Solving For Twitter

If you’re going to basically declare that Twitter is a sacred public good, the world’s town square, you’ve got to at least acknowledge—and presumably have an argument to justify—the fact that there’s something just a little troubling about the richest man in the world buying the town square. 

 Twitter is a political and sociological problem—a problem rooted in conflicts over values—not an engineering problem. It requires a different set of skills.

I mention all that as a preface to the second thing that should be said about Elon Musk, which is that his talents–impressive as they are—are not at all suited to solve Twitter’s problems.

Whatever else you want to say about Elon Musk, there is one undeniable fact in his favor: he is the first person to become the richest person in the world by deliberately setting out to reduce existential risk for humanity. For most of the past two centuries, the people at the top of the economic ladder–the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, For... See more