First off, I should say I think Elon is the man. What he's been doing at "engineering" companies is of course absolutely incredible (go Starship!). But not so sure he should be mucking around with a social-networking/media company, in which messy social and legal rules are even more important than the technologies themselves. Yeah, his idea that free speech should be the overriding principle is at it's heart true, but tell that to Mark Zuckerberg and FB (as many of us here know, he originally was saying something similar years ago, that it wasn't FB responsibility to moderate content, but then it became known that many organizations and states are using bots and companies dedicated to promoting their own agendas. How do you stop something like this??). Free speech is an ideal that must be balanced with other ideals like protecting individual people & groups against defamation and libel amongst other things. Not sure an intense, engineering mind like Elon is the right person to wade into these very murky waters. And, have a feeling Elon wouldn't even enjoy working on a problem like this (as a software engineer myself, don't think I would either!)
I don't believe in nor really care about his points regarding "free speech" (whatever that even means, considering everyone has a different concept of it).
However I believe the current model of social media being funded by "engagement" has peaked, is hard to grow in a world already saturated by advertising, and is at risk from privacy & pro-consumer legislation slowly being enacted around the world.
I just don't see a future in the current model, yet the social media industry seems to be stuck in this local maximum without an easy way out. A hostile takeover of a large existing player by a risk-taker is the "kick in the butt" that the industry needs. It may go well, it may go wrong, but IMO it's at least worth a try.
You would be surprised, Instagram is showing pretty dramatic revenue growth over the past 4 years and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Global expansion into developing markets will continue to fuel that 'funding' for social media companies. On the ad side, humans seem to be pretty ok with buying more and more and more stuff.
Good point, Twitter is a bit of a mess. hmm... But a huge worry is that Twitter has become such an important mass-media tool, and if he messes it up, it could become even more the goto outlet for politicians, autocrats, or even just businessmen with bad intentions to sway public opinion.
Yeah, as mentioned, Elon is a god, but in my humble opinion, his talents are in engineering (and Twitter just seem like a problem an engineer wouldn't even want to solve).
Agree, he's used to regulations. But, it's not just the legal rules, but the unspoken social rules we have as well as groups and factions he'll have to deal with. I could totally be wrong, but at least for me, I don't see him being good at or even enjoying fixing the problems of social-networking companies. Seems like a distraction from SpaceX and Tesla (which is more than enough)
