I haven't deleted my Twitter account, but I will, soon. I have mostly stopped tweeting. I don't bother checking the account or its updates or catching up anymore. Japan Twitter accounts are still crazy active though. Those are still kinda fun. What a pity.
This opinion piece resonates because I share the writer's opinion. Clare Malone wrote 'How Elon Musk Could Affect the 2024 Election', published in The New Yorker on June 13, 2023. This illustrates it, "The personal politics of Twitter’s owner wouldn’t matter so much if he hadn’t also demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for pettiness."
I normally wouldn't care so much about who bought Twitter or who owns it, but in this case, the owner's style of corporate takeover was a tad unsavory and his personal branding is so huge till I'm suddenly averse towards supporting any of his ventures. We were sort of keen to get a Tesla if it could get its software and pricing right in Singapore. But that tanked. Acck.
Musk’s personal political leanings and his cultivation of right-wing voices wouldn’t matter as much if he hadn’t demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for pettiness. Naked displays of insecurity are typically welcome and hilarious in billionaires—see: Jeff Bezos’s five-hundred-million-dollar yacht with a busty mermaid figurehead that looks an awful lot like his new fiancée—but Musk has a taste for personal vendetta that runs from the benign (cancelling a customer’s Tesla order because he didn’t like the guy’s blog review of a company event) to the malignant (trying to get a lawyer who interviewed Musk during an S.E.C. investigation fired from his position in private practice). The malignant pettiness has only grown since his acquisition of Twitter. In December, Musk removed several journalists’ Twitter accounts after they wrote about or linked to an account that shared publicly available information about his private-jet usage. This instinct to censor those with whom he disagrees—a sort of personal autocracy—coupled with the alarming news about Twitter’s enthusiastic compliance with takedown requests from governments, should raise some alarms about what limits on political speech could come during the 2024 cycle. Could Musk put his thumb on the scale for Republicans?
Every generation and century of leadership and people shape their own politics. This era is no different. We look to both US and China in our foreign policies. It'a always a delicate waltz. How we lean also has a lot to do with our geographical location and who our neighbors are. The sensitivity has to be there, and it's something that as a people, we haven't fully grasp.
In Singapore, there isn't a clear left or right wing faction in political parties, not really. It's just the incumbent and the 'opposition'. There really isn't a clear divide of policies or ideas. It's an opposing voice, and hopefully measured and valid. But for the society at large, there seems to be a clear divide as to which segment the people lean towards. I'd love to think that I'm moderate, but all my values and the principles I support seem to lean towards a mild left. I could care less about Singapore's own upcoming Presidential elections. Looking at all the candidates, to me, is a no brainer vote. I would have to vote, methinks.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has just announced a 2024 presidential run with Elon Musk on Twitter Space, moderated by David Sacks. Of course he is Republican. His 'Stop Woke Act' bill in Florida is pure madness, and so is his proposed law banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. I shudder to think of how much wreckage that could pile up should he actually win.
When a supposedly for-free-speech and neutral Twitter lends candidates platforms to air their views, perhaps the owner shouldn't be involved in it. Or at the very least, give air-time to all candidates. That's fair isn't it? Then it's erm less Republican-facing in the presentation of whether a corporate channel favors one candidate over another.
Musk’s prominence is, in many ways, a continuation of the personality politics that was popularized when Donald Trump ran for President. Though Twitter was never a bastion of admirable civic discourse during the Trump years, at least it was regularly filled with sharp arguments; now that it’s run by a man who revels in ad hominem attacks (and attention), the chatter on the app is just a lot dumber. And, unlike Trump, Musk’s incessant desire for clicks and controversy carries a significant downside. Trump was a national joke who suddenly found himself being taken seriously; Musk is only lately a national joke, having fallen from great heights of seriousness. With Tesla’s stock price recently tanking and Twitter flailing, it’s unclear whether there will be a pile of money to cushion his landing.
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