- This video is brought to you by BetterHelp.
(upbeat lofi music)
What's up, guys?
Michael here to talk about the website
that has irreparably damaged every nook and cranny
of my fragile brain, Twitter.
And while we're on the topic of things
that are objectively bad for me that I can't look away from,
let's also talk about Elon Musk.
Because along with solving the energy crisis,
building colonies on Mars and naming a baby X,
he has decided to use some of his fortune
to purchase the aforementioned hellsite www.Twitter.com.
Now it's not uncommon for rich people
to buy outrageous things.
So naturally, the internet responded to this purchase
in a totally rational way.
Nah, just kidding, everyone lost their minds.
And enough Twitter users
straight-up deleted their accounts in protest,
such that some folks were wondering if Elon
had already started to wield his powers
to drain their followers.
Others retreated to Instagram, a part of Meta,
which is owned by this guy.
So, were people right to freak out about Musk's Twitter bid?
Can he use the platform for some type of evil?
Or is the internet always in need of its main antagonist,
and Musk just happens to fit the bill?
And should we not be using products owned by dudes
who might be bad?
Does any of this really matter?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack edition:
Will Elon Ruin Twitter?
And a quick note before we get into it,
buying one of the major tech platforms
isn't like buying a new couch.
Transactions on this scale involve board members
and stocks and lawyers and lots and lots of money,
which all take lots of time.
So at the time of this recording Elon Musk
does not officially own Twitter,
and the deal could still fall through.
And if it does, merely consider this a thought experiment.
But before we dive in,
we wanna thank BetterHelp
who's sponsoring this video
in honor of mental health awareness month.
That's right, May is a month dedicated to raising awareness,
providing support, and fighting the stigma
against mental health struggles.
This year's theme is together for mental health
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So here, I'll go first,
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so it wasn't until much later in life
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So I, for one, wouldn't be where I am today without therapy.
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And now back to the show.
Now, before we figure out
if the Musk-buys-Twitter outrage is warranted,
we need to take a brief detour through the analog era.
Because while old-timey rich men
didn't know the difference
between a Dogecoin and a Bennifer,
they did know the power of owning the means of cultural
and journalistic production.
For more on this, see the quaint indie film, "Citizen Kane."
Dudes like William Randolph Hearst,
the inspiration for "Citizen Kane,"
used the newspapers they owned to push their own agendas.
This allowed them to do things
like garner national support for a war,
Hearst was partial to the Spanish-American variety,
or simply to seek revenge against their industry rivals.
For the ultra-rich of the early 20th century,
owning a newspaper was basically
like having a personal megaphone.
Eventually, feeling like their voices
still weren't quite loud enough,
the Hearsts of the world began acquiring entire chains
of newspapers to further propagate their beliefs.
But in the post-World War II era,
things like journalistic integrity
and editorial independence became trendy,
and the idea of a rich old dude
that lived in a castle owning all the newspapers
started to seem a bit gauche.
And American journalism lived happily ever after, right?
Right?
It did, it lived happily ever after?
Yeah, not really.
To say nothing about the fleecing of American newsrooms,
pivots to video,
and the push from news to content in the past decades,
we are once again living through an era
of super-rich people owning media outlets.
And also, an era of really good TV shows
about super-rich dudes owning media outlets.
- Why shouldn't we do all the news?
Well, Kim Jong-Pop,
because that's not how things work in this country.
- [Michael] Speaking of television's favorite father figure,
the real-life inspiration for Logan Roy
is none other than Rupert Murdoch,
whose company News Corp heads up hundreds of news
and media outlets around the world,
including your uncle Rod's favorite channel, Fox News.
And, much like his on-screen counterpart,
Murdoch has been accused of various misdeeds,
from hacking the phones of journalists and celebrities
to straight-up using his media empire
to manipulate the national political discourse.
And Murdoch isn't alone.
The ex-husband of noted philanthropist MacKenzie Scott-
♪ CEO, entrepreneur ♪
♪ Born in 1964 ♪
- [Michael] Jeffrey Bezos, threw down $250 million
to acquire the Washington Post in 2013.
