Kara Swisher said she worries about Twitter’s security if Elon Musk takes over the app in what Swisher calls a “s—ty deal.”
“I don’t trust them to do a good job at security as before,” the veteran journalist said at The Makers Conference in Dana Point, California, underscoring that she would be saving her own data in case the app fails to protect her information. She also pointed to Musk overpaying $30 billion in the proposed $44 billion deal as indication of his “incompetence” to run the platform, noting that the deal was made in a “brofest of idiocy.”
Swisher also critiqued the growing relevance of business owners like Musk inserting themselves into social policy by controlling social media platforms. “It’s not that they shouldn’t say what they want,” she said, noting that their knowledge in business and tech does not equate to being an expert in social impact. “They think because they’re good at one thing, it transfers and actually impact things.”
The same can be said for Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West who recently announced he plans to acquire conservative social media Parler — who Swisher said she will not interview, and encouraged other media outlets to stop giving the artist a platform to voice his antisemitic beliefs.
Swisher also imagined a conversation between Musk and Ye, saying that she envisioned Musk saying “Hey dude, stop saying you’re gonna kill Jewish people, not cool.”
Given the potential future where Musk controls Twitter while Mark Zuckerberg continues to run Instagram and Facebook, Swisher notes that people to the left, right and middle are “exhausted” with conversations of democracy online.
“The noise has taken over and everyone else is quiet about what’s happening,” the tech reporter said. “So, in this particular situation, people with an ability to be screaming like Marjorie Taylor Greene … and others get to be more important than they are, and then it … weaponizes and amplifies their hate.”
