I was asked yesterday "when will you be quitting Twitter" by a good mate. I was a bit miffed in truth, that someone thought I was so indecisive that if I thought a platform was completely untenable, I'd not depart immediately. There has been lots of talk of quitting Twitter recently. Everyone from the Guardian to Clifton Suspension Bridge have left the platform. If I am honest, I've given far more thought to stopping my subscription to The Guardian than I have to 'quitting Twitter'. The reason? Well it costs me a small fortune to buy the Guardian and there is almost nothing worth reading in it. I used to have a whole list of people that I'd check in the morning, as they had something worth reading. These days, it really is only sketch writer John Crace left, as well as Dooensbury on a Friday morning. I buy the Daily Express and The Guaridan every day. It gives me a balance of writing on the right and left. It helps me hone my arguments. Much of what is in the Express political content is complete rubbish, but a trip to Twitter will confirm that there are no shortage of people who beleive it. Let me give you one example. This morning, their political writer Leo McKinstry claimed Labour were wasting Britians reserves of oil and gas by not exploiting them. Think of this logically, it is an absurd statement. The reserves will be there forever, until we extract them. We are simply making a decision not to exploit them now. If that decision turns out to be a mistake, future generations will still have some wealth in the bank. If I hadn't read this twaddle, I'd not have my arguments formed should someone say something so ridiculous. There was a fascinating feature about a crime writer and how his terrifying experience of being abducted as a teenager influenced his writing. The only article of real interest in the Guardian today (apart from Crace & Doonesbury) was an interveiw with Gwen Stefani, where she admitted that Madness and the Specials were two of her favourite bands. Stefani is a big guilty pleasure of mine (don't tell Mrs T). She used to be on rotation at the Gym when I used to do a lot of running on a treadmill. The point I'm making is that as a rational person, I don't spend money on information sources because I agree with the politics of the owners.
If I didn't subscribe to products owned by people I find reprehensible, I'd never have subscribed to the Rupert Murdoch owned Sky Sports. As a football fan, this would have meant I'd be depriving myself of one of the few things I really enjoy. Of course, I hated lining the pockets of Rupert Murdoch, a man I despise and who I believe has caused more damage to the Uk than anyone since the second world war. But life is full of compromises. Had I not subscribed to Sky Sports, it would have massively impacted my life in a negative way. I doubt Rupert Murdoch would have missed the money I spent, that made its way into his bank account. Ironically, Sky studios in Elstree have actually ended up making a massive contribution to the local economy. I still can't stand Murdoch, but the concept of watching Strictly on the BBC instead of the football on Sky is something that I personally couldn't do. I'd much rather Someone else got the cash, but in our Capitalist society, that is not how it works. We get these powerful billionaires with a monopoly on information and we have to live with it. It is also worth pointing out that before Sky TV, football coverage was far less professional and there was far less opportunity to watch it. The sad truth is that such billionaires do deliver products that make our lives better, even if they do many other things that make our lives worse.
Which brings us to Elon Musk and Twitter. I first heard of Musk when I started using Ebay in around 2002. I made a small fortune trading on the platform. Musk also owned Paypal. Whatever you may think of Musk, Paypal is a brilliant platform and is the payment platform we use for online payments at the studio. For someone despised by the left, it is rather ironic that Musk invested a fortune building the Tesla green brand, which makes electric vehicles and batteries, which are seen as the future of the green economy. Unlike Trump, who is all for a dirty carbon economy, Musk has probably done more to move us to electric than any other person on the planet. You may not like it, but the facts are there. Then there is SpaceX. Now you may see it as completely bonkers. Musk says that it is the only way that humanity can ever survive in the long term. Moving beyond planet Earth will secure the long term future of humanity. He has a point, whether you like it or not, it is a worthy goal. Which brings us to his takeover of Twitter. From the moment it was first mooted, it was met with howls of anger from the left. "How dare a zillionaire take over a start up that we like?" seemed to be the refrain.
Twitter was a company bleeding money. Press coverage indicated that when Musk saw the books, he was horrified. Much of what he's done to try and make it turn a profit has been very painful, but he's not the first boss to fire staff in a loss making business. He's not the first boss to try and wring every penny out of his customers. He's also not the first boss to mess up a product. Twitter is now a horrible environment. Musk welcomed back the likes of Tommy Robinson and all manner of US far right loonies. He made changes that encouraged them to spout bile on line. There is nothing nice to say about it, except that in the West we believe in free speech and sadly that means these sort of people have as much right to spout bile, so long as they are not breaking the law, as woke lefties like me.
