Why did Elon Musk buy Twitter?
Musk bought Twitter a year ago. Why did he buy it?
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Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died 85 years ago on 10 November 1938. Even today, every 10th November in Turkish cities, you would hear loud sirens at 9:05am, which is the time when he died. Cars and pedestrians would stop in a show of respect to their Atatürk.
My opinion of Atatürk evolved over the years. When I was of school age, I saw him as the undisputed saviour of our nation and felt only respect and admiration for him. As I get older, and coming across many people wearing Atatürk masks on their faces while pursuing all sorts of chicaneries, I experienced some distancing. Later, I changed my mind again. Today, my admiration for Atatürk is stronger than when I was a young school kid. Without him, what happened to the Austrian-Hungarian empire after the WW1 would also have happened to the Ottomans, and the post-Ottoman Turkey would be squeezed into a small area around Konya. Atatürk rejected the post-war agreement (Sevres agreement) and managed to mobilise the tired Turkish peasantry of Anatolia to continue fighting for another four years and until a new agreement defined Turkey in its present boundaries (ignoring the Hatay province which was added afterwards). Today, I find it especially interesting and admirable that he managed to do this without calling in the religion card. It probably would have been easier to call people to arms under an Islamic banner but he chose otherwise and set Turkiye up on a secular path from Day 1. In spite of a small fundamentalist minority, most of Turkey are still on this secular path as evidenced by the 85% approval of Atatürk’s inheritance as shown in recent polls1.
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Summary
Background on Twitter and Elon Musk:
Twitter launched in 2006; Musk initially tried and got bored with it.
Musk revisited Twitter in 2011 and became active with 19,000 tweets over ten years.
Musk's analogy for his tweets: "Niagara Falls" with occasional "random turds."
Twitter's Evolution and "Wokeness":
2010s: Rise of "wokeness" in American society.
Musk tweeted about the origins of "wokeness" in Dec 2021.
Twitter began to filter content, leading to perceived progressive bias.
Incidents of bias: Hunter Biden tweet suppression, Trump's delisting.
2023: Matt Taibbi's "Twitter Files" revealed internal discussions on content decisions.
Musk's Involvement and Acquisition of Twitter:
Musk shared concerns over Twitter's censorship.
Musk bought $10 billion in Twitter stocks and was invited to join the board.
Musk's criticism of Twitter's leadership; saw potential for improvement.
Purchased Twitter for $44 billion in September 2022.
Changes Under Musk's Ownership:
Musk brought physical changes and cost-cutting measures to Twitter offices.
Major layoffs: Reduced staff from 8,000 to 2,000 by mid-December.
Musk had journalists review Twitter's internal documents.
Insights from the Twitter Files:
Evolution of journalism and its relationship with government and intelligence.
Challenges of content moderation highlighted.
Discussion on whether Twitter should suppress accounts flagged by the FBI.
Reasons Musk Bought Twitter:
Financial capability: $44 billion was 4% of his net worth.
Desire to correct perceived wrongness in silencing voices.
Potential for profit and expansion, inspired by WeChat in China.
Optimism for Twitter's future despite current undervaluation.
The end of SMR Story (in the Short Takes)
The termination of the NuScale project probably marks the beginning of the end for the SMR narrative.
Walnut Therapy
The old Chinese self-help method only needs two walnuts
Stephen Baxter
Creation Node
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Musk and Twitter
Twitter was launched in 2006. Musk tried it then but got bored. Twitter started like today's Instagram, cat photos or the coffee people tried that morning.
Musk tried Twitter again in 2011 and got hooked, with 19000 tweets over ten years.
“My tweets are like Niagara Falls sometimes and they come too fast. Just dip a cup in there and try to avoid the random turds.” (Musk)
During the decade 2010s, a disease called "wokeness" was spreading through the American society. Its origins may be the subject of an investigation at the end of the century as the Hippie culture of 1960s were examined in 2010s. I was pleased to see that Musk was also puzzled on where wokeness trend came from, as he tweeted in December 2021, "traceroute woke_mind_virus"2:
While Musk was tweeting against "wokeness", Twitter was starting to become a woke filter of the public discourse. Twitter hired a cadre of content moderators tasked with filtering out abuse, misinformation, and violence3. As these moderators strove for impartiality, biases inevitably crept in, skewing the platform towards progressive leanings. It is easy to see the bias of the opposing view but not your own. While trying to hire unbiased people, Twitter ended up hiring more progressives4. There have been a number notorious instances of Twitter bias like suppressing and blocking tweets on Hunter Biden as disinformation; and delisting President Trump. There were also suspicions that Twitter executives were in collision with the Biden government officials in suppressing tweets that did not fit Biden government agenda. This collision was later proven in 2023 through a series of Tweets by Matt Taibi, under the heading of Twitter Files. Matt Taibi "revelations contain internal chats of Twitter's inner circle of senior executives about a series of controversial decisions: limiting the dissemination of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the permanent suspension of Donald Trump in the wake of the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, and limiting the reach of some influential accounts." BBC reports another example of Twitter executive censure: this was shared by US journalist Bari Weiss, who had been provided with screenshots by Twitter's new head of safety Ella Irwin revealing three influential conservative accounts in the US put on different "blacklists", meaning their tweets either wouldn't trend, might not appear in search, or would not be "amplified".
