Reddit’s Twitter Community Protests Its New Overlord, Elon Musk
Reddit has a community for everything, even other social media platforms. The subreddit /r/Twitter recently made their own protest against Elon Musk after the announcement Musk bought a 9.2% share of Twitter and would be joining its board.
Though few specific changes have been announced, users and employees are concerned about the potential effects Musk’s influence may have on the management of Twitter. Despite the concern, there are also plenty of Musk fans excited for whatever his involvement might bring, including those Donald Trump supporters hoping Musk will bring their leader back to the platform after he was banned from Twitter for inciting violence.
The /r/Twitter community has nearly 80,000 subscribers. Most of the posts in the community are complaining about the platform or trying to find technical support for problems. However, once the news broke of Musk’s large purchase of Twitter shares, the subreddit was quickly flooded by threads about Elon Musk.
Subreddit mods have the ability to pin a particular thread, up to two in fact, to the top of the subreddit’s homepage, which is how one particular mod launched a public protest against Elon Musk by pinning a thread entitled “Elon Musk: Worst Person of the Year.”
This thread is a link to the article by that name on Exberliner.com which covers a range of problematic issues about Musk. As noted in the article, Elon Musk joined the likes of Adolf Hitler in being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The article calls out several problems with Musk, including how bad his companies are for the environment despite him peddling his futurism as ecofriendly.
“Musk’s swindle with E-Autos not only fails to help the environment,” the article states. “He is actively diverting resources from simple steps that could actually cut emissions, such as making mass transit more affordable and more reliable.”
Also addressed is his union-busting behavior, which is common among people of his economic class. The article even quotes a time in early 2021 when Musk declared, “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” and forced his employees into work.
Within the comments of the pinned Reddit thread, there is also a pinned comment adding another anti-Musk piece to the conversation. This comment states “Elon Musk Is Not Your Friend” and links to that video from a YouTube channel called Some More News. The 43-minute video goes into Musk’s long history of grifting consumers and the public with his “big idea” futurism while stoking a “great man” persona for himself as Humanity’s savior.
In reality, billionaires could actually use their immense wealth to help solve a lot of problems we face, but instead they usually seem most interested in “letting the free market” handle it, making potential solutions they can turn a profit on, thus profiteering from the very disasters they had a hand in creating. Capitalist double-dipping, perhaps.
For Twitter, while the platform itself might not be particularly profitable, the value for Musk would likely be in its ability to control and shape narratives. While the early promise of the Internet was that it could democratize information, giving everyone equal access and an equal voice across the globe, the reality of Web 2.0 has shown that it’s become a tool easily weaponized by those with money and resources.
You can buy millions of followers on any social media platform if you’re willing to spend that kind of money, greatly amplifying your voice to levels most regular people could never reach. And if you have a few billion to spare, you can buy 9.2% of a social media network and get a seat on the board. Free speech has never been so expensive.
