Monday, December 19, 2022

Uncommitted

Twitter users just voted for Elon Musk to step down as head of the company. Before votes were cast, Musk said he'd abide by the result.

Mr. Musk also said that he wouldn't take action against the ElonJet Twitter account. So who cares what he said about the results of his poll? Including this in headlines seems like a pointless "gotcha" attempt. It's understood that there is an adversarial relationship between Mr. Musk and many members of established media outlets, whom Mr. Musk tends to see as biased and dishonest. If people didn't care that Mr. Musk created a reason to walk away from other public commitments he's made (which is pretty much the entire story of his relationship to Twitter), it's difficult to see why they would care about this.

Elon Musk, and his supporters, and likely the universe of Twitter users more broadly, don't care enough about what members of the media think of him for them to be able to call him on the carpet. People who were going to leave Twitter have already gone; those who remain are indifferent to it all, or understand that they need Twitter more than Twitter (and, by extension, Elon Musk) needs them.

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