I have my own suspicions as to why Elon Musk has snuggled up to Trump. I suspect the main reason is that he knew Trump would win and it would be good for business. He is in the inner circle. He has the opportunity to shape the future of the USA. Unlike just about every other appointment Trump has made, Musk is actually very intelligent and has acheived things in his life. His wealth was built in tech and in spotting opportunities that no one else even realised existed. How could he not see an opportunity in what the Trump presidency offers? Musk does not come from a mega wealthy background. His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, emerald dealer, and property developer. He clearly comes from a family where taking risks and seizing opportunities is in his blood. My assessment and it may be cruel, is that Musk see's Trump as a gateway to realising his dreams of space exploration and destroying the old financial world order. He sees a bloke who appears to be suffering from a touch of dementia, who has appointed a bunch of absolute morons to run his government, because they all tell him he's marvellous. If you are clever, ambitious and a risk taker, what is not to like?
That is not to say I don't have massive concerns, which are probably just due to my paranoid and cynical nature. My biggest is Musk's investment in "The Boring Company". What does every credible Bond style villain have, whilst they are planning to destroy the world with nuclear bombs? A massive bunker where they can be safe. I do wonder if Trump ever watched any of the Bond films with Roger Moore? If I was him, I'd be a tad reticent about snuggling up too close to Musk, but maybe that's just why I don't own Paypal and am not President of the USA.
A friend suggested that Musk wants to be the next President. Whatever you may think of him, that's impossible as he was not born in the USA. It would require a change to the constitution and I doubt that will ever happen. I suspect Musk has bigger dreams. He has his eyes on the whole universe. For him, I suspect the USA is a bit small for his ambitions. My gut feeling is that Musk will be one of the few sane people in the Trump administration and that cannot be a bad thing. What few people seem to understand is that as the owner of Twitter, he has ownership of one of the biggest data mines of personal information on the planet. Every opinion that you've ever expressed on Twitter is owned by Mr Musk. I used to write software that mined information to spot fraud patterns in UK government benefits payments. What we soon learned was that once you start looking at such data, you learn all manner of things. A whole bunch of types of fraud were identified that no one even new existed until the data was crunched. I have no doubt that all of the Tommy Robinsons and their followers are having their data thoroughly crunched as we speak and I suspect that the usage of the data will only become apparent when someone realises how you can use it. I suspect that with AI analysis, Mr Musk will be able to study my Twitter history and tell me what colour underpants I'm wearing, what I'm having for dinner tonight, what time I go to the toilet, what I'm listening to on the radio and all manner of other information that would be highly useful if he decided to destroy me by fair means or foul. Whilst I doubt I'd find myself in his crosshairs, I do wonder if all of these libertarian Americans who he's actively encouraging to share their lives and thoughts on Twitter will be quite so lucky, when they cease to be useful and stand in his way.
And if you've been tweeting your life away for the last fifteen years and you've quit, it's too late. You've already put it out there. Every time you've tweeted that a company has badly served you, every time you've posted a restaurant, gig or coffee shop you like, every time you mention someone you know, everything. It's all there and it can all be crunched. Even things like the time you tweet at will give away things. There is also the location you are tweeting from. All of it. Not just Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. All of them. The reason why a loss making concern such as Twitter was worth so much to Musk is because Tech investors understand this. Let me give you a trite example. If Mr Musk owned a rare bootleg album of The Ramones at The Roundhouse in 1977, he could get his lackeys to crunch Twitter and he may well conclude that I'd be a great person to sell it to and send me a Tweet offering it to me. There are far darker things he may want to do with data. Who knows? The sad thing about Twitter and all of these other platforms is you've already put it out there.
Which brings us back to the title of this blog. Why I am staying on Twitter.
1. It costs me nothing.
2. IMHO Musk is no worse than most other multi billionaires and tech companies.
3. The horse had bolted, my digital history on Twitter is already in his hands
4. I beleive in free speech and much as I dislike nutcases, they have as much right to post crap as snowflakes like me. I don't want to belong to a platform that is an eho chamber for my views.
5. No one has actually made a rational case for leaving, other than their personal dislike of Musk.
6. Twitter is still the best of breed and I see good content on it.
7. I dislike Rupert Murdoch more than Musk and I still have Sky Sport, so it would be deeply hypocritical to flounce off Twitter just to keep my lefty mates happy.
8. Every review of every film, play and record I've read in the Guardian in the last ten years has been wrong, If they like something, it is invariably rubbish and vice verse, so their flounce off Twitter is most unconvincing.
9. Like reading the Daily Express, Twitter exposes me to difficult arguments from people I don't like, which ultimately makes me better able to argue my case.
10. If Musk succeeds in his aims of moving forward humanities colonisation of space, it may mean humanity lasts a bit longer than it would if we were earthbound. As someone with a vested in the survival of humanity, it seems a worthy ambition.
11. Its the zillionaires that we never hear about who really worry me.
12. Having someone in the Government of the USA who is not a thick, useless Trump yes man can only be good.
And what would make me change my mind? That is really quite simple. If I found that I couldn't be arsed looking at it anymore. I'd not flounce off, I'd just stop looking at it and unconsciously disengage, like I did with Friends Reunited and Myspace. Or if Elon Musk bans me as he doesn't like this blog.
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Anyway, now I've got your attention, here's another plug for The False Dots gig on Sunday at 2pm, at The Dublin Castle. Please come along. We are launching our first album in 45 years!
