Twitter is not the same as SpaceX or Tesla
Why Elon Musk cannot work his magic with Twitter
Let us be real: Elon Musk is a really smart guy. The success he has had in revolutionizing the rocket industry and the EV industry doesn't just happen out of pure luck. Those achievements have made many people elevate Elon Musk to technology leader Demi-God. Anyone who disagrees are brushed off as envious or stupid.
But if there is anything I have learned from studying successful people, it is that almost all of them have major flaws in some areas. The Gods of evolution are not so gracious that they give some people win the lottery in every aspect of life. A lot of success Elon Musk has had has been built on experiences and traits which are a great advantage in one area but a great problem in another.
Elon Musk has background in physics, software and business in terms of education and career. He has a mind well suited for solving tricky technical question. It is also something he enjoys. By his own account and that of others he spend a lot of time around engineers talking solutions with them.
It is the kind of skills that have mattered greatly when building Tesla and SpaceX. Those companies have been about overcoming challenging technical problems. Because both companies have had a strong and appealing mission: electrifying all transportation and colonizing Mars, Elon Musk has been able to attract top talent who believe in that mission and work hard to achieve it.
In many ways Elon Musk has almost had the role of technology "Führer" or "Glorious leader." In such as role, employees will put up with a lot of nonsense because they are part of something big they believe in. The capricious nature of Elon Musk has also been offset by the fact that employees have a lot more freedom to pursue novel solutions. Elon Musk has not buried his business in lots of complex bureaucracy and red tape the way traditional aerospace and car industry is. Elon Musk has basically brought silicon valley software culture to these industries.
So, why cannot Elon Musk repeat the same successful formula for Twitter? Because Twitter is already in the software industry. People already have the kinds of creative freedom aerospace and the car industry has often lacked. Elon Musk isn't brining it. Quite the contrary, Elon Musk is bringing an authoritarian streak insisting that nobody works at home. He fires half the staff based on rather arbitrary metrics.
The second problem is that Elon Musk isn't bringing a grand vision people can get behind. Twitter isn't sending rockets to Mars. While I use Twitter plenty it cannot exactly be considered a technical marvel. They are not doing anything particularly novel or revolutionary in terms of technology. It is easy to see why somebody who wants to do something exciting wants to work at Tesla instead of Toyota, but is there anything pushing software engineers to desperately want to work at Twitter instead of YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Zoom, Apple or any other number of software companies?
There isn't anything special about Twitter. Elon Musk has taken for granted that the best and the brightest wants to work for him. But how much of that is really about working for him as opposed to working for companies with amazing vision and building exciting products? Elon Musk is throwing employees at Twitter under the bus left and right. He is acting like a bully. He can get away with that at Tesla, but for a common like Twitter you need to actually be an attractive workplace.
Keep in mind, Elon Musk has always paid below the industry standard because people want to make exciting products. No software engineer will sign up for a software company which makes nothing special, has below average salary and tyrant for boss. If Twitter looses too much of their existing talent and Elon Musk is incapable of attracting new talent, then the company will not survive long term.
Elon Musk may not need high caliber software engineers to do what Twitter does, but technology isn't even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that Elon Musk doesn't grasp content moderation, human psychology or society very well. You might ask: Why not? He is a super smart guy. Why would he not get this?
Elon Musk by his own admission has Asperger. Asperger doesn't affect your IQ and actually gives certain advantages. Let us look at these two classic symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome:
An intense obsession with one or two specific, narrow subjects
Memorizing preferred information and facts easily
We can see both of these with Elon Musk and also understand why they have helped his career. For anyone in a technical field memory for facts is a benefit. Likewise, is extremely narrow focus the problems he is trying to solve has been a great advantage. Thus, a lot of his success can likely be attributed to him having Asperger's syndrome. But there is a catch. Those positives come with a long string of negatives:
Inappropriate or minimal social interactions
Not using or understanding nonverbal communication, such as gestures, body language and facial expression
Difficulty managing emotions, sometimes leading to verbal or behavioral outbursts, self-injurious behaviors or tantrums
Not understanding other peoples’ feelings or perspectives
In short, while Elon Musk has high IQ, he has likely lower emotional intelligence than the average person. Read up on Elon Musk and you will find a large number of examples of this. Just in ways he treated his former wife when they lost a child for instance. I am not saying this to vilify Elon Musk, but to get across that he has some serious handicap, which people seem to ignore when they put him on a pedestal thinking his brilliance will overcome any challenge.
Twitter as a platform relies on understanding people, their feelings, and emotions. Elon Musk has frequently made a fool of himself in this space. Just look at his response to the cave diver in Thailand he called pedophile. Somebody with higher social intelligence would not have made such a major publicity blunder.
The latest example of his poor understanding of communication and media is the Twitter blue verification mess. It allowed numerous Twitter accounts masquerading as official companies to troll Twitter. Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly took a heavy hit on the stock exchange because of this:
One of the most viral examples was a verified Eli Lilly account that tweeted “insulin is free now,” which forced the real ELi Lilly to apologize for the “misleading” tweet because its insulin is, in fact, not free. Another fake Eli Lilly then apologized for the actual Eli Lilly’s apology. An account that appeared to belong to a Twitter ad sales rep desperately tweeted at Musk to remove the fake Eli Lilly accounts. Both of the fake Eli Lilly accounts were suspended, but the tweets still sent the pharma company’s stock into a nosedive.
Needless to say such drama will send advertising companies away from Twitter screaming. Elon Musk has been so obsessed with the narrative from the alt-right and the Trump crowd about woke Twitter hampering free speech. Hence Elon Musk has doubled down on the idea that anything goes, not realizing that is a PR nightmare with advertisers which keeps the company afloat. Not to mention he sets up Twitter for being sued by numerous companies loosing money from this mess.
It is easy for people to hate moderation and being censored. But most people will quickly realize that when there is no moderation or censoring, you end up with a platform nobody wants to be at. The right-wingers who get upset because their vaccination conspiracy theories or xenophobia get censored might get equally upset about foul language and nudity not getting censored. Or what if Putin and Xi start spreading propaganda on social media. Is their "free speech" paramount or is there a duty to limit disinformation and media manipulation?
Please note, I am not suggesting particular limitations on speech here. I am simply trying to communicate the idea that very few people will like zero moderation in practice. And the ones who will like it the least are companies with deep pockets which anyone in the media industry will rely on.
I don't rule out that Elon Musk can come on top. Many have underestimated Elon Musk in the past and been proven very wrong. The way Elon Musk may get on top in the end is through some kind of technological innovation, but the odds are against him:
He is making Twitter unattractive for competent people to work
He has already damaged the reputation of Twitter and made paying customers flee
How do you a major change with half the staff?
Thus far he has not shown any real ability to understand the industry
He has a handicap when it comes to understanding social situations
Some predict that Twitter will collapse, but I don't think that. Rather I think Twitter risks a gradual decline into obsolescence the way we have seen before with Yahoo, ICQ, IRC, Skype, Tumblr, MySpace and many other technology platforms. Most likely Elon Musk will at some point cut his losses and sell out.
Other technology companies will exploit the vacuum left by Twitter. It could end up being filled by Jack Dorsey's new social media platform Bluesky or maybe even Mastodon which is seeing increased traffic these days. I recently joined myself just in case.
What do you think? Can Elon Musk pull this off and if so what from his history suggests he can transform social media?