Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

by Kate Conger

“Elon only wants to hear positive things,” Rezaei instructed him. “Don’t tell him about what we can’t do or try to justify the status quo.” “Elon just wants to do what benefits humanity.”

But incidents like the data scientist’s confrontational exit scarred him. Whether he fully realized it at the time or not, Musk had gambled his reputation and billions of dollars on the haphazard acquisition of his favorite toy.

The company needed a leader who deeply understood psychology, politics, and history, and the messy ways people connect instantaneously and constantly online. Instead, it got someone whose offer for the company—$54.20 a share—included a weed joke.

AT THE TIME OF WRITING, the story of Musk’s conquest is not over. It may yet end with a bang or a whimper—or an improbable success. But what is clear already is that Musk has destroyed the platform. What he owns is no longer Twitter—not in name, but also neither in substance nor in spirit. Gone are the people who built it idealistically, at a time when Silicon Valley’s utopian promises seemed much easier to believe, and gone is its company culture of debate, equality, and idealism.

What was once called the digital town square is becoming Musk’s mirror.