Elon Alone
Elon's Twitter stands alone in a corporate war for control of the network. Let's dig in.
Elon’s Twitter stands alone.
Twitter is the only major corporation in the networked world that hasn’t aligned itself with the network #swarm, and as such, the company is now at war with the rest of the corporations in the network. Here are some highlights of recent corporate actions against Twitter (and hints of what’s to come):
More than half of the big advertisers have suspended (some permanently) their spending on Twitter. Furthermore, Apple has threatened to disconnect Twitter from its app store (if they act, Google will be quick to follow), halting Twitter’s growth. Extreme limitations on Twitter’s access to user information will follow (this limitation is how Apple and Google destroyed Facebook as a competitor).
Financiers and payment processors will be pressured to disconnect Twitter from sources of financing and the ability to charge for services. We can already see pressure on Elon’s wealth — the #swarm’s badge of financial alignment, something called ESG (environmental, social, and governance), was withdrawn from Tesla to damage its stock price.
#Swarm-aligned politicians and government bureaucrats have begun investigating Elon’s companies and personal actions (Tesla, crypto, the Twitter acquisition FTC/SEC, etc.). The goals are costly fines or new restrictions on Elon’s ability to act.
The Corporate Coup
Let’s put this war into context. The first signs of corporate involvement in the war for control of our new social decision-making began in 2017 (when I first started to write about it). That’s when governments worldwide pressured networked companies to take ownership of social stability. This effort initially met with moderate success in the US, but that changed dramatically in January 2021 when corporations fully embraced this role. Here’s a section of the January 2021 GG Report that sums it up nicely:
These companies, acting as a single network, announced their control of the US sociopolitical system (and, by extension, the world) in three quick steps:
They permanently disconnected Donald Trump, a seated US President and arguably the most powerful person in the world. In short, they announced: we are in control and nobody is above us.
They then disconnected Parler, a competitive social networking system used by millions of people, many of whom supported Trump during the recent election. This action announced: nobody is allowed to run a network except us.
They demonstrated that disconnection — through a “disconnection cascade” involving thousands of other online firms from e-mail to payments to smartphones — is far more than simply losing access to social networks; it’s a loss of all connectivity. This action announced: Resist us, and you will cease to exist.