Media & Entertainment

Don’t lose sleep over Elon Musk’s desire to build the next Twitter

Comment

Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., arrives at the Axel Springer Award ceremony in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. Tesla Inc. will be added to the S&P 500 Index in one shot on Dec. 21, a move that will ripple through the entire market as money managers adjust their portfolios to make room for shares of the $538 billion company. Photographer: Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Image Credits: Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz/Bloomberg (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Elon Musk tweeted this weekend that he is “giving serious thought” to building his own social media platform.

“Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” the billionaire serial entrepreneur who is CEO of Tesla and Space X tweeted. “What should be done?”

If your blood pressure spiked reading these tweets, you’re not alone. But let’s take a deep breath. We probably won’t see an app called DogeSociælX any time soon.

Musk has a history of tweeting absurd memes, thoughts and even material information about Tesla, then feigning shock when U.S. regulators react with more than a raised eyebrow. However, when it comes to Musk actually following through on his wacky Twitter ideas, his track record isn’t great.

This isn’t the first time that Musk has fantasized publicly about his dreams of being the next Jack Dorsey (though maybe he’s closer to a Zuck?).

After journalists criticized Musk for his questionable Tesla management choices in 2018, he vowed to launch a website called Pravda, the Russian word for “truth,” which is also the name of an historic Russian communist newspaper. Musk’s website would allow the public to rate journalists, editors and media outlets on their “core truth” and “credibility scores.” Thankfully, this idea did not come to fruition, but as all journalists know, Twitter already functions very well as a vehicle to make you aware when people don’t agree with you.

When Musk’s Twitter-borne ideas do get off the ground, they have traditionally fallen far short of becoming the next SpaceX.

Also in 2018 — a big year for his antics — Musk announced his “new intergalactic media empire,” a comedy company called Thud (punctuated with an optional exclamation point). After Elon Musk was tapped to host SNL last year, I embarked on a Sisyphean journalistic task: I contacted all 13 former employees of Thud, Musk’s forgotten foray into comedy media.

No one was willing to talk to me on the record. Powered by former editors of The Onion, Thud flopped, and was then reduced to a conversation starter on a resume (former Theranos employees can relate). It’s no wonder that these writers and designers didn’t want to revisit Thud, which its minimalist website now calls “short-lived” and “aptly named.”

Initially, Musk funneled $2 million into Thud, but he left the company abruptly, leaving its editors with no plan to monetize the project.

“Making a swift transition from being a billionaire-backed project to an independent media company is… You know,” editor Cole Bolton told The Verge at the time.

Given his history of making outlandish statements online for the fun of it, there’s little need to panic about Musk’s sudden interest in creating a social media empire (this one isn’t even intergalactic!). Plus, even when there’s a big name behind a new platform, there’s no guarantee it’ll take off. Donald Trump’s own new app, Truth Social, may feel like it’s poised to become a mainstream 4chan, but weeks after launch, we’re still 976,985th on the waitlist. And once you’re admitted, the party doesn’t appear to be too exciting (unless you’re into “hot chicks golfing“).

https://twitter.com/kelsaywhat/status/1508185434844766220

Even if Musk were to develop his own social media platform, he wouldn’t have the same level of reach he has on Twitter. He boasts 79.4 million followers, landing him solidly in the top 10 most-followed users on the site, beaten out only by figures like Barack Obama and Justin Bieber. But unlike Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, Musk leverages his following to make Hitler jokes and compare Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal to Joseph Stalin. Notably, as Musk complains that he is not allowed to speak freely, these foul tweets were not removed by the platform; he deleted his Hitler meme himself, and the dig at Agrawal is still up.

This isn’t a free speech issue; it’s just Musk’s distaste for any form of regulation. It’s doubtful that Musk’s nearly 80 million followers would migrate over to his theoretical new platform, but even if they did, the SEC could still hold Musk accountable for whatever insider information he shares.

Musk’s most powerful tool has always been Twitter, and like Trump, he doesn’t seem to gain anything by trying to start a new company that the SEC would still monitor anyway.

This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about the threat posed by egomaniacal men in power who are wealthy enough to make their fever dreams realities.

After all, Musk seems to be a bit better at business than Trump. But sometimes, Musk’s outbursts on Twitter do nothing but create polarizing, charged dialogue, and we forget that even though Musk’s tweets can move markets, sometimes, they simply just fall with a thud.

