Elon Musk’s X grift is arguably one of his most spectacular grifts, almost as much so as the Department of Government Efficiency – which was never a department and did nothing to make the government cost us tax cows any less.
The X grift centers on getting people to buy into paying for free speech. Well, that’s not entirely fair to Elon. X does allow people to speak (that is, to post things on the platform) for free in that there’s no charge for that. The trick is that if you don’t pay for reach (i.e., visibility, in Elon-speak) then almost no one will see anything you post. Effectively, you are as muzzled as if you were censored without technically having been censored. This allows Elon to market X as a “free speech” platform, which is – technically – true. As true as “vaccines” that don’t confer immunity on the “vaccinated.”
Some will say it’s Elon’s platform and for that reason he has every right to charge a fee in return for the service X provides. That is inarguable – as well as entirely beside the point. Certainly, he has as much right to demand people pay for reach on X as a guy who owns a parking lot has a right to demand that people pay to park on his lot. But the parking lot owner does not claim to be a free parking spot site. Everyone knows your car will be towed if you park it there without paying. Elon’s dirty pool is claiming X is free speech when the fact is, if you don’t pay for reach, you might as well not bother to post anything on X because almost no one will see it, unless they specifically look for it. Which is like looking for a penny that fell into the ocean dropped from an airplane flying at 30,000 feet.
Even in the case of people with reach, such as myself. I am not Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson, but I do have something of an audience. I do multiple weekly radio shows and podcasts, including some that have big audiences. Thousands of people read EPautos each month. I am not writing any of the foregoing to be braggadocious. I am stating it for context, to make my point about Elon’s “free speech” grift.
How is that I have only got – as of today, January 9 – 188 followers? That is, people who’ve seen something I posted on X and clicked on the “follow” button. (I dislike this business of “following” people; it smacks of something servile. Just as I dislike “consumer,” which smacks of hogs being fed. As in garbage.)
I suppose I am lucky to still have that many (sic) followers, in view of the fact that X regularly unfollows people who do follow me. This isn’t my imagination. I have been told be people I know, personally, who follow me that they discovered – after I asked them about it – that X had unfollowed me. They no longer received notifications about new things I’d published – links to my articles here on EPautos – and so assumed I had not published anything new. It’s a very subtle way of disappearing people without people noticing.
Some may ask: Why do I bother with X? Well, I don’t – except to the extent of doing what I can to expose the grift. I feel duty-bound to do this, especially when it comes to Elon Musk – whose serial grifting is as spectacular as it has been remunerative. I admire Henry Ford and Steve Jobs because they made things that were valued by the market rather than exploited the government. Elon Musk is a “capitalist” of the sort Ayn Rand described in her novels.
Do I wish people would stop using X? Of course. It would be like not buying a time share or refusing to wear a “mask.” The best way to put a stop to grifts is to stop enabling grifts. It is a shame that there’s no real alternative to X in the sense that there is no truly free speech online platform that has the reach of X. But that is only so because so many people continue to use X rather than something else instead. They keep using X because they think it’s the only way anyone will hear what they have to say (assuming they pay for the reach) and that’s true – but it’s also circular.
If they started using other platforms where speech actually is free those platforms would wax – and X would wane.
But it’s like so much else that’s wrong with this country in that not enough of us are willing to break free of what everyone else seems to be doing – just because everyone else seems to be doing it.
. . .
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https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-informational-abyss-gazes-also
Gato has an interesting column today about social media and the algorithms. The reason I link it isn’t so much to explain why Twitter/X doesn’t work for you but to maybe get you to understand the size of the machine you’re working against. The AI engines are learning at the scale of 100 billion new test points daily. In the time between when you wrote this post and this reply (roughly 6 weeks) the AI trained itself with 2 trillion validations for positive engagement or corrections for engagements that did not work. Every single day it’s experimenting an order of magnitude more than the whole of human-scale research and clinical psychology and media manipulation has learned -ever- in totality.
The shark was long ago jumped. So whether you have 5 or 500,000 followers or whatever they use to gauge is missing the point. It’s using you and your content experimentally. You go against the narrative, you present topics that are not conducive to immediate engagement, that aren’t easily suggestive or can be quickly monetized. Even if you assume it’s not political and just about making money you will never get bandwidth. Musk probably does want relatively indifferent politics, he just wants eyeballs. He doesn’t care what you say as long as it helps sells something and you don’t say things so hyperbolic that you drive away traffic. In fact the more over the top the better.
