Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have had it publicly once again. This time for the upcoming launch of a Twitter clone by Meta. Taking advantage of the weakness of the bird’s platform, Zuckerberg has decided to go on the attack. Meta has options: dominant position – more than 3,000 million users between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – and its natural terrain is that of social engineering.
It’s not a minor detail. Engineering is based on certainty, replicability and predictability. The same input conditions always give the same output. All this changes when we enter people into the equation. Social processes are uncertain, non-replicable and unpredictable; they are stochastic processes, that is, the same input data can give completely disparate results. One of Musk’s weaknesses is to believe that one engineering is comparable to the other, that landing rockets on a platform is like landing people in reality. And no.
His first major error of judgment was thinking that a platform like Twitter could function without moderation. Although it only has 300 million active users, the fourteenth in the world, it has a disproportionate influence on public opinion. Self-proclaimed “absolutist of freedom of expression”, one of the first measures that Musk took was to reduce the moderation teams to a minimum and readmit the whole Trumpist group. What could go wrong? All. Messages of hate, harassment of minorities, anti-Semitism, denialism and white supremacism have practically doubled. Since taking over, Twitter has lost 4% of its users.
We could go on, but you already understand. Suffice it to mention that the billionaire’s latest measure has been to ban the use of cisgender and cis, which he considers “slander”. If you want confirmation and send an email to press@twitter.com, you will receive an automatic reply with the poop emoticon. The example serves to show that Musk is a “freedom of expression absolutist” in a stochastic way, that is, when it suits him.
Zuckerberg has seen an opportunity and for the moment and without proving anything already wins one to zero. It turns out that a Twitter user suggested to Musk that they should solve this challenge with clubs and that it would be good if they met for a fight. The answer from Musk’s mouthpiece was that yes, no problem for him if Zuckerberg was willing. Zuckerberg responded on his own ground, on Instagram, with a video in which he responded with a meme from the wrestling world: “Send me a place”.
The next video Zuckerberg posted on his Instagram was of himself doing a jujitsu match, a discipline he masters as part of the martial arts he practices. The fight is in Las Vegas, the date is still missing, but the promoters have already advanced that the thing is real and that the fight could surpass Mayweather-McGregor in 2017 in terms of audience.
