Myriad criticisms aside, Elon Musk’s strategy for Tesla is a sound one: Increase public interest and demand for electric vehicles by showboating his literally “S3XY” EVs, thus putting pressure on establishment carmakers to follow suit. Of course, after years of overpromises, shoddy deliverables, and unreliable profit margins, this approach has had mixed results, to say the least. But that’s alright for everyone else, all things considered, given that Tesla still owns a barely 2 percent market share of the total U.S. automotive industry.
Twitter, meanwhile, occupies almost 10 percent of the U.S. social media market — over 200 million people log on every day. Coupled with the platform’s corrosive, dangerously outsized influence on politics and socio-cultural public health, it makes for an entirely different, unwieldy beast. Unfortunately, Musk is already making it clear that he thinks his carnival barker approach to business and company policy will work just fine for his newest pet project. He couldn’t be more wrong, and I couldn’t be more terrified.
