Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Sam Lessin Of Slow

Musk’s grand vision for Twitter faces reality check in Asia His biggest headaches lie abroad. The question to be answered over the coming years is how far Musk will stick with his promises of freeing up Twitter — not just in the US, but in the rest of the world. ...... For all the furore about which way Elon Musk might tilt US political discourse after getting the keys to Twitter Inc, his biggest challenges may emerge across the Pacific. ........... If the Tesla Inc and SpaceX billionaire makes good on promises to scrap censorship, he’ll encounter a plethora of perplexing regulations, wielded by sometimes authoritarian governments, pushed to the limits by a horde of first-time Internet users. ....... Twitter’s monetisable daily active users numbered 179 million internationally — dwarfing the 38 million in the US in 2021 ........ “Asia has the potential to make or break the new Twitter” ........ Twitter is officially banned in China, but the country will still demand a lot of Musk’s attention. Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos alluded to the potential conflicts in a tweet shortly after Musk’s deal, asking “Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?” ....... An obvious point is that China is tremendously important for Tesla, the key source of Musk’s wealth. The billionaire will certainly face pressures — implicit or explicit — to fine-tune Twitter’s policies to please Beijing. ...... As the world’s biggest electric-vehicle market as well as a supplier of Tesla batteries, China is essential to the healthy growth of the centrepiece of Musk’s business empire. Tesla has also benefited from significant tax breaks in setting up his Shanghai Gigafactory — its first overseas plant — and been allowed to wholly own its local operations, a rarity for a US firm. .......... A pressing issue is how Twitter handles China’s efforts to spread propaganda globally on the platform. The company in 2020 instituted labels for government officials and “state-affiliated media” for publications like Xinhua and Global Times, and readers are reminded of this government-backing any time they like or retweet stories. Chinese media have called the practice “intimidation” and already begun to lobby the billionaire to roll it back. ........ Bots are another matter. China has also used automated and anonymous accounts to distribute the government’s messages, which prompted Twitter to remove more than 170,000 accounts in 2020 for “spreading geopolitical narratives favourable to the Communist Party.” Musk has pledged to “defeat the spam bots or die trying!” and sounds determined to keep taking on the fake accounts. ......... Beijing has shown a willingness to punish billionaires who don’t comply with its wishes. Regulators have hammered the country’s tech giants and effectively banished Alibaba Group Holding Ltd co-founder Jack Ma from public view. ........ Musk’s SpaceX could certainly seek Chinese customers, while his Boring Co may profit from lucrative infrastructure contracts in the country.



Job interest in Twitter skyrocketed more than 250% since Elon Musk moved to take over. But current employees are nervous.
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