Since Elon Musk’s forty-four billion dollar acquisition deal of ‘X’ in 2022, the site has been filled with racist and Neo-Nazi rhetoric. It is no surprise that the site has sunk so low, as Musk has been falling down an increasingly hateful rabbit hole for a while now. In 2023, he expressed that the “woke mind virus” had “killed” his daughter, who identifies as transgender. Since then, Musk has been using his website as a platform for hate speech under the guise of free speech.
Last year, Musk aggressively told advertisers not to advertise on his platform, concluding that they were trying to blackmail him. Advertisers adhered to his request and pulled away from ‘X’ due to the increasingly pro-Nazi content on the site. Clearly, Musk had not thought this decision through as he is now suing a group of advertisers, claiming that they cost the company billions of dollars in revenue while violating antitrust laws. It makes sense that advertisers would not want to be associated with a site where their ads can appear next to a post containing hateful speech. What does not make sense is why Musk considers this blackmail.
Furthermore, due to Musk’s incompetence in managing a platform, the value of the company has fallen by 71% since the buyout in 2022. This is likely a result of not only advertisers pulling out of the website but also Musk deciding to change the website’s widely recognized name, “Twitter”, to something blander, “X”. This decision is seemingly nonsensical, as many companies wish they could have the brand recognition that “Twitter” had, with words such as “Tweet” and “Tweeting”. These words have now been replaced with generic statements like “Posts” and “Posting”.
Musk’s terrible management has gotten so bad that the website has been banned in Brazil, due to Musk refusing to ban accounts spreading misinformation as requested by the Supreme Court of Brazil. Musk claimed that it was censorship, and he does not support that. However, his refusal to control the amount of racism, anti-semitism and misinformation on the website, suggests that he does not care what information is put on his platform in the first place.
Musk is continually digging himself and the company into a deeper hole, as they will only lose more money in ad revenue and the website’s reputation continues to plummet.