More TechCrunch

After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the…

Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo

Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature…

Meta’s latest experiment borrows from BeReal’s and Snapchat’s core ideas

Welcome to Startups Weekly! We’ve been drowning in AI news this week, with Google’s I/O setting the pace. And Elon Musk rages against the machine.

Startups Weekly: It’s the dawning of the age of AI — plus,  Musk is raging against the machine

IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups. We took special note of a few, which were making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims…

IndieBio’s SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises

YouTube TV has announced that its multiview feature for watching four streams at once is now available on Android phones and tablets. The Android launch comes two months after YouTube…

YouTube TV’s ‘multiview’ feature is now available on Android phones and tablets

Featured Article

Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

CSC ServiceWorks provides laundry machines to thousands of residential homes and universities, but the company ignored requests to fix a security bug.

17 hours ago
Two Santa Cruz students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

OpenAI’s Superalignment team, responsible for developing ways to govern and steer “superintelligent” AI systems, was promised 20% of the company’s compute resources, according to a person from that team. But…

OpenAI created a team to control ‘superintelligent’ AI — then let it wither, source says

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and the buzz is palpable. But what if we told you there’s a chance for you to not just attend, but also…

Harness the TechCrunch Effect: Host a Side Event at Disrupt 2024

Decks are all about telling a compelling story and Goodcarbon does a good job on that front. But there’s important information missing too.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Goodcarbon’s $5.5M seed deck

Slack is making it difficult for its customers if they want the company to stop using its data for model training.

Slack under attack over sneaky AI training policy

A Texas-based company that provides health insurance and benefit plans disclosed a data breach affecting almost 2.5 million people, some of whom had their Social Security number stolen. WebTPA said…

Healthcare company WebTPA discloses breach affecting 2.5 million people

Featured Article

Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

19 hours ago
Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Ember has partnered with HSBC in the U.K. so that the bank’s business customers can access Ember’s services from their online accounts.

Embedded finance is still trendy as accounting automation startup Ember partners with HSBC UK

Kudos uses AI to figure out consumer spending habits so it can then provide more personalized financial advice, like maximizing rewards and utilizing credit effectively.

Kudos lands $10M for an AI smart wallet that picks the best credit card for purchases

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday.  The trustee is asking…

A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’

U.K.-based Seraphim Space is spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The…

Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies

OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to use the social news site’s data for training AI models. In a blog post on OpenAI’s press relations site, the company said…

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

X users will now be able to discover posts from new Communities that are trending directly from an Explore tab within the section.

X pushes more users to Communities

For Mark Zuckerberg’s 40th birthday, his wife got him a photoshoot. Zuckerberg gives the camera a sly smile as he sits amid a carefully crafted re-creation of his childhood bedroom.…

Mark Zuckerberg’s makeover: Midlife crisis or carefully crafted rebrand?

Strava announced a slew of features, including AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, a new ‘family’ subscription plan, dark mode and more.

Strava taps AI to weed out leaderboard cheats, unveils ‘family’ plan, dark mode and more

We all fall down sometimes. Astronauts are no exception. You need to be in peak physical condition for space travel, but bulky space suits and lower gravity levels can be…

Astronauts fall over. Robotic limbs can help them back up.

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

What a wild week for transportation news! It was a smorgasbord of news that seemed to touch every sector and theme in transportation.

Tesla keeps cutting jobs and the feds probe Waymo

Sony Music Group has sent letters to more than 700 tech companies and music streaming services to warn them not to use its music to train AI without explicit permission.…

Sony Music warns tech companies over ‘unauthorized’ use of its content to train AI

Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.

GrubMarket buys Butter to give its food distribution tech an AI boost

The investor lawsuit is related to Bolt securing a $30 million personal loan to Ryan Breslow, which was later defaulted on.

Bolt founder Ryan Breslow wants to settle an investor lawsuit by returning $37 million worth of shares

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, launched an enterprise version of the prominent social network in 2015. It always seemed like a stretch for a company built on a consumer…

With the end of Workplace, it’s fair to wonder if Meta was ever serious about the enterprise

X, formerly Twitter, turned TweetDeck into X Pro and pushed it behind a paywall. But there is a new column-based social media tool in town, and it’s from Instagram Threads.…

Meta Threads is testing pinned columns on the web, similar to the old TweetDeck

As part of 2024’s Accessibility Awareness Day, Google is showing off some updates to Android that should be useful to folks with mobility or vision impairments. Project Gameface allows gamers…

Google expands hands-free and eyes-free interfaces on Android