Elon’s buyout of Twitter has widely been criticized as one of the worst mistakes of his career:
But I argued in in 2023 that liberal elites had errored gravely by letting a major organ or propaganda fall into the hands of someone who was avowedly un-woke, especially running up into an election year. This was post-Covid Elon, when it was already obvious that he was no friend of the left, not pre-2018 Elon, who was still a darling of Reddit.
Democratic finance and media elites could have pooled their money to buy the struggling social network. In doing so, Twitter would not have lost advertisers, and the valuation would have held up much better compared to the immediate 50% haircut after Elon took the reins, so it’s not like the suitors would have lost much money on paper by making a counteroffer. Also, he didn’t even want the site and fought a futile legal battle to back out from the deal, so the counteroffer could have possibly even been lower than Elon’s original offer instead of a bidding war.
Perhaps elites rationalized that Elon would be forced to sell Twitter at a fire sale back to its original owners, so why stop him? From 2022-2023, it would seem like Elon had overpaid and it would go down as a major blunder. Advertisers were jumping ship. But in hindsight maybe it it was a genius move.
Admittedly, the advertiser situation is still bad; Elon last week threatened a lawsuit alleging that advertisers colluded to boycott the site. Much of the media coverage focusses on the advertiser situation, but Twitter is also indirectly a bet on the intensification of the news cycle and politics becoming more heated and polarizing, which 2024 will go down as a record.
So far for 2024 we have seen:
-Campus controversies and woke backlash (like against Harvard)
-Ongoing Middle East tensions post-October 7th
-Biden’s debate disaster
-Biden replaced by Kamala
-Trump assassination attempt
-Cloudstrike debacle
-Olympics
-Tim Walz and JD Vance controversies
-Trump-Elon interview
Admittedly this is an election year, but still, there is no denying that things are much more intense now than even just months ago. We still have more debates, the election itself, and the inauguration (and likely even more unforeseen events, such as in the Middle East). In each of these instances, Elon positions himself at the center of the controversy or media circus, such as endorsing Trump after the failed assassination attempt, which eventually led to the interview last night. In both these instances, Twitter saw enormous engagement. Consequently, tweets by Elon are getting much more engagement now compared to as recently as 3-6 months ago. Moreover, the left has lost its monopoly on discourse, compared to pre-2022 when Twitter accounts were routinely suspended for ‘misinformation’ or ‘hate speech’.
Twitter has become a major media outlet on the level of CNN or Fox , but Elon is now at the center. He can use any event to strengthen his brand and nudge policy in his favor, such as endorsing Trump, who if elected may return the favor by enacting policy or deregulation that will help Tesla. This can amount to billions of dollars of extra revenue for Tesla indirectly and the rise of Tesla stock even if Twitter/X is losing money.