But I don’t think that’s what he’s trying to do right now.
Instead, he understands that the main asset of twitter is owning peoples network and relationships. If we had a simple way to migrate all our relationships elsewhere all at once, everyone would have jumped ship already.
So the biggest threat to him is other social platforms that try to replicate / copy the social graph of twitter.
That’s what substack is doing behind the scenes for years with their newsletter product, and now they announced a direct competitor to twitter.
This is an existential threat to twitter, so musk sets out to destroy them. Not because it’s best for its users, but because it will make sure they never get a good enough alternative to leave.
And in the end, people will stay on twitter because the core value isn’t the ux or who the CEO is. The value is that they invested years into relationships and network effects, and don’t want to lose them.
I don’t think musk is crazy, although he is brutal, sociopathic and ruthless. I think he’s simply making power moves to keep his advantage.
Similar to how Jobs set out to destroy Adobe by removing Flash from iPhones. How Apple set to hurt Facebook by removing ad tracking. Or how Amazon shamelessly copies successful marketplace sellers to get more profits.
Ruthless power moves, not ideal for users, but not craziness.