Bezos' billionaire frenemy,
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff,
snatched up ownership of Time Magazine in 2018.
And The Emerson Collective,
an organization run by widow of Steve Jobs,
Laurene Powell Jobs,
snagged a major stake in The Atlantic.
Meanwhile, The LA Times, San Diego Union Tribune,
and a number of smaller community papers
were purchased by biotech billionaire
Patrick Soon-Shiong for $500 million.
- I don't believe you.
The liberal media would've told me about this.
- There's no such thing.
The New York Times is owned by NYT Incorporated
which is owned Altheon Ballistic Dynamics,
which is owned by the Murdoch family
who are owned by Halliburton.
(dramatic music)
- So, as you can see, Musk's bid for Twitter
is far from the first time
that a rich one-percenter purchased a media company,
maybe for the purpose of directing media narratives
or making sure people can't say mean things about them.
And to put my cards on the table,
the only truly mean thing I have to say about Elon Musk
is that men who get hair transplants are sellouts
and there is no room
for self-hating bald men in my circle.
Now, you might be thinking,
"Elon isn't like the other billionaire boys,
because he's not buying a newspaper or cable news network
to reinforce his own ideological agenda,
he's just purchasing a demented global town hall,
where he will sit back and let everyone express
whatever views they want, 280 characters at a time."
And while we get where you're coming from, in another sense,
the fact that Musk isn't simply buying a paper
or media network makes things even more extreme.
That's because he's not just buying a media source,
he's buying the place where a majority of news media
and information is posted and distributed.
In other words, he might not be buying a newspaper,
but he's purchasing the proverbial digital printing press
and distribution networks used
by every news and media company,
along with basically every writer and journalist,
on the planet.
And in doing so,
he's going beyond the trend of members of the ruling class
owning media companies as pet projects.
And to understand what this means,
we need to talk about something called platform capitalism.
To understand what it is,
let's start with the first part, platforms.
While they are sometimes places you can stand
while you wait to catch a train
to a magical school of wizardry,
these days platforms usually refers to apps and websites
like Uber, AirBnb, and Facebook.
As the book, "Platform Revolution" puts it,
"A platform is a business based
on enabling value-creating interactions
between external producers and consumers,"
providing "an open, participative infrastructure
for these interactions"
and setting "governance conditions for them."
Or, as theorist and academic Nick Srnicek puts it,
"What are platforms?
At the most general level,
platforms are digital infrastructures
that enable two or more groups to interact.
They therefore position themselves as intermediaries
that bring together different users:
customers, advertisers, service providers,
producers, suppliers, and even physical objects."
And unlike, say, a newspaper,
which is a physical product that can be sold for profit,
platforms don't really create anything of value,
at least not in the traditional sense.
According to Srnicek, "By providing a digital space
for others to interact in,
platforms position themselves so as to extract data
from natural processes,
weather conditions, crop cycles, et cetera,
from production processes,
assembly lines, continuous flow manufacturing, et cetera,
and from other businesses and users,
web tracking, usage data, et cetera.
They are an extractive apparatus for data."
So while old-school billionaires
might've used their media companies
to push their own views and agendas onto media consumers,
new-school billionaires like Musk use platforms like Twitter
to extract data from those of us who use these platforms.
In this way, we can see Musk's acquisition of Twitter
as evidence of what writer and professor Jill Lapore
refers to as Muskism, or, extreme capitalism.
As Lepore sees it, a childhood of reading,
and, according to a recent video on this channel,
misreading science fiction
has led Musk to favor a sort of capitalism
which is more theoretical than industrial.
As she describes it,
"I think it is an extreme form of capitalism
in the sense that it's plutocratic.
It's something old again.
There's a lot of feudalism in Muskism.
It's like there are these lords
and the rest of us are the peasantry
and our fates are in their hands because they know best."
And the idea that Musk's brand of capitalism
is sending us back towards Feudalism caught on quickly
after he announced his purchase of Twitter,
with people expressing concern that, with Musk in charge,
every time we tweet we'll actually be doing free labor
on Musk's digital land.
