How Media Shapes Politics

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The Twitter Saga: April 14th

The Twitter Saga April 14th, 2022 On April 14th, Elon Musk reached out to Twitter with an offer to buy 100% of Twitter at 54.20 per share. This is a valuation of about $43 billion. Oftentimes this number is presented exactly how I just did it, but I want to put the true scale of that number in context. A normal salary could be $43k per year. Written in full, this would look like this: $43,000 A 3 bedroom house nowadays may cost $430k. In full, that looks like this: $430,000 A mid-budget movie may have a budget of $43 million, which looks like this: $43,000,000 The cost of the Twitter deal looks like this: $43,000,000,000 If you wanted to count to 43 billion and you counted up one number every second with no break to sleep, drink, or eat, it would take you over 1,636 years to do . When you start looking into the true scale of a billion, you gain perspective on just how much money the ultra-rich have. When this was announced, nobody had any i...

The Twitter Saga: July 8th-12th

The Twitter Saga July 8th-12th, 2022 After the announcement of Elon Musk's intention to buy Twitter, and the fallout, meme-ing, and conversation that followed, Musk ended up trying to back out of the deal on July 8th. Musk and Twitter went back and forth about the ins and outs of the deal. Musk claimed that Twitter had breached their agreement and had made false statements during negotiations. Meanwhile, Twitter was adamant on making Musk go through with the deal. Twitter's current at the time board chairman Tweeted this: Then, on July 12th, they did pursue legal action. Twitter sued Musk for not honoring his obligations. Most of Musk's supposed reasons for backing out stemmed from the amount of bot accounts on the platform. If you ask me, it sounds like he decided he just didn't feel like it anymore and tried to back out of genuine business deal. Chairman Taylor also Tweeted regarding this situation: The case would end up going to trial, and Musk would end up ...

The Twitter Saga: October 27th

The Twitter Saga October 27th, 2022 It happened. After months of drama, it finally happened. The deal went through, and Elon Musk owned Twitter. This is a huge even, perhaps the most crucial event, in this entire saga, and yet there isn't much to say on it. The firestorm of ridicule and bad decisions started nearly immediately. Musk, a professional crybaby, began firing people who dared disagree with his decision making. He fired people who didn't write enough code. This meant he was firing all of the employees who worked on the difficult to code parts of the app. The parts that are essential to the app's performance. I honestly can't say much here about this, because I'll be talking about some of the major events in other posts. What I will say is that $43 billion ($43,000,000,000) is a lot of money to spend on something you are seemingly trying to destroy. More info: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-compl...

The Twitter Saga: November 3rd

The Twitter Saga November 3rd, 2022 Then the layoffs began. Musk laid out plans to lay off over half of the company's workforce. That's half of the company's 7,500 employees who now won't have a job to feed their families. Who won't be able to pay their mortgage or rent. All in the name of profit. We know that the United States as a whole favors profit over people. It's why we don't have guaranteed paid parental leave or vacation time. It's why healthcare is so expensive. It's why my generation will never own anything again. Musk's Twitter tirades up to this point had just been effecting him. He didn't want to spend $44,000,000,000 on a deal he probably thought up while having a temper tantrum about something minor. But now, it is beginning to affect real people and their livelihoods. More: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/3/23439802/elon-musks-twitter-layoffs-start-friday-november-4

The Twitter Saga: November 5th

The Twitter Saga November 5th, 2022 In perhaps the most talked about decision in this story, Elon decided to make it possible to pay to get verified on Twitter. This led to an absolute firestorm of fake accounts. Many of the Tweets from these fake accounts were vulgar, so I won't post them here, but a few of them even caused the stock price of the company being impersonated to plummet. The companies being impersonated included Nintendo, which tweeted a picture of Mario putting up his middle finger that stayed up for hours, and Eli Lilly, a pharmaceutical company. The fake Tweet from this company claimed that insulin was free now. The other obvious ramifications of this could be political opponents impersonating their least favorite senator and saying damaging things. Because a verified checkmark has long been used to signify that an account was official, seeing this checkmark on a non official account would lead someone to assume that whatever the account tweets is from an official...

The Twitter Saga: November 19th

The Twitter Saga November 19th, 2022 The last development I'd like to talk about is one of the biggest, in my opinion. Musk announced he will allow former President Trump to come back on the platform. This follows his ban after the January 6th riot at the capital of which Trump fanned the flames. Musk made the decision after putting out a Twitter poll. Musk originally claimed he wouldn't be reinstating any banned accounts. Musk's ego seems to be so big that he thinks his little Twitter poll is the voice of the people. Trump responded by saying he won't come back to the platform anyways. Trump has his own social media platform, truth social. Trump announced recently a plan to run for president again in 2024. If you'd like to know more: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/19/23467280/donald-trump-twitter-back-elon-musk-poll https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-twitter-poll-showing-narrow-majority-want-trump-reinstated-2022-11-20/