Elon Musk is making Twitter dumber – or is it the other way around…?

When Elon Musk bought Twitter, it was obvious he’d make the platform dumber. Now, people are realising that this process isn’t a one-way street, with far-right agitator Musk seemingly becoming dumber by the second:

Elon Musk is actually a victim of his own algorithm and rules he established on this platform.

He is consuming the very echo chamber he created, which is full of fake news, brazen racism and omission of facts.

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) August 10, 2024

The enworsening of Twitter

One user succinctly summed up what Twitter is now:

Elon Musk has absolutely cooked this app. It’s a big shame. If it’s not porn, it’s filled with extreme right wing propaganda, neither of which are part of my algorithm or curated as part of my ‘For You’ tab yet that’s all I see every other second post. Nasty work

— Alexandre Pato (@SVCarbaholic) August 1, 2024

It’s not just the world’s biggest pusher of porn, spam, and right-wingery; it’s also the biggest pusher of Musk:

Elon's cousin James Musk held an emergency, "high urgency" meeting at Twitter after the Super Bowl because Elon's tweets performed worse than Joe Biden's.

Then Twitter had engineers rush to change Twitter's algorithm to ensure Elon received "previously unheard-of promotion." pic.twitter.com/mitR2fYTXC

— Tim Onion (@oneunderscore__) February 15, 2023

It’s obvious who Musk is designing the app for, given that he openly responds to right-wing influencers like Chaya Raichik:

The ‘new algorithm’ is basically an iterative process that Musk will use to boost as many anti-humanity accounts as possible while suppressing criticism of the fascist establishment he is a part of.

This was what $44bn bought him: the power to shape collective consciousness. pic.twitter.com/UMu6OBl3IC

— Tiberius (@ecomarxi) August 10, 2024

The enworsening of Elon Musk

It’s obvious that Twitter is worse under Elon Musk. Given that he was a Twitter addict even before he even bought the site, it only makes sense that Twitter’s enworsening would in turn enworsen Musk.

Musk tweets constantly every day, which has raised suspicions about how much work he actually gets done at his day jobs:

Elon Musk is scrolling through twitter too much for a guy who apparently works 100 hour weeks and is the ‘CEO’ of 3 companies. Big time fraud.

— ㅤً (@Evertxn) August 10, 2024

Of the many, many tweets he produces each day, most highlight the man’s hastening descent into idiocy:

The word "slavs" comes from an ancient Slavic word that means "people who speak". It's why in every Slavic language the word for "word" is a variation of "slovo". And also why Slavs call Germans "niemzy" which means "people who don't speak". Musk is talking from his ass. pic.twitter.com/8DFbA2BIc2

— kraut △ (@Der_Parrot) August 10, 2024

THE BILLIONAIRE WHO INHERITED HIS FORTUNE FROM AN APARTHEID EMERALD MINE THINKS HE'S THE RESISTANCE https://t.co/e9Zyy4cTlq pic.twitter.com/trXokualG1

— 🦖 Noah 🪐 (@MrYutyrannus) August 10, 2024

Another recent endeavour of Musk’s is suing advertisers for not advertising on his platform, because he thinks… what does he think exactly? That he has a legal right for companies to advertise on his website?

elon musk consults with his lawyers before going to war with the advertisers pic.twitter.com/6MVwvlEBFt

— Smooth Dunk (@SmoothDunk) August 6, 2024

While the cartoon above is funny, companies don’t need to prove it – they can advertise where they want. Again, what is the man thinking? As we’ll argue later, we suspect at this point he isn’t actually thinking at all.

A vicious spiral for Elon Musk?

Many are arguing that Elon Musk is a victim of his own website:

Mad to watch Elon Musk get radicalised by his own silo-building algorithm in real time

— Ben Beaumont-Thomas (@ben_bt) August 6, 2024

Essentially, Musk is the keeper of the brain rot machine, and the more rotten his brain becomes, the harder he cranks the dial marked ‘WARNING – MAXIMUM ROT’.

Musk’s spiral into dumb-fuckery has recently seen him stoking the flames of race riots with what he believes to be an “inevitable” civil war in the UK:

However, it’s arguable that Musk might actually just be a nasty racist. Because in the next tweet, the South African-born Elon isn’t just saying Muslims control the UK police (a racist and easily disproved point); he’s saying it with a racist analogy which seems to say ‘these Muslims are going to fuck you, you dumb whites – you know, like a gang of Black guys would’:

It’s not just the UK government Musk is at war with – here he is using a graph posted by a crypto-shilling account to suggest that the “Biden-Harris Administration is importing vast numbers of voters”:

The Biden-Harris Administration is importing vast numbers of voters https://t.co/p0OQM0RWpt

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2024

As people pointed out, “illegal aliens” can’t vote:

Yes because babies and undocumented immigrants notoriously vote the most https://t.co/P2eJ5vBvKW

— Linds (@explorativeLins) July 30, 2024

Musk’s war on world leaders has not gone unnoticed, as Politico reported:

In just the last two weeks on the platform — since rebranded X — the billionaire provocateur unloaded a string of posts that poured fuel on the fire of Britain’s worst anti-immigration riots in decades; shared a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris deeming herself the “ultimate diversity hire” for president; and claimed without evidence that the Biden-Harris administration is “importing vast numbers” of illegal aliens to swing the November election.

Musk’s latest flurry of innuendo, half-truths and lies online is making it increasingly clear that it is the tech mogul — and not just his platform — who poses the greatest challenge to governments struggling to rein in content that can incite extremist violence.

“Elon is weaponizing this in a way it hasn’t been weaponized before,” Democratic strategist Adam Parkhomenko said of Musk’s posts and hands-off approach to others’ content on X. “It just is sort of questionable why he’s allowed to do what he’s doing.”

People might be tempted to ask what Musk’s endgame is. Across the world, government’s are eyeing up legislation like the EU’s Digital Services Act, which describes itself as “ensuring a safe and accountable online environment”. In years past, people might have been more worried about government’s stepping in; now, social media is such a cesspit that few would disagree that something needs to change.

So we come back to the same question: what is Musk’s end game?

Is he trying to scare regulators into backing down?

Is he trying to ensure right-wing politicians who are more favourable to him take power?

We’d like to argue that while there may be some truth to the above, the reality is that he’s algorithmed himself into becoming a tweet-happy dumb fuck who simply can’t keep his keyboard quiet. He’s no idea what is or isn’t in his best interest anymore; he just compulsively replies with whatever he instinctively thinks to whatever he habitually reads.

He can’t help himself.

Clownfall

Users like Elon Musk are the product of Twitter like iPhones are the product of Apple – unthinking tweet machines who flood the site with content that other users can react to. It would be genius if it wasn’t so dumb; if it wasn’t completely devaluing the company and driving away advertisers.

To be clear, we’re not arguing that Musk needs to be taken down a peg because he dared to criticise Kamala Harris and Keir Starmer – world leaders we have zero respect for.  We are saying his targeted promotion of far-right bullshit is making his own failure inevitable. The only question is whether his version of Twitter is nerfed out of existence by government regulators or whether it goes bankrupt before they can draw up the legislation.

Featured image via Daniel Oberhaus (Flickr)