![]() ![]() It’s a cautionary tale about what is lost when you only focus on wealth.” On Slack, a product manager responded to Simon’s enthusiasm for Musk with skepticism: “I take your point, but as a childhood Greek mythology nerd, I feel it is important to point out that story behind the idea of the Midas touch is not a positive one. Other employees noted the darker motifs of Musk’s career - the disregard he brought to labor relations, the many lawsuits alleging sexual harassment and racial discrimination at his companies - and found his interest in Twitter ominous. Simon, who owned a portrait of himself dressed as a 19th-century French general, told his team, which managed advertising services, that he wanted to build an “impact-focused, egalitarian and empirical culture, where any team member, with a strong data-driven justification, gets the metaphorical center stage.” The move thrilled employees like Simon who chafed at Twitter’s laid-back atmosphere and reputation for shipping new features at a glacial pace. Musk offered to buy the company for the absurdly inflated price of $44 billion. “At least 50% of my tweets were made on a porcelain throne,” he tweeted one evening in late 2021. His incessant, irreverent tweeting violated every norm of corporate America, endearing his fans, pissing off his haters, and making him the second-most-followed active account on the site. Like Trump, Musk knew how to use Twitter to make himself the center of the conversation. Who better to restore Twitter to its former glory than its wealthiest poster? It shadow-banned conservatives, suppressed legitimate discourse about COVID, and selectively kicked elected officials off the platform. In his view, by 2022 the company had been corrupted - beholden to the whims of governments and the liberal media elite. ![]() This was the Twitter that irked Elon Musk so much that he became convinced he had to buy it. Two days after the January 6 insurrection, the platform banned Trump the company had seen the toll of unfettered speech and decided it wasn’t worth it. Disney CEO Bob Iger pulled out of a bid to acquire Twitter, saying the “nastiness” on the platform was extraordinary.Īfter the election and the blown deal, Twitter overhauled its content-moderation policies, staffed up its trust and safety team, and committed itself to fostering “healthy conversations.” Never again would it let itself be used by a tyrant to sow discord and increase polarization. A new consensus that the site was a sewer made it worth a lot less money. ![]() No one understood how to weaponize that influence better than Donald Trump, who in 2016 propelled himself into the White House in part by harnessing hate and vitriol via his feed. What it lacked in profits it more than made up for in influence. Frequently, the platform set the news agenda and transformed nobodies into Main Characters. Twitter rode this momentum to become one of the most important companies in tech: an all-consuming obsession for those working or merely interested in politics, sports, and journalism around the world. That moment, which coincided with the rise of Facebook and YouTube, inspired utopian visions of how social networks could promote democracy and human rights around the world. In its early days, when Twitter was at its most Twittery, circa 2012, executives called the company “the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.” That was the era when the platform was credited for amplifying the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring, when it seemed like giving everyone a microphone might actually bring down dictatorships and right the wrongs of neoliberal capitalism. To Simon and those like him, it was hard to see Twitter as anything other than wasted potential. When he spoke about Twitter, it was often as if someone else were running the company. ![]() Dorsey, who was known for going on long meditation retreats, fasting 22 hours a day, and walking five miles to the office, acted as an absentee landlord, leaving Twitter’s strategy and daily operations to a handful of trusted deputies. Twitter had been defined by the catatonic leadership of Jack Dorsey, a co-founder who simultaneously served as CEO of the payments business Block (formerly Square). “Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer and scientist, and he has a track record of having a Midas touch, when it comes to growing the companies he’s helped lead,” he wrote in Slack. Luke Simon, a senior engineering director at Twitter, was ecstatic. In April 2022, Elon Musk acquired a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder, and was offered a seat on the board. ![]()
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