But Srnicek questions the argument that posting
is equivalent to doing unpaid labor.
He says that, "Free labor is only a portion
of the multitude of data sources
that a company like Google relies upon:
economic transactions,
information collected by sensors in the internet of things,
corporate and government data,
such as credit records and financial records,
and public and private surveillance,
such as the cars used to build up Google Maps."
So even when we're not actively posting,
if that's something you're capable of,
we're still creating data simply by existing,
or being alive in, our largely digital economy.
We're creating data basically all the time.
Srnicek goes on to further disconnect posting
from traditional labor,
"Beyond the intuitive hesitation
to think that messaging friends is labor,
any idea of socially necessary labor time,
the implicit standard against which production processes
are set, is lacking.
This means there are no competitive pressures
for getting users to do more,
even if there are pressures to get them to do more online."
While a feudal laborer couldn't really choose
to not work their land,
we can choose to put our phones away and not post.
So the good news seems to be
that when you tweet at your favorite director
giving them your notes on their latest release,
you're not technically doing free labor for Musk.
The bad news is that no one is forcing you
to tweet other than yourself.
But labor or not, he's collecting a fuck-ton of your data.
Like, you know, that you're watching this video.
Right now. In your house.
But let's get back to the negative reactions
to Musk's Twitter acquisition.
Much of the anger seemed to be based on the idea
that people enjoy using Twitter,
but they don't enjoy the person of Elon Musk,
and thus, Musk's acquisition of Twitter
means they will now enjoy it less.
Sort of like if some dude who bullied you in high school
bought your favorite sandwich shop,
and now every time you bite into that turkey pesto sub,
you can almost taste the toilet water
he used to dunk your head in.
For others, it seems that they worry that Musk
will somehow impose his personal political views,
whatever they are, onto the platform in some way.
And this isn't an unfounded worry,
as according to Srnicek, "Platforms are also designed
in a way that makes them attractive to its varied users.
While often presenting themselves as empty spaces
for others to interact on,
they in fact embody a politics.
The rules of product and service development,
as well as marketplace interactions,
are set by the platform owner."
Though, as of the writing of this script,
the main changes he's discussed
are charging brands and larger accounts for quote tweets,
potentially monetizing viral tweets,
as well as the addition of an edit button.
But for many it simply seems to be the case that Elon Musk
owning a popular platform
is crossing some type of moral boundary.
But that worry also seems to imply that up until now,
Twitter was owned by the good guys.
And who are those good guys?
Well until Musk takes over,
the majority shareholders of Twitter
are Morgan Stanley Investment Management,
The Black Rock group, Vanguard Funds,
and some Saudi investors.
None of these dudes have ever been accused
of being too woke.
And Black Rock was at one point the world's largest investor
in coal plant developers,
and is currently one of the world's largest investors
in weapons manufacturing.
I mean, say what you will about Elon,
but at least the dude is more into batteries than coal.
And rockets that go into space more than rockets
that accidentally hit hospitals full of civilians.
So what makes Elon Musk any better
or worse than those companies?
Or, for that matter, the owners of Meta, Google, Amazon,
or any number of prominent digital platforms?
Some of the outcry seems to come from a genuine desire
for a version of what we could call ethical capitalism,
or ethical consumerism,
where our money, and, in the case of Twitter,
our time and attention,
is spent supporting brands and companies
that share our values.
This mentality has been on the rise in recent years,
and is particularly prominent amongst millennials.
There are even financial funds
that specialize in investing money in companies
deemed to be adequately ethical
and/or environmentally friendly.
This attitude looks like someone
who won't eat at Chick Fil A
because their owners have a history
of funding anti-LGBTQ organizations,
but who will eat at Chipotle because of their commitment
to sourcing sustainable and organic ingredients.
But just like you can't bang your way to virginity,
some would argue that you can't capitalism your way
to an ethical society.
It seems like the phrase,
"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism"
is becoming a crucial proverb for our times.
