Twitter owner Elon Musk wrote Friday that the “media elite” will do everything it can to prevent the goal of the platform elevating what he calls “citizen journalism,” and professional journalists fumed.
“As Twitter pursues the goal of elevating citizen journalism, media elite will try everything to stop that from happening,” he tweeted to his 115 million followers.
“Mainstream media will still thrive, but increased competition from citizens will cause them to be more accurate, as their oligopoly on information is disrupted,” he added.
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From critics poking the world’s richest man for saying he wanted to take on elites, to hitting him for suggesting the media would be improved by his changes to make the platform more democratic, Musk’s latest Twitter missives drew a massive reaction.
“Journalists are citizens,” Condé Nast’s Luke Zaleski wrote in response. “The vast majority are middle and working class men and women doing difficult and important work. This obscene glutton and bully controls perhaps the most powerful combination of wealth and media reach in human history. And he’s blaming so-called ‘elites.’”
“Is this tweet from 2009?” wrote Vox’s Ryan McCarthy. “It’s almost like the last 12 years of Twitter – and the internet – didn’t happen and now we’re back to the democratization blather from social media’s first era.”
“Twitter apparently is pursuing the goal of being a 2003 blog post,” Bill Scher quipped.
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The free speech advocate has said he wants to make Twitter a premier public square for sharing information and ideas, but Musk’s rapid series of changes to the platform and mass layoffs have prompted an uproar among the tech and media establishments. Perhaps his most controversial move has been the $8 subscription option for so-called blue “checkmarks,” which were previously only given to certain established public figures.
However, the program was suspended on Friday after a series of impersonators caused confusion online, such as a fake “LeBron James” account with a blue checkmark making some people think the NBA star had requested a trade from the Los Angeles Lakers. Another example was one appearing to be Rockstar Games promising a new edition of its popular “Grand Theft Auto” video game.
Musk has been vocal throughout the rapid changes to the platform on Twitter, at times cracking jokes and needling critics.
“Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months. We will keep what works & change what doesn’t,” he wrote on Wednesday.
“I love when people complain about Twitter… on Twitter,” he wrote, including a laughing emoji.