No matter what I feel about Donald Trump or the other conservatives blocked by Twitter, I do not think it is appropriate for Twitter or any other media to surreptitiously silence them. Elon Musk thought the same way and, unlike me, he was in a position to do something about it. He spent $10 billion buying Twitter stocks and called Parag Agrawal, the software engineer who had taken over from Dorsey as Twitter CEO and told him about his vision for Twitter as the "public square" where no one should be denied a voice. Parag invited him to a have a seat in the Board. Musk thought Parag was a nice guy but, for him, this was a problem. “What Twitter needs is a fire-breathing dragon,” he said after meeting Parag, “and Parag is not that.”
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Following the success of SpaceX (see my last post) and the meteoric rise of Tesla, Elon Musk's net worth in April 2022 was over 1 trillion dollars. He could easily afford Twitter and he made an offer in April 2022 for $54.20 per share, $44 billion in total. He later wanted to reduce the offer by arguing that Twitter misrepresented the number of active users versus the number of bots. However, his lawyer convinced him that he would lose the case if it went to trial. He was also getting excited about it again so he closed the deal in September 2022. “Arguably, I should just pay full price, because these people running Twitter are such blockheads and idiots,” he told Isaacson. “Its stock was seventy last year with such a ship of fools. The potential is so great. There are so many things I could fix.”
On 26 October 2022, he walked into Twitter buildings as the new owner carrying a kitchen sink in his hands5. He was amazed with the extravagance he saw in the building. The floor that Musk commandeered as his base camp had fridges filled with earthy snacks and five types of water, including bottles from Norway and cans of Liquid Death. “I drink tap water,” Musk said when offered one.
On November 3, he sacked about half of the company’s employees worldwide, and close to 90 percent of some infrastructure teams. He also fired most of the human resources managers. And that was just round one in what would be a three-round bloodbath says in the Isaacson's biography (p 674). The layoffs continued until the end of the year. There were 8000 staff when Musk took over on 27 October. By mid-December, only two thousand were left.
Musk also had journalists like Matt Taibbi and Barry Weiss examine the internal documents of his new company. What they found was quite disturbing and I mentioned this at the top. I copy from the book as a summary:
The Twitter Files highlighted an evolution of mainstream journalism over the past fifty years. During Watergate and Vietnam, journalists generally regarded the CIA, military, and government officials with suspicion, or at least a healthy skepticism. Many of them had gotten into the craft inspired by the Vietnam reporting of David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan and the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But beginning in the 1990s and accelerating after 9/11, established journalists felt increasingly comfortable sharing information and cooperating with top people in the government and intelligence communities. That mindset was replicated at social media companies, as shown by all the briefings Twitter and other tech companies received. “These companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus,” Taibbi wrote, “although evidence suggests their Quislingian6 executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed.” I think the second half of his sentence is more true than the first. The Twitter Files brought some transparency to how Twitter had handled content moderation, but they also showed how difficult the task can be. The FBI, for example, flagged Twitter that some accounts tweeting negatively about vaccines and Ukraine were being secretly run by Russia’s intelligence directorate. If that was indeed the case, was it valid for Twitter to suppress these accounts? As Taibbi himself wrote, “This is a difficult speech dilemma.” (p.741)
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Why did Musk buy Twitter?
I do not think there is a single reason but a combination:
Because he could. The $44 billion he paid for Twitter was 4% of his net worth at that time. Not insignificant but not an amount that would kill him if he lost it all. I can see myself putting 4% of my net worth into a worthy investment without losing too much sleep over it.
Elon Musk is a man of conviction. He was convinced that silencing people out because they clashed with the prevailing wisdom was wrong and he wanted to make a contribution to correcting this wrongness by buying and fixing Twitter.
