About rockets and birds | Fast Company Brazil

When “Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter” (editor Todavia) arrived in bookstores in the first week of October, the company acquired by the eccentric billionaire in 2022 for a stratospheric US$44 billion, later transformed into X, was worth 79% less – around US$9.4 billion, according to the investment manager Fidelity.

Considered the worst deal for North American banks since the 2008 crisis, the operation seems like a rocket out of orbit in the career of the businessman who accumulated fame and fortune developing electric cars, satellites and leading space exploration.

The financial fiasco, however, had a calculation, as shown in an excerpt from the book. While most tech industry billionaires spent money on huge yachts, sports clubs, press releases, or faraway islands, Musk coveted a megaphone, a website where his voice would be broadcast directly to hundreds of millions of people. He wanted Twitter.”

In addition to the megaphone, Elon coveted the pulpit and, most importantly, total control of the “global public square”, a somewhat contradictory definition used over the years to refer to Twitter, “an open space for discussion where everyone has a voice and freedom to guaranteed expression”.

“'Character Limit' meticulously narrates all the steps to acquire the platform and points out worrying scenarios for democracy in the US and the world.

Powerful and unpredictable, the richest man in the world has put more rockets into space this year than all countries combined, his companies control satellites that monitor and provide internet access in strategic regions such as the Amazon and Ukraine, not to mention his proximity to Donald Trump and other exponents of the global far right.

The book is the result of rigorous reporting by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, technology journalists at “The New York Times” who had access to confidential documents, internal memos and heard more than 100 people, some very close to the billionaire's circle – Musk was not interviewed by the authors.

The businessman joined the platform in 2010 and, in 2022, was one of the most influential on the network. Secretly, he began to buy and accumulate shares in the company. He had 80 million followers and made noise promoting his companies, provoking enemies and complaining about the “censorship” that Twitter began to exercise over publications, which would go against one of the site's fundamental principles.

For megalomaniac Musk, the survival of democracy and the human race itself depended on the future of the platform and only one person in the world could save it.

The purchase of the new toy was chaotic from the beginning. Musk demanded the expulsion of a top executive even before he became CEO, while thousands of people were fired at random, forcing the company to rehire some of them shortly afterwards – a turnaround that sagacious network users would call “plot Twitter“.

The security engineering, moderation and human rights departments were decimated. Paranoid, Elon carried out an audit to prove the identity of all seven thousand remaining employees in the company, which provoked embarrassed laughter from some executives. The new owner thought that there were people who were paid without working and who might try to sabotage the X, but the diligence did not locate any ghosts.

The book is the result of rigorous reporting by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, technology journalists at The New York Times.

The authors also revealed the businessman's spiteful and aggressive face, as when he received confirmation that the billion-dollar transaction with Twitter had been closed. Musk punched the table and shouted what sounded like a battle cry: “Fuck you, Zuck!”

The feud with Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, is old and has several chapters. It started in 2016, when a SpaceX rocket, which was going to send a Facebook satellite into space, exploded while still on the platform and ruined the project that would bring internet to remote areas of the planet. Zuckerberg said he was “deeply disappointed” by the accident, which angered Musk.

Since then, the two technology moguls have been exchanging accusations and threats on an increasing scale, which culminated in a bizarre episode to the point where they challenged each other to a wrestling match broadcast live to the world.

Despite the uproar on the networks – they even speculated that the Colosseum in Rome would be the venue for the duel – the “fight of billionaires”, as it was sarcastically called, ended up being cancelled.

Suspended in Brazil since the end of August, X should be released soon, after complying with measures imposed by Brazilian justice. But the scenario for the company is increasingly cloudy.

Its survival is conditioned by a series of factors including the US elections, the return of advertisers to the platform – something increasingly unlikely – and the evolution and popularization of new networks that want to occupy and revitalize the market, such as Bluesky and Threads.

The future of X depends, above all, on Elon Musk's next moves – something that not even the enlightening and surprising “Character Limit” could predict.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gustavo Mayrink is director of content and culture. find out more

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