Zuckerberg in the dock before Congress. He was barraged with questions
about what he knew and when, and while he claimed that there was no significant data breach,
it was enough for politicians to call for the company to be broken up or placed under
federal oversight. And it wasn’t just in the US - Cambridge Analytica had been heavily involved
in advertising during the Brexit vote in the UK, and many politicians there wanted answers too.
And the politicians weren’t the only ones with strong opinions.
Two years ago, it had been Musk in the hot seat when Zuckerberg hit out at him, and Musk was now
ready to strike back. Amid the scandal, the Telsa founder suddenly deleted all of his companies’
Facebook pages - no doubt breaking the hearts of Tesla fans worldwide. His explanation? The
big tech company and its deep involvement in user data gave him “the willies” - a typically blunt
statement from the billionaire who once composed a rap song dedicated to the late gorilla Harambe.
These were the big incidents - but the two couldn’t seem to stop taking shots at each other.
In the past, billionaires tended to be business magnates who kept to themselves and didn’t speak
to the common folks as much. But today’s tech billionaires are as much celebrities
as businessmen, and they’re rarely shy about sharing their opinions. In the past, Musk has
talked about how he believes that artificial intelligence is a threat to the human race,
raising the prospect of an intelligence so strong we couldn’t control it. But Zuckerberg had a
more optimistic view - and couldn’t resist the chance to take a dig at his nemesis.
During a Facebook Livestream, he talked about how assuming the worst of artificial intelligence
was irresponsible - and stated that he was optimistic about the future.
Of course, it didn’t end there.
Musk immediately took to Twitter the next day and accused Zuckerberg
of having a limited understanding of AI, and the fight was off once again.
The two would continue sniping at each other on and off, and old incidents would come up again.
When Musk was asked about the failed rocket launch, the Tesla CEO commented that at least
they gave them a free launch to make up for it, and implied that Zuckerberg was
making too big a deal over the loss - after all, they probably had insurance.
But in 2020, the feud would explode - and somehow, Borat was involved.
The controversy over Facebook’s data regulation continued into 2020, as the next Presidential
election loomed. Many activists called for the company to be regulated or broken up - including
the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who condemned it for letting antisemitism flourish on the
platform due to a lack of moderation. What he wasn’t expecting was for one of the world’s
richest men to leap on his post and reply with “Hashtag Delete Facebook It’s Lame”. Maybe not
the most profound statement, but Zuckerberg would only read it one way - a declaration of war.
And soon, real-world events would escalate the feud once again.
The Presidential election was over, and soon Joe Biden would be certified as the winner - but
a mob of protestors had other opinions. They stormed the Capitol building and killed a police
officer to stop the certification vote, leading to arrests, injuries, and deaths. In the aftermath,
the shocked nation looked for a cause - and many pointed the finger at social media,
which had allowed conspiracy theorists to spread rumors about the election being rigged
for months before the vote. While much of the attention focused on Twitter and its moderation,
others thought Facebook was still a major culprit.
And Musk was ready to once again throw fuel on the flames.
He took to Twitter, claiming that the Capitol rampage was part of a domino effect that all
started when Mark Zuckerberg created a website to rate women on his campus. While the popular
domino internet meme may not have been the most effective way to make his point,
Musk continued to comment on their data-sharing and spying practices, as well as the greater
integration on apps like Messenger and WhatsApp that meant Facebook would be getting more
data - even if people weren’t on it. He even pointed people to the encrypted messaging app
Signal as an alternative - and was retweeted by another Zuckerberg rival, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
So why do these two dislike each other so much?
It seems counterproductive for them to keep on sniping at each other - after all,
they’re not direct business rivals in many areas. While their interests can intersect,
the sources of their fortunes are very different. And in the new economy,
the wealth of these billionaires is largely dependent on one thing - the state of their
stock holdings. Controversy makes their companies seem unstable, and that can lead
people to sell stocks - something both are very familiar with, as controversy
has seen their net worth fluctuate wildly, losing billions in a single day of trading.
So why can’t they seem to stay in their own lanes?
One possible explanation is that they don’t understand each other very well.
The two come from different backgrounds - Musk is the scion of a wealthy South African family
with roots in old money. Zuckerberg, meanwhile, didn’t grow up poor but was
certainly not expected to become a billionaire when he went off to Harvard. Musk’s explosive,
eccentric personality is not a good match for Zuckerberg’s more restrained demeanor. It may be
a version of that one person in your friend group you just don’t vibe with - just on a global scale.
The other explanation is much more ambitious.
There are only a few people on the planet who have more money than they know what to do with.
Zuckerberg and Musk own so many companies that their wealth basically grows on its own.
So they’ve turned their attention to changing the world - and that puts
them into competition with each other. They’re both chasing historic firsts,
and when only a few people in the world can do the same thing you do, it’s natural
to see them as a rival - and try to tear them down at every opportunity.
But they’re not the only people trying to pull them down.
Another reason for their enmity might be because they want to make sure the heat is on the other
guy. As two of the most visible billionaires, they have come under frequent fire from politicians
angry about income inequality. While their twelve-digit fortunes are enough to make people
bang on the virtual gates with pitchforks, their own scandals have raised ire as well.
Controversy over Zuckerberg’s data scandals and Musk’s love for energy-consuming cryptocurrency
have gotten them both in hot water - and if they can emphasize the other guy’s problems,
maybe Congress won’t be looking at their own.
But someone else might stand to benefit from this feud.
While Musk and Zuckerberg have been fighting in the background,
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been emerging as possibly the most powerful billionaire in the
world. His Amazon delivery service has become the go-to source for ordering just about everything,
his streaming service is producing dozens of new series a year,
and he’s started his own space travel company, Blue Origin, allowing tourists with deep pockets
and even celebrities like William Shatner to make trips to the border of space. While he
gets many of the same complaints about his massive wealth - just short of Musk’s total as of October
2021 - and there are persistent complaints about conditions at Amazon workplaces, he doesn’t seek
out the headlines as much as Musk and Zuckerberg - and he’s only getting richer while they fight.
It might be time for the two long-time rivals to stop sniping and focus on a
bigger threat like rival superheroes - or they could just keep insulting each other on Twitter.
For more on the strange world of the fabulously wealthy,
check out “Millionaires vs. Billionaires - How Do They Live?” or watch this video instead.