He thinks he can make more money from it. He would try and convert Twitter to something much bigger resembling WeChat in China. This was what he wanted to do with X in 2010 but Thiel convinced him otherwise.
Bloomberg says that X is now worth less than half of the price Musk paid for it a year ago. I do not think it will stay that low for long. I have been using Twitter since 2012. In terms of troll traffic, I think it is better now. I also like the new feature "Communities" and have been sampling different communities to see if there is one that I would like to join. In longer term, I think it is a very good idea to build more functionalities into X making it the be-all software as what WeChat is in China.
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Short Takes
Major blow to Small Nuclear Reactor prospects
Power Magazine, 8 November 2023, Aaron Larson
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) and NuScale Power Systems had a DOE-funded project to build a 462-megawatt Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR). Last week they terminated the project. Earlier this year, when they had updated the target cost of the electricity from $58 to $89/MWh, it was clear that the progress was not as good as expected. The levelised cost of $89/MWh was more expensive than electricity generated by firing natural gas. As noted by IIEFA, the price would be much higher without $4 billion federal tax subsidies that include a $1.4 billion U.S. Department of Energy contribution and a $30/MWh break from the Inflation Reduction Act. Moreover, this is still an estimate and the real cost would probably be higher. The project partners did explain the cause of termination as "the lack of subscription to continue toward deployment". I am not sure what this really means but it very much sounds like "no one is interested in the technology".
This is a major blow to the future of Small Nuclear Reactors. Many people, including me, thought they had a chance to occupy a niche in future power generation. There are other SMR firms but NuScale is the only one that got approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I may be wrong but I do not think the SMR technology will recover from this.
I view last week's UAMPS-NuScale decision as resembling the closure of ZeroGen in Australia 20 years ago. ZeroGen was a government industry partnership aiming to build a new type of coal power plant in Queensland. The CO2 emissions were to be captured and stored underground. The technology turned out to be too expensive and the project was terminated. Since then, there has been only lip service paid to CCS projects. What ZeroGen meant for the CCS projects in Australia will be what the NuScale project termination will mean to the future SMR prospects.
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You Tube
The 4th interview of Musk by Lex Fridman. Eminently watchable as all the other three.
You can also find it on Spotify I believe.
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Diary
I was in China with a Chinese-Australian friend. We had lunch with a guy who was my friend’s supervisor in China thirty years ago. The 70-year old supervisor, now retired, had two walnuts in his hand and he was continuously rolling them against each other. He said that it was good for his mind.
Later I did my own research and learned that rolling two walnuts in one hand is a traditional practice in China, known as "walnut therapy" or "hand exercising balls." This practice is believed to have several benefits, including:
Improving Hand Dexterity and Strength particularly beneficial for musicians, artists, or anyone working with intricate hand movements.
Stimulating Acupressure Points: activating various acupressure points in the hands, walnuts help overall health and well-being.
Reducing Stress: The repetitive, rhythmic action of rolling the walnuts will calm the mind.
Increasing Blood Circulation: The movement helps in promoting blood circulation in the hands and fingers
Mental Concentration: Some believe that the focus required to smoothly roll the walnuts without dropping them can enhance concentration and mental discipline.
Aging and Health: In the context of traditional practices, it's often recommended for elderly people to maintain joint flexibility and to keep the mind active.
The walnuts in the picture are wild walnuts I bought in Xi’an. If you want to try it, you can use your own walnuts. Some Chinese friends just use smooth crystal or marble spheres of similar size. So I think it is the practice of rolling rather than the surface roughness.
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I had a Nokia phone. It just stopped charging last week. Switching to a new phone is always a hassle. Therefore, I tried to get it fixed but gave up after spending $50 with the local repairshop. Yesterday, I bought a Google Pixel 7a from HB HiFi for $749. I managed to get most of my apps back on this new phone except my university email account. The UQ identity checker wanted to send a code but would only send it to a device already verified, which the new phone was not. It was a Catch 22 and the security system blocked my entire access rights to the UQ services while I was trying to get this new phone recognised. I hope I can get it fixed on Monday by emailing the IT Services. Otherwise, I will have no access to my work computer until I get to the campus on Thursday.
Happy Diwali
In Hindu culture, Diwali festival symbolises the victory of light over darkness and good over evil. To all Hindu readers: May the festival of lights bring you peace and joy.
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Pascal Hagi
Pascal is watching me from the bathroom window while I enter to take a shower.
