Watching Elon Musk destroying Twitter has the same creepy fascination that one experienced during the 44 days in 2022 when Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were busily employed tanking the British economy. There was, however, one important difference between the two spectacles: Musk actually owns Twitter, whereas Truss and Kwarteng were merely the temporary custodians of the national economy.
With Twitter, the wrecking process started even before Musk owned the company. Having offered to buy it for $44bn (arguably at least twice what it was worth), he then tried to get out of the deal, but was compelled to go through with it. Once installed as the owner, he fired half the staff, including many of the people who understood how its technical infrastructure worked and others who had a good understanding of the complexities of running a social media company in today’s polarised world. He embarked on arbitrary and contradictory decision-making on the hoof, one moment announcing new rules, the next minute abandoning them.
