“How do you solve a problem like Elon?”
Like a pack of anguished Austrian nuns, progressives can’t stop singing this tune on talk shows and Twitter feeds. And for good reason: the world’s richest man has turned a once-essential social media platform into a far-right propaganda machine.
Despite his lofty libertarian claims of a year ago, X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk has put his finger on the scale in countless ways to boost far-right posts and deprecate others — starting with his own posts.
For all the actions that have been proposed...the most obvious one often goes unsaid: we should stop using X.
He has made over 50 false election claims so far this year, and amplified countless posts of misinformation, conspiracy theorizing and antisemitism. He’s done nothing to stop Russian use of the platform to sow misinformation (and, we now know, the targeting of left-leaning American Jews) in support of Trump. He has complied with censorship requests from authoritarian-led Turkey while defying democratic Brazil and the European Union. He has filed frivolous SLAPP lawsuits against those who have pushed for a boycott. He has boosted nationalists in India, China and Argentina and received business favors from each. He helped foment violence in the United Kingdom, spreading misinformation and predicting “civil war.” And so on.
Yet, for all the actions that have been proposed — demanding advertisers boycott the service, going after SpaceX or Tesla or Starlink — the most obvious one often goes unsaid: we should stop using X.
The reason for this silence is obvious: what political scientists call a “collective action problem.” As first articulated by philosopher David Hume, this is when everyone would be better off by acting together, but each individual has an incentive to cheat. Environmental degradation is a classic example. Where there’s a finite resource (a fishery, a common grazing field, or even the entire Earth’s atmosphere), everyone would benefit if we all worked together to protect the resource — but each individual would benefit more by cheating. And so there’s a built-in disincentive to cooperate.
X is similar. If every moderate-to-liberal human and organization stopped using the site, that might pressure Musk or his board of directors to stop weaponizing it. But unless we all quit, it’s quite costly to be among the few virtuous journalists, politicians or celebrities to do so. Except in very rare cases, Musk won’t notice that you’re gone — but you sure will, in the form of less clout, visibility and impact.
So we all complain about X but don’t really do anything about it.
Sure, we all have our rationales. For example, we tell ourselves that this is how we can reach people we might not agree with and help show them the light. But come on. X has as much in common with civic discourse as boeuf bourguignon has with a steaming pile of cow dung.
As always, though, the solution to a collective action problem is coordinated, collective action. What would that look like in this case?
In an ideal world, even public agencies, sports teams, and non-political organizations would join as well.
It could start with a kind of inverse giving pledge: a network of high-profile figures (way higher than yours truly) could set forth a list of specific actions that must be taken by a certain date, and promise to stop posting on X if that doesn’t happen. The list has to be public, clear, and as nonpartisan as possible. It shouldn’t complain about Musk being a troll or donating money to Trump. It should be focused on the abuses that have caused Twitter to become a “propaganda machine,” such as those listed above.
From there, others can sign onto the pledge. If it’s written narrowly and nonpolitically enough, media organizations and corporations could sign on as well. So could politicians. In an ideal world, even public agencies, sports teams, and nonpolitical organizations would join as well.
And if, as one would expect, Musk tells everyone to “go f--- yourself” (as he told advertisers who left X in 2023), then we can all leave. At once. Cheaters could be called out, and scrappy journalists like me wouldn’t lose out as much by leaving.
To be clear, this is not censorship. Really it is the opposite: it is capitalism.
First, free speech isn’t the same as amplified speech. The Supreme Court got it wrong in Citizens United: political donations are not acts of speech, but acts of megaphone-building. They are nonspeech acts that amplify speech acts.
Twitter is similar. Spreading batshit conspiracy theories is free speech. Having a giant digital megaphone to amplify them is not.
Second, of course, X isn’t the government. It’s a company that makes a product, a product now being rigged, by the owners of X themselves, to not only advance a particular political view, but to do so via deceit, misinformation and rigging of the software’s algorithm. It’s hardly censorship to take a stand against that kind of manipulation. (I hope I’d take the same position if the ideological poles were reversed — and, no, the actions documented in the “Twitter Files” are nothing comparable to this.)
To be clear, this is not censorship. Really it is the opposite: it is capitalism.
It isn’t even a boycott. Leaving X isn’t like boycotting Coors because it’s too right-wing or Bud Light because it’s too left-wing. Those boycotts are fine — that’s part of capitalism too — but X is different in kind. Because unlike beer, the X product itself is the problem. Each time you post on X, you are using and helping a tool its owners use as a political weapon.
It’s totally reasonable to stop doing that. And arguably, collective action might avert the need for governmental action, which would be a lot more problematic from a civil liberties perspective.
So that’s my challenge to people with 100x the social media platform that I have: come together and stop this nonsense. Use other services. Craft a pledge broad enough to appeal to libertarians, moderates and conservatives as well as liberals and progressives. And if the world’s richest man won’t back down, hit him where it hurts — together.