“Say Anything You Like About Me, But Spell My Name Right” — P. T. Barnum
Eric,
Gab is a good platform to be on. They practice real free speech for FREE!
Well, as much as I love this site, Eric, why would I condescend to join some censored social media site? I want to be able to read uncensored content, and to post uncensored comments. I suspect that most of the people who read this site feel the same.
I don’t do social media. These tech-tyrants are my enemies, and I’m not going to enrich their coffers- even if it’s just by my presence increasing their stats. I’m not going to play by their rules. Their environment (and most who use such sites) hold no interest for me.
If we who desire to maintain any vestige of freedom (especially the free exchange of ideas) voluntarily put ourselves under the surveillance and control of these technocrats by availing ourselves of their infrastructure (Like smartphones and social media), then we are no better than the typical statist.
I hear you, Arthur –
To be clear, my object is only to expose the fraud that is Musk. Everything he does is a grift. It annoys me that so many see him as some kind of Ayn Rand hero, when he is everything that stands in opposition to the heroes of her novels.
Wll said, Eric! Well said. Musk’s picture should be in the dictionary under the definition of crony capitalist grifter. (Although the “capitalist” part would be a misnomer- I don’t think the guy in his entire life has ever done anything that was truly free-market. He’s the ultimate parasite, amassing his fortune via government perversions of the market, and being enriched both directly and indirectly by massive amounts of taxpayer money).
Thanks, Arthur!
Especially aggravating – to me, at least – is the adulation of some “conservatives,” who of course reviled Musk before he became “MAGA.” I asked one of these people – a good friend of mine: What happened to DOGE? What happened to the $5k “rebates” we were supposed to get? He changed the subject.
I tracked you down and followed
but I read this column EVERY day, so it is superfluous
love your stuff, carry on
PS I’m that “Cynthia” behemoth – it’s easy to add followers by giving to get
I collected so many, my blue check is free
and I don’t care about reach, not monetized either – I talk to myself at home, too!
What happened to Parler or Minds? I found that I don’t give a shit about social media after dropping Facebook a decade ago, though I joined Parler briefly before it was killed for a time by AWS or whatever it was.
“How is that I have only got – as of today, January 9 – 188 followers?” – EP
Assuming this is an honest question searching for an honest answer . . . I’ll dare to take the bait.
You need to do some soul searching about your brand, who your audience really is, and reevaluate how you perceive your reach.
Your audience (here) seems to me to largely be Gen X and Boomers. Probably more than a few like me never have had a Facebook or Twitter account and never will. Same for all the other social media. Gen X and boomers are an aging, dying, shrinking demographic especially with respect to social media presence.
Many people do not want, nor appreciate free speech absolutism. Sad, but that’s the new Murica’.
The venomous comments here for a particular ethnic group(s) and religion(s) further limits your reach. Don’t think for a minute that your site and its comments section don’t get scraped, rated, and evaluated by the bigger platforms that then use to adjust your reach accordingly. Just looking at my own behavior I used to share this site way with others way more than my can now.
The reality is that although your free speech absolutism is highly admirable from a libertarian position, it limits the reach of your brand and will restrict your reach elsewhere. This ought not to be the case but that is the world we live in.
YouTube is the second most commonly used search engine 2nd to Google. How is your presence over there? Less than 2k subscribers and 650 videos that have very little engagement.
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you, your brand, and your commitment to free speech. I make small donations here when I can.
If you want to grow the brand, revisit the brand strategy. If you like it as is, that’s cool too.
You have one more follower on X. looks like i am #633.
Hi Sptifire,
Thanks – but I’m only seeing 187! Are you sure you followed me? I think you may have followed my old/dead ID. This is the one I opened after Xcrement blocked the old one for calling Keir Starmer a pederast protector: https://x.com/apostate27832
I will give Elon some leeway on this. After he bought twitter, the corporate media government complex tried to shut it down by pulling advertising. It was Elon against the world when it came to funding.
Everything is a trade off and if he has to charge to keep it viable, it’s not the worst situation. It was and maybe is still the rare place where you can get unapproved takes on events. Would we be were we are with MAHA and seeing Israeli genocide without it, esp now that Tiktok is owned by the zionists?
It’s not perfect, but nothing is.
