The Musk-Xit Agenda

If you haven't been following Elon Musk's abuse of a small blue bird then congratulations, you have a good life. For the rest, let me make your day a tiny bit worse. Sorry. 

What's Going On?

We all know several things - EM has a bit of a hard-on for the name "X." He's just trashed 16 or so years' worth of branding and progress to erase Twitter and rename it to "X." Now don't get me wrong, I thought Twitter had become a bit of a cesspool years ago and only spent time on there because I had a handful of friends who were on it. But it's hard to make sense of Musk's actions if one doesn't look a bit below the surface... 

I've heard quite influential media personalities refer to Musk's "childishness" and "pettiness" but hear me out - what if he isn't? What if he's working very hard towards a goal?

What Could Be The Goal? 

Well, let me start at the beginnings. in 1999, Musk and several partners founded and developed x.com, an online bank that then merged with another company and became Paypal, which Ebay bought. For all the time since then, x.com redirected you to Paypal, as of now, it redirects you to the "Xsanguinated" carcass of Twitter. There's a clue there. A clue, but probably not the ultimate clue. So sorry, it's not going to be good. 

Remembering several things here about the reluctant purchase of Twitter by Musk, he overspent hugely on the purchase. X is now bleeding out millions a day, which is unsustainable. The only reason(s) I could think of was that Jack Dorsey's (Jack being the founder of Twitter if you're aware of that fact) insistence on Musk honouring the sale had pissed Musk off to the point where he was determined to destroy all of Twitter's cachet and reputation as a way to get even for being so ripped off before pulling the plug and squatting on the domain name just to rub it in.

Then he began to destroy all the safe foundations that Twitter had taken all that time to work out, and that despite saying he was for free speech. Then followed all sorts of right-wing fuckery, and it became obvious that he was actually only for abusive hate speech and division. In short, a voice for authoritarianism. He also began to - to be honest - rant and dribble on a bit, semi-coherent quite hate-filled speech, and I thought maybe he wanted to support Trump back into office and make the world more RW.

I'm still of that opinion. Only with some far darker goals envisioned, now.

Back To X.com

Space-X returned to Musk's love affair with his X site names, and maybe the runaway success of Paypal stung a bit too. But while he was the altruistic soul that redirected that domain to Paypal while it suited him, he's not so much of a philanthropist now...  

And he's made a claim that Twit.. - that X would be the way forward to an 'everything' app.

He's aiming to reinstate X.com as his original money-spinner, piggy-backed onto The Messaging Service Formerly Known As Twitter, and I'm willing to bet it'll soon feature an Xpay, an Xbook, an Xbay, Xcars, Xplay, Xplus, Xmazon, XTV, and a host more. Think I'm stupid? Check back with me in a year. Now I don't think he'll be inordinately successful with it (although, knowing that people in large mobs are basically just that, herd animals) but you never know. I'll put a reminder in my calendar... 

This could be a Good Thing but so far not one such Good Thing has actually been Good for the users and customers - Facebook has become a terrifying behemoth that damages people's mental health, their fiscal health, and the health of the entire Internet. Google shifted from a motto of "Do No Evil" to one more like "Fuck You, We Can And We're Doing It" - to the detriment of every human alive on the planet today and also of the entire Internet. Murdoch News was okay when it was a few newspapers but is now a Dark Side that's infected all the media. Banks were convenient when they allowed money to be safely transferred, but became a Number One drain on the entire working population's income when they got too greedy, too ready to make loans based on knowing the debtor would default and the banks make double incomes, and especially when they became "too big to fail..." 

Then there's authoritarian surveillance operations. At the moment all the three-letter-acronym agencies that routinely spy on all our communications already need to do that via largely backdoor methods, and need to jump through a few legal hoops before they can tie your physical self to the email address behind the username that said the Benevolent Dictator Trump is a small-dick fuckwit. 

But with X, the whole point of it will be to tie you to your account so that the Xuber you ordered can come to your front door, your order from Amazon (or Xmazon - why not rip off the original market disruptor yourself?) can be dropped at your door, etc. It becomes a trivial operation to trace "trumpisasmalldickfuckwit@anonymous.Xmail" back to the original account holder. 

And therein lies the danger. While a large number of "anonymous" users exist on the planet, it's difficult to exactly track back. If the population of a whole country or series of countries are all on the same de-anonymised service, the few anonymous activists will stick out like the proverbial canine's testicles. 

And That's All A Problem Why Exactly?

Let me introduce you to a company you may or may not know, China's Tencent. Tencent owns Wechat, and Wechat is The One App in China if you want to chat, buy stuff, let people pay you electronically, pay someone electronically, order a cab, find a bargain, book theatre or movie tickets - anything. I urge you to read those two articles. In China, there isn't ANYTHING you can't do using Wechat, QQ, or one of the tencent subcompanies. And you can bet Musk has seen this and realised it too. 

Something like this would bounce him so far past Jeff Bezos and Amazon that it would cement his place as the richest person ever. If any of that sounds okay to you, consider that Elon used almost fifty billion dollars to buy Twi.. - X. It seems that he had that much wealth floating around, and rather than spend it on something that might help the planet, he spent it on this platform. Fifty billion dollars would have launched enough solar and wind energy to stop 90% of fossil fuel use dead. 

It would have catapulted EVs into number one spot. But oh yeah - Tesla is boring to him now, it's been lapped by bad cheap Chinese EVs that are coming out at half the price of a 3, and are slowly becoming legal in every country in the world so there's no longer any incentive for Musk to bother with that. 

He could have used that to set up a series of giga-factories to turn out inexpensive efficient housing that could be deployed to combat homelessness and make it easier for climate change refugees - and feed them each one square meal a day for the next ten years into the bargain - but he chose to buy Tw.. X instead. 

That tells you that despite already having more than enough wealth to fix the world all by himself, he's not out there for any reasonable purpose now. I repeat - there is not one single good or sane reason that one needs to keep scrapping for money when one is that wealthy, meaning that our billionaires are mad and evil. Not one of them escapes this analysis. And certainly not Musk.

Now For The OTHER Other Reason That This Is Bad

The one other thing that Tencent and Wechat and QQ and even Aliexpress have in common is that they all have to allow the Chinese government complete access to their customer data. They're already instituting "social rewards" systems where compliant people get preferential treatment on public transport and accommodation and so forth, while low-scoring individuals get to walk everywhere because they find that they can't board buses, planes, and trains, hotels will not accept their payments and so they can't stay in them, and no bank will give them a loan due to their low social score. 

The government makes up the rules for giving those social scores. One day you may get 25 points for holding open a door for a woman, but then two weeks later some government official has decided that that's a derogatory act and you find yourself copping a minus 250 points hit to your social points, and trams won't let you board on your way to work, next thing you've lost your job, and so forth. 

So. 

Still think Musk's a petulant man-child with custard for brains? Or can you see how he may very well be one of the most dangerous things to happen to the free world? 

Please use the links in the little mini-banner graphic above or wherever you see it, to support my writing and work. Every donation helps me to pay for fees involved, subscriptions to news services so I can research more. Speculation like this may sound wild but ask yourself - are you really so sure that it is? 

Please share this post far and wide, add it on your messaging service of choice, on your social pages, and any other groups you may be part of. Share it to news sites and letters to the editor.