The idea here is that if we apply
the standards of individual ethics
and morality to capitalism,
which functions according to economic,
and not moral logic, we'll be consistently let down.
Much like the recent controversy
around Joe Rogan's deal with Spotify,
which similarly led users to proclaim
that they were leaving
for other digital streaming platforms,
we see these contradictions when people want brands
to share their ethics and politics.
And it's not hard to see the contradictions at play
when companies attempt to convince consumers that they are,
in fact, doing ethical stuff.
For example, recently Blue Bottle Coffee
started piloting a shift to make oat milk
their default milk,
for the purposes of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
that come from dairy production.
Which seems great.
Until you realize that Blue Bottle is owned
by the Nestle corporation,
who, along with being a generally very, very bad company,
they literally did child slavery,
also has a full-on dairy division.
So even if you feel good about your oat milk latte,
you're also giving money to a company that was sued for,
and I can't repeat this enough, doing child slavery.
- It's not handmade in USA,
it's pronounced "hahnd-made in Oosa."
The Hand people are a Vietnamese slave tribe,
and USA is their island prison.
They made your jeans.
Do you know how they get the stitching so small?
Orphans.
- On the other hand, there are those who might say
it's unethical to eat things like fast food,
due to things like food quality,
environmental impact, and labor conditions.
And that it's bad to eat factory farmed
and non-organic meat and produce,
again, for environmental impact and working conditions.
But what does that mean for people who can't afford organic,
grass-fed chicken breasts
or gluten-free cashew mac and cheese?
Are they to be held morally responsible
for their consumer choices?
Or, are they simply doing whatever they need to do
to survive in a system
that isn't providing a lot of other options?
If you can afford to patronize companies
that treat the planet and workers well, that's great.
But if you can't, you shouldn't be held morally responsible
for systemic issues that you have no control over.
Which brings us back to the question
of whether or not Elon Musk is going to ruin Twitter,
and if leaving the platform is a useful response
for folks who don't dig
Elon's whole libertarian space pirate
who is also an online psychopharmacologist vibe.
So, if people decide to leave Twitter, where will they go?
If you're able to simply abstract yourself
from social media altogether,
we have nothing but the deepest love and respect for you.
But for those who are dependent,
either socially or professionally,
on social media platforms,
where might you go if the worst guest host
in the history of SNL succeeds in buying Twitter?
Maybe you head over to Instagram or Facebook?
Well, they're both owned by Meta
which is the brainchild of this guy,
and if you find him to be
a significantly better person than Musk, there you go.
But maybe you're not
into Zuck's misinformation-happy platform either,
so you're gonna park your digital self firmly on TikTok?
Oops, they're owned by Chinese company ByteDance,
which has been accused of censoring
and surveilling content on behalf of the Chinese government,
which is not the best.
So maybe you go with a platform not connected
to global corporations
and find some new friends on Craigslist missed connections.
What are you trying to do, get yourself killed?!
The point is, it's pretty hard to fully disconnect ourselves
from companies that vary from kinda sketchy
to literally doing human rights abuses,
because platforms of all types have become inextricable
from modern life.
So unless you want to go fully off the grid,
you're going to have to navigate
some type of relationship to platforms
owned by people with names like Mark, Jeffrey,
and yes, even Elon.
And we're not saying it's good that Musk is buying Twitter,
but we are saying that moral categories
like good and bad
aren't the most useful metrics to apply to platforms
whose sole purpose is the extraction of data
for the sake of profit.
Asking a platform to be moral
is like asking a couch cushion to be delicious.
Musk's reign as CEO of Twitter might be bad,
it might be good, it will almost definitely be weird.
But one thing we do know for sure
is that he isn't the only super-rich person
who sees value in owning a platform
whose sole purpose is the collection of monetizable data.
And as more of our social and professional lives
get inextricably linked with these platforms,
we're all kind of stuck here,
whether or not we continue sharing our flaming hot takes
on Twitter every time we drink too much caffeine.
But what do you all think?
Is Elon going to destroy the peaceful Twitter community
we've come to know and love?
Or is the reaction to his recent bid overblown?
Let us know in the comments.
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