It’s been over 9 months now since Elon Musk completed his purchase of the bird app. Since then, many words have been dedicated to documenting Twitter’s (I refuse to call it X’s) woes. I’d rather not add to them. What I’d like to explore are Musk’s political motivations for buying the app.
You see, his purchase was about much more than money. In the lead up to his take-over, Musk had been part of a chorus of people who saw Twitter as unfair towards social conservatives. It’s not surprising then, that he has fashioned Twitter into a safe space for them. Musk’s Twitter has; restored the accounts of many who were suspended for violating the app’s previous community guidelines, searched obsessively for the algorithm supposedly “silencing conservatives”, and taken hatchet to many of the features designed to protect people from offensive language, trolls & other such attacks. He even recently deemed the term “Cisgender” to be a slur, threatening those using it with temporary suspension. All of this has been done concurrently with Musk’s lifting of the ban on political adverts on the app, creating an environment that might favour political candidates on the Right.
This activity adds Twitter to the ranks of other conservative platforms such as Donald Trump’s Truth Social, a de facto bullhorn for the former president. The phenomenon also goes beyond social media, many brands, media platforms and even news outlets now cater exclusively to a uber conservative worldview. For example, Pure Flix bills itself as a Christian alternative to Netflix; used by a million evangelical Christians who want their entertainment filtered through a religious lens, on the site they can watch historical epics, rom-coms, action and even sci-fi movies, all with a conservative Christian slant that confirms their world view.
However, those who identify as more socially liberal are also beginning to seek out spaces that protect them against the other side. Amid the chaos that engulfed Twitter, many potential alternatives came and went. These included Mastodon and Blue Sky (created by Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey). Ruling roost though, was Meta’s Threads, whose app launch led to the announcement of an (unfortunately now postponed) MMA fight between Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. While Threads may not have promoted itself as a liberal twitter alternative, they were all too eager to emphasise their community guidelines, highlighting rules that many social liberals decried Musk for scrapping. This, and their ease of set up rocketed Threads to a trouser-soiling 100m users in less than a week.
As marketers this trend puts us in a pickle. What does it mean for us if culture becomes irrevocably split along political lines? How can brands still reach people effectively if a good chunk of their potential market use platforms that knowingly reinforce polarised or even extreme views? Lately, this question has riddled my thoughts.
I'd like to kick off a discussion by sharing three essential steps I believe brands should take to navigate this fragmented cultural moment.