Hi Dan,
Yeah, but Elon is worth – what – $60 billion? If he’s really an ardent free speech guy, I think he could afford to lose a few advertisers. He’s a con man. A grifter. And his greatest con has been persuading people he’s not.
Eric,
He is definitely a grifter, but he didn’t make the rules either. Probably paid for some of them though. The $60 billion is on paper, not sure what his liquidity is.
Europe is trying to fine him into compliance / out of existence.
To be fair, if I were him, I would prefer to have twitter stand alone without constantly dumping money into it.
I see we have an Elon shill in our midst. How quaint.
Eric,
Musk is closing in on becoming a trillionaire. According to an internet search, he is listed as having a net worth of 714 billion!
“But how much of that $714 billion is on paper?” [Dan]
So if you’re wealthy you’re expected to give away things for free?
At what point are you just well off enough not to be expected to enable freeloaders.
What you say regarding his twisting “free speech” is true. But people have been exploiting words and concepts to sell shit since 1776. Come celebrate your Independence Day by buying a new couch!
But there’s nothing in the Constitution that guarantees you free speech. The 1st Amendment just prevents the government from suppressing your right to speech. It’s not the government’s job to force other citizens to do or not do anything. The government just can’t lock you up for saying your piece. That’s all it means.
You are definitely not guaranteed a platform.
If you wanted something published in a newspaper they give you a free option, the letters to the editor. Which they will selectively publish. If you want better space they have a way, called an ad.
There’s other ways to get in the paper. Get arrested, kick the bucket for an obit, announce a marriage, publish a business press release.
But even this isn’t free. If you want to read what’s in the paper you have to subscribe or go to the library and read it. Are pay walls and print edition subscription one step away from communism, too?
If you want real page space to say whatever you want about anything you you want you need to buy an ad. So that’s paying for reach, isn’t it? I suppose though in your view newspapers are supposed to put your letters and a link to your blog on the front page if they really respect your right to free speech.
Hi Mandy,
You missed my point. I don’t expect Musk to give anything away. I object to his serial dishonesty. His claims about “free speech” are a lie. Because it isn’t free, is it? If he openly stated that people who don’t pay might as well not participate – because whatever they post would not be seen – then fine. But he doesn’t do that. Also, his oily algorithm favors/promotes some not others – which (again) is his business. But it’s still oily.
Like Musk.
Social media platforms are like the old vertically integrated film studios. The reason why so many cities have old theaters is because all the studios owned everything about a production, from the actors working on them to the soundstages to the optical printers to the theaters themselves. So if you wanted to see the latest Clark Gable blockbuster it was going to be at the State Theatre (MGM’s chain) downtown. If you didn’t want to go to the State for whatever reason, you never saw Gable perform.
It took anti-trust court cases to break up the studio system. I’m afraid the same thing will be necessary to break the back of the Facebag/X duopoly. But for that to happen someone would probably need to challenge Section 230 first. And because X and FB’s entire business model depends on the ability to edit/remove/promte whatever they wish without repercussions, they’d fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo.
The entire Internet is a sandbox that we’re allowed to play in as long as we “play nice” according to the owners of the sandbox.
Big social platforms such as Facebag and X and Next Door are playgrounds for spies, ranging from three-letter agencies monitoring threats against politicians to the DMV [another three-letter agency], looking for hooligans who ‘deleted’ their diesels. I don’t register or post there.
I’m regularly surprised by how many public-facing groups use Facebook as a primary communication channel. Unregistered visitors can only see two or three posts before being blocked by a login screen. It limits the audience, excluding those like myself who are actively seeking out their information.
Screw social media. I’m more interested in burrowing into the dark web to buy some primo narcotics such as ecstasy and LSD. Turn on, tune in, drop out. 🙂
Alternatives to Twitter/X exist, and the fundamental service is a long afternoon CS grad student project, but the appeal of the service is about the dopamine hit of the app.
Twitter’s app, formerly the open source Tweetie client, has been carefully managed for 18 years, engineered by psychologists and developers to maximize the user experience in the most minute ways imaginable.
Funny how they crushed Parler.
Parler crushed itself by trying to be what they were trying to beat. A “better” or “freer” Twitter won’t draw enough people for success. What’s needed is something radically different and in control of the end users (likely managed by smaller administrative companies, much like corporate email). Wouldn’t be free as in beer, but if it offers a unique experience I think it would work.