Look, each time you write one thing even mildly important of Elon Musk, whether or not it’s a sound criticism or not, whether or not it’s an statement based mostly in logic or not, a few of Elon’s many followers are going to make their presence identified within the feedback, accusing you of being anti-freedom of speech, anti-American, anti-intellectual, and so on.

So right here, I’m not going to say it, I’ll let Elon himself converse for himself.

Exhibit a:

Exhibit b:

So Elon’s clearly modified his obvious hardline stance on this. As a result of “free speech”, I assume.

And naturally, Elon’s followers are going to blindly help such, as they do the whole lot that he says or does.

However certainly this raises a query about his ethical stances, proper? Absolutely this highlights that what he says and what he does should not all the time in line.

However in case you had been to stay with the “free speech absolutist” argument, then positive, Alex Jones ought to come again. However Elon himself doesn’t adhere to that stance, altering his perspective on such at any time when it fits him, and at any time when it’ll get him and X extra consideration.

For instance, X’s algorithm limits the attain of hyperlinks to publishers that Elon doesn’t like, he shut down the account monitoring his personal jet, whereas numerous critics of X and/or Tesla have additionally had their accounts mysteriously suspended. Elon is completely not all about free speech as he proclaims, whereas his continued modifications on the app largely mirror precisely what he criticized earlier Twitter possession for.

For instance, final week, after discovering that his new chatbot Grok leaned additional left than he would love, Elon vowed to appropriate it.

How would he do this? Grok, in accordance with Elon, is educated on X information, so the one technique to make it roughly aligned to a sure political perspective can be to manually intervene.

Which feels like:

Now, it’s simply Elon’s ‘thumb on the dimensions’ as a substitute, however the interference that he is referring to, theoretical or not, is precisely the identical.

On the similar time Elon has additionally acknowledged that reinstating Alex Jones’ account will likely be dangerous for the corporate’s advert enterprise, its key revenue driver, which was already down 50% year-over-year earlier than Elon’s latest controversial remarks prompted extra huge manufacturers to reduce their X spend. But, quite than making an attempt to fix bridges, and even look into their considerations, Musk has doubled- and tripled-down on his criticisms of these pausing their campaigns, taking particular intention at Disney chief Bob Iger, whom he clearly has private points with.

And now, he’s seeking to make it worse once more, and the one conclusion I can come to now’s that Elon is now actively making an attempt to kill the enterprise, as a type of high-stakes political theater.

I used to be instantly reminded of a idea I learn final yr, that Elon by no means really supposed to purchase Twitter within the first place, and that his actual intention along with his preliminary takeover bid was to have the Twitter board reject it, simply so he may then make a present of how “woke” and owned by the “censorship industrial advanced” they had been. However the Twitter board did settle for, which then noticed Elon flail about making an attempt to wriggle out of the deal, citing bot numbers as a key obstacle (which, conveniently, he’s by no means referred to once more).

That being the case, possibly that’s nonetheless in play, and Musk is now resigned to the truth that X goes to go down in flames, which is able to nonetheless present that the institution desires to regulate the narrative, and X merely obtained too near amplifying the reality.

That’s the one logic I can consider as to why Elon’s now intentionally making an attempt to sink X. As a result of Alex Jones was a non-issue, nobody was making a giant deal about how he’s banned, Elon simply determined to revive it, regardless of it including another excuse for advertisers to second guess any funding within the app.

From a advertising and marketing perspective, this does doubtless make X extra of a danger, and I most likely wouldn’t be placing huge emphasis on the app in your 2024 advertising and marketing plan. Possibly, in case your viewers is there, and also you typically see good returns along with your X campaigns, then it may nonetheless be price it, however Elon appears intent on making it a political assertion in itself, which now appears much more prone to implode than tackle better significance.

Each particular person, each model can have a distinct perspective, however it’s vital, as a enterprise, to take politics out of the equation as a lot as attainable. Your determination on working X adverts, or not, ought to come all the way down to what kind of profit it drives for what you are promoting.

The one actual advisory, then, is that I’m unsure that X goes to make it via one other yr. And sure, there may be an rising danger of your X adverts being displayed alongside offensive content material, which might have unfavorable affiliation impacts.

Every enterprise has to make a name on how they view such, however proper now, the state of affairs is just not getting higher for Elon’s X challenge.