Who's been more effective at driving
hope and change.
A political icon with a methodically
crafted public persona.
Or an unfettered polymath, wild
card entrepreneur.
Barack Obama and Elon Musk
both have lofty ideals,
zealous fans, ferocious
critics, and a cautious
optimism about the future.
I am more optimistic about
the future of America
than ever before.
As long as we push hard and
are not complacent.
The future's going to be great.
Musk says he strongly supported
Obama for president before the
Democratic Party was hijacked by
extremists, and Obama helped
make Musk's SpaceX possible
by opening up the final frontier
to private companies.
Let's allow the private sector to
get in. We may be able to achieve
a point in time where those of you
who are just dying to go into space,
you know, you can buy a ticket.
They're the politician and
businessman with the most followers
on Twitter.
Although Musk will soon own the
company, but the contrast in how
effective they've been at realizing
their visions underscores why
entrepreneurs, not politicians,
are more effective agents
of social change.
And Musk's Twitter takeover
could be just the wild card
American political discourse needs
right now. Obama's public persona
is carefully stage managed,
while Musk is a publicist's worst
nightmare.
Out of the blue he tweeted, "I am
considering taking Tesla private
at $420.
Funding secured.
The S.E.C.
disputed that claim and charged
him with securities fraud."
I want to be clear. I do not respect
the FCC.
I do not respect them.
Obama was a political outsider
who used the new tool of social
media to overtake and eventually
become the establishment.
I might never have been elected
president if it hadn't been for
websites like and I'm dating myself
MySpace.
Meet up
and Facebook.
For Obama, state action
is how you change the world for the
better.
Musk starts companies.
Obama mostly failed to limit
greenhouse gas emissions through
subsidies and regulation.
Musk created America's first
successful electric car company.
Obama backed a failed high speed
rail project.
Musk created a company that promises
to build underground Hyperloop in
America's denses cities.
Obama expanded online surveillance
allegedly to make us safer.
Musk developed satellite internet
technology that could one day help
citizens access information censored
by authoritarian rulers.
There's a lot to criticize about
Musk. There's no honor in slandering
a critic as a pedo or toying
with shareholders on Twitter.
He's exaggerated both the promise of
battery technology and advancements
in self-driving cars.
His companies have received billions
of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies
and other government handouts, which
have certainly been a factor in
their success.
It's also true that Musk's boldest
plans haven't come to fruition
and may never.
Although investor optimism has made
Tesla the world's highest valued
auto manufacturer.
Its total share of the US auto
market is merely 2.4%,
and that's with the benefit of tax
breaks, credits and other subsidies.
But much of the anger musk attracts
has nothing to do with the help he's
received from taxpayers.
It's rooted in the belief that under
capitalism, billionaires have too
much power and that Obama's
approach leads to a fairer world.
And then there's Musk's latest wild
card move.
It's the best illustration of the
effectiveness of the entrepreneur
versus the politician, both
looking to reform how social media
platforms present information to the
public.
Elon Musk struck a deal to buy
Twitter at a price of roughly 44
billion bucks.
Obviously, this is a victory for
free speech.
If you get invited to something
where there are no rules, where
there is total freedom
for everybody, do you actually want
to go to that party?
And that's a question for Twitter
users.
A few days before Musk reached
a deal to purchase Twitter, Obama
gave a talk at Stanford about
the future of online speech.
Where I'm going to evaluate any
proposal touching on social media
and the internet
is whether it strengthens
or weakens the
prospects for a healthy,
inclusive democracy.
But I also think decisions like this
shouldn't be left solely
to private interests.
Regulation has to be part
of the answer.
Obama, like most of the Democratic
Party establishment, wants to amend
Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act so that social media
platforms can be held liable for
content posted by users.
He favors regulation that would
allow the federal government to
inspect and approve the algorithms
that social media platforms are
employing as a way to combat
misinformation.
Biden's Department of Homeland
Security just launched a
disinformation governance board
to prevent disinformation and
misinformation from traveling
around the country.
Musk, by contrast, has stated
he wants to make the algorithms more
transparent to users and
for moderators to focus exclusively
on removing fake accounts and bots
and illegal material while
entrusting users to sort back
fiction.
I think it's very important for there
to be an inclusive
arena for free
speech.
It's not necessary for people to
believe this information
in order to weaken democratic
institutions.
You just have to flood a country's
public square with enough
raw sewage.
You just have to raise enough
questions, spread enough dirt.
Plant enough conspiracy
theorizing.
That citizens no longer know
what to believe.
When Obama talks about threats to
democracy, we all know he's
referring chiefly to the man who
incited a mob to contest an
election.
We just saw a sitting
president deny the
clear results of an election
and help incited violent
insurrection at the nation's
capitol.
If Musk lets Trump back on,
could that help him retake the White
House?
It's a scary prospect for a lot of
people.
If extremists run rampant,
could they foment the kinds of
violent revolutions that social
media has spurred on in other
countries?
And is Musk really committed to
the free speech values he currently
professes?
In fact, welcoming his worst
enemies onto the platform?
Twitter will be his property, so
he'll be able to do what he likes,
but he'll also have to bear the
consequences if users abandon
the platform.
And Facebook's collapse in active
daily users is a reminder
that social media platforms can't
count on user loyalty.
And that's the main difference.
If you don't like what Elon Musk
does at Twitter, leave.
Obama is pushing for more
government control of information
across all platforms,
which is what's actually dangerous.
There's no shortage of false
information online as the COVID 19
pandemic has made all too clear.
The question is who
decides? What's prohibited is false.
Government officials shouldn't be
the arbiters of truth.
We've seen how fallible they can be,
claiming that vaccinated people
cannot spread COVID 19 or
that the Hunter Biden laptop was
Russian disinformation.
Mask mandates, climate change policy
and gender identity are all
examples of contested political
questions that social media
platforms have often treated as
factual ones rushing to
declare political disputes, settled
science and suppressing skeptics
isn't protecting liberal democracy,
it's undermining it.
I'd prefer a totally decentralized
social media landscape where neither
government regulators nor large
corporations nor a single
billionaire decide what information
gets shared. Maybe we'll get there.
But today the choice is
Obama versus Musk.
Technocratic control versus markets
which are both fallible.
But in the case of Twitter, only
one side put $44 billion
on the line.
Love Elon Musk or hate him,
but recognize the value of the wild
card. It changes the game.
The trajectory of social media was
towards more control and heavier
moderation.
Now the deck has been reshuffled.