Twitter expatriates - don't let the screen door hit you in the fanny

The Musk-Twitter fandango, in all of its glory

Every once in a rare while, something comes along that prompts a can't help yourself, laugh-out-loud moment. This week I've enjoyed an entire series of these courtesy of Elon Musk's acquisition of the social media platform, Twitter. Mr. Musk said that he intends to make Twitter a private company with an improved focus on free-speech and balanced moderation.

For the record, I'm agnostic on whether or not Mr. Musk will succeed. I know that Musk is a brilliant and innovative businessman with an enviable track record. I also know that he's unpredictable and occasionally lacks the emotional self-control to avoid, say, causing the stock price of one of his own companies to plummet after some ill-considered public musings. Two hundred and eight character manifestos, as it turns out, are not for everyone.

I question why a bright guy like Musk want's to have anything to do with running a social media empire that seems to be mostly a gigantic pain in the butt. It seems to me that even Musk, with great successes in SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink and The Boring Company, has acquired an unprofitable company, mired in controversy, and that his prospects for changing any of these shortcomings are less than great.

But if anyone can turn Twitter around, it just might be Mr. Musk. Especially if the reaction to his mere acquisition of Twitter says anything. The reverberations have been revealing – and not in a way that that casts the left in any flattering light.

If you needed one last tidbit of information to convince you that Big Tech in this country is highly susceptible to influence from the left, just observe the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the run on safe-spaces, that have occurred in response to Musk acquiring Twitter.

My favorite of all the triggered stories is that of Vijaya Gadde. Ms Gadde, an attorney, is Twitter's chief executive in charge of trust, safety, legal and public policy functions.

Ms. Gadde was the Twitter executive in charge of, among other things, kicking then President Donald Trump from Twitter, and censoring The New York Post from Twitter for an accurate story about Hunter Biden's laptop that broke in the weeks leading up to his father's victory in the 2020 presidential campaign. She is reputed to have cried during a meeting that she called with Twitter staff just after Musk acquired the platform.

No less than Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly admitted that banning The New York Post over accurate reporting was a mistake. Dorsey also seems to be open to the idea that Musk may be able to restore Twitter so some semblance of balance in the area of free speech.

Twitter may not be subject to First Amendment guarantees, but when government officials, or agents acting on their behalf, can get companies, like Twitter, to eliminate speech that they don't like, it's a matter of concern to everyone. The only difference between left and right, on this point, is timing. If it's not you and your crowd now, it will be sometime down the road.

But all of this news, arguably very good news, has triggered Ms. Gadde and many of her friends in tech and in the media.

Gadde seems to have a remarkably thin skin for someone who enjoys the title of “Twitter's conscience” and has been glowingly profiled as the woman behind “Twitter Going Full Resistance.” To me, this, all by itself, tells the story of how Big Tech and their progressive allies in the media are sufficiently blinded by a combination of arrogance, bias and an inability to consider points of view they consider “wrong,” that they are incapable of fairly moderating conversations in a public square.

Given the lay of the land, at least the bar for Musk is low. He has that going for him. But I've seen this play out before - at Idaho State University. It's very possible for even a low bar for success to be too high. We'll just have to wait and see.

My absolute favorite part about the Twitter-Musk fandango is the manner in which it has prompted many progressives to self-cancel and leave Twitter before Musk has instituted a single change. I think that the reason that many of the left are panicked by Musk's acquisition of Twitter is because it comes at a time when progressive institutions: wokeness, cancel-culture and the left's overwhelming grip of the media, are under scrutiny. Even, perhaps, beginning to wane. I'd panic too, if I were them.

The signs are out there.