He keeps saying “Baba bıcı bıcı, Baba bıcı bıcı (hard C, pronounced as ‘dg’)”, which means “Baba is washing up”.
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What I read
This is a new section I start this week. I will say a few words about the book I read that week. Usually, this would be fiction because otherwise I would mention it in other parts of the post.
Last week I finished reading “Creation Node” by Stephen Baxter.
Baxter is a prolific writer, mostly science fiction. I wish he were not as prolific because while some of his books are masterpieces, others are really bad. This one is in the latter category.
In the 23rd century, the humans have colonies on the Moon, the Mars and some asteroids. Today’s national differences are all gone. There are three divisions: The rapacious capitalists of the Lunar colony; the extreme Conservationists; and the rest of the humanity as middle-of-the-roaders living on Earth under one Earth government. The politics between the three groups are glossed over. It is two hundred years into the future but the only new technology breaktroughs are nuclear fusion and space elevators. Against this background, a Conserver spaceship travels to the Oort cloud to check on a mass anomaly which they think is the ninth planet that completes its orbit around the sun in 28000 years. It turns out that it was not a planet but a portal to another universe.
I was not satisfied with the book although I read it to the end. I think I was not satisfied because it was too absurd (in the way Camus refers to the absurd). I asked ChatGPT for a definition of the absurd, it gave a good explanation that ended uo with the summary statetement as “(it is) the philosophical idea of a fundamental dissonance between the human search for meaning and the indifferent universe. It's a recognition of the inherent lack of ultimate purpose in life, coupled with an embrace of the freedom that this recognition allows.” In science fiction, one would like to see a meaning to the universe.
I do not think Baxter did intentionally try to write absurd. I think this is just bad fiction.
In other Baxter stories, the universe is full of life. Nature nanages to create life even under the most unfriendly conditions. Not in this book. There are many loose threads in the book that are not serving any purpose, like the black pendants of the five principal women. You will understand what I mean if you read the book but you probably can find a better book to read.
The following shows the Baxter books in my Kindle library:
The Xeelee Ombinus is a collection of four books that were published separately: Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux, and Ring. They are good reads. In addition, I recommend the following books by him. I read them as hard copies before I bought my Kindle.
Destiny’s Children series, which includes four books: Coalescent, Exultant, Transcendent, and Resplendent.
Manifold series, which includes threee books: Time, Space, and Origin.
Incidentally, in the Manifold series, the protagonist was an engineer called Malenfant, a brilliant engineer with no emphaty. Elon Musk reminds me of Malenfant.
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Zika Statistics
Regular readers from past posts will remember me monitoring the height of the sourdough I buy from Zika’s pastries to see if I could see a pattern to the baker making new sourdough culture. I present the data as a graph:
The date for Day 0 is 4 October 2023.
Unfortunately, I cannot find the poll reference now but I am pretty sure this was the number I read as the approval percentage for Atatürk.
In December 2021, Elon Musk posted a tweet that said "traceroute woke_mind_virus". This tweet was widely interpreted as a reference to the concept of "woke mind virus", which Musk has described as a "prevalent mind virus, and arguably one of the biggest threats to modern civilization".
Facebook also employed monitors but mostly for the purpose of being able to say so. The Facebook main interest was in making money
For the last two decades, a strange form of "don't take prisoners" identity politics was shaping up in America. The US society was always split between progressives and conservatives. Lately, the people who are holding extreme positions on either side managed to hijack their side's agenda. This predated Trump but he used it unashamedly for his own purposes. The political discourse started degenerating into shouting match between two lunatic fringes. People nominate various reasons for this phenomenon including
the effect of the social media and internet: The technology made it easier for lunatics reach other and experience positive reinforcement in virtual echo chambers and it was not helped by unscrupulous operators who want to take advantage of this such as Facebook.
disillusion and distrust caused by lying governments during the so-called war on terror
Growing inequality
Two social media programs that accelerated the divisions were Facebook and Twitter, for different reasons. Facebook wanted to make more money and they could do it by encouraging people to be meaner to each other. Twitter, on the other hand, wanted to do morally the right thing and they hired tens of thousands of content moderators to review tweets and block those that include abuse, harassment, misinformation, and promote violence. Facebook also employed monitors but mostly for the purpose of being able to say so. Their main interest was in making money.
I think the purpose of carrying the sink was to make a visual pun: “I am the new owner now. Let that sink in:
The term "quisling" is derived from the surname of Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian politician who collaborated with the Nazi regime during World War II. In the context of World War II, the term "quisling" was used to describe a person who collaborated with an enemy occupying force.