Elon Musk’s first day as head of Twitter was all about helping right-wing accounts

Elon Musk just spent a whopping $44 billion on Twitter, a social media platform with nearly 400 million users worldwide.

So what are his priorities for day one? Apparently they consist of looking into a complaint from an anonymous right-wing troll about how they lost 1200 followers the other day.

Late Thursday night, the deal was finally done sealed between Elon Musk and Twitter, ending a months-long saga that resulted in Musk overpaying for the acquisition of the platform and its private use.

Musk took to Twitter last night to announce the change in ownership with a tweet.

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“the bird has been released,” Musk posted.

Elon Musk, Customer Support Representative

His next tweet — which was his first response to another user as Twitter’s new owner — was in response to anonymous right-wing Twitter user “@catturd2,” a user who was frequently retweeted by former President Donald Trump before Trump was suspended from the platform in January 2021

The a tweet to which Musk responded was a complaint from @catturd2 saying he was “still Shadowbanned, ghostbanned, searchbanned and Twitter removed 1200 followers today – as usual”.

It’s worth noting that @catturd2 has more than 850,000 followers and that his tweet had tens of thousands of likes before Musk even answered him. Those are huge numbers that would put him in the upper echelon of Twitter users, making his claims of being persecuted by Twitter pretty much nonsensical.

However, Musk personally reached out.

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“I’m going to dig more today,” answered musk.

After Musk’s response, @catturd2 quickly responded that he gained thousands of followers and credited Twitter’s new owner for quickly making changes that allowed this to happen. Logical people would note that @catturd2 probably gained followers because Musk responded to him, not because radical changes were made to Twitter’s algorithm within the 20-minute time frame in which all of this happened.

Will Musk personally respond to every influential right-wing figure to help satiate their complete misunderstanding of how social media works? Time will tell.

Musk said one of his goals at Twitter will be to crack down on bots and fake accounts. But the question remains: How will it remove these accounts without mad @catturd2s on twitter? Everyone on the platform (and across the political divide) has at least a few fake followers. And the bigger the account, the more fake followers they have. If Musk goes through with his plan, accounts like @catturd2 will surely blame him for removing hundreds of thousands fake followers. How then will Musk respond to attacks from right-wing accounts?

Elon Musk needs to solve the Elon Musk problem

But Musk actually has a more pressing issue to attend to: myself.

Early Thursday morning, Elon Musk tweeted a statement to Twitter advertisers who expressed concern about their marketing continuing on Musk’s version of Twitter. He sought to allay their fears by saying he would not allow Twitter to become a “free-for-all hellscape” and said his plans were a response to fears that social media would split into partisan echo chambers.

But Elon Musk himself is clearly in a right-wing echo chamber. of Musk personal textsthat were released as part of the original Twitter lawsuit show him texting several right-wing partisans, some of whom even recommended he hire current Republican congressional candidates.

Another interesting conversation gleaned from Musk’s court-submitted texts involved a contact who allegedly his ex-wife Tallulah Riley. The two discussed Twitter’s suspension of a conservative (self-proclaimed) parody site that featured gender-incorrect trans people, an account that was in violation of Twitter’s rules at the time.

“Please do something to fight the vigilante fraud,” Musk’s contact pleaded.

His personal right echo chamber

Musk is clearly surrounded by rightists.

And his first attempt at investigating a right-wing user’s follower count wasn’t a one-off either. Soon after replying to @catturd2, his next answer was to a Twitter account belonging to a right-wing organization called Canada Proud, which sought his help on censorship in Canada.

Despite what conservative activists think, Big Tech is not a left-wing utopia. In fact, it is entirely owned by law. These are black capitalists. Twitter’s board is literally suing Musk to force him to honor his legal agreement to buy the company because they value their personal salary over the livelihood of their workers. (Remember: Musk has plans for big layoffs.) Twitter executives walk away with millions of dollars payouts while the employees Musk plans to fire will have to worry about their next paycheck.

And it’s not just on the business end of things. Social media companies in particular have a history of pandering to right-wing users. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, was afraid of angering so many right-wing influencers that they were given special treatment for spreading misinformation on Facebook.

It’s remarkable how Musk doesn’t mind making it obvious where his true intentions lie.

Musk may be in charge of Twitter now, but he’s still beholden to a powerful group: advertisers. After all, he has to pay back his loans and please his investors somehow. Perhaps it would be wise for him to take his own advice and get out of his echo chamber.

Or maybe he can just continue his new profession as a personal social media concierge service for right-wing social media addicts. Twitter may still be after the same advertisers that attract conservative media: MyPillow and gold coin traders. Surely those revenues will make the $44 billion purchase worthwhile.