Spaceman's Election

I don't often write about elections because they're boring. Granted, I can say that because I live on a quaint island that's reached geopolitical semi-retirement, but even in more rambunctious nations, elections are dull. Somebody always wins, they were probably ahead the whole time (despite what the polls say) and everything normally turns out more-or-less fine. In most countries, at least, competent bureaucrats ensure new leaders get too bogged down with tax rates and farming subsidies to do any real damage. The media clearly disagrees with me.

To newscasters the world over, elections are so exciting that each vote is the deciding factor between Heaven on Earth and the Reign of Satan. This is nonsense even when you're one of the millions with a vote to cast, but when you're not even a citizen of the country going to the ballot box, it's utterly ridiculous. In the weeks leading up to the US Presidential run-off, I couldn't turn on the TV without being assaulted by the British media's fabrication of high drama.

And there was a fantastic new media gambit - the White House race was cast as an election like no other in history. Except even the most cursory look revealed that Trump had already been President and Harris was the sitting Vice President who had run against him last time. I don’t see much novelty in that - maybe I’m weird. I do wonder, though, if the media's assertion of a historical first may, in a round about way, have been rooted in something real, not with Donald or Kamala, but with Elon?

I won't get purple about Elon Musk. It's not as though any of his individual actions were staggeringly new in the run-up to November 5th, anyway. The super-wealthy often use their money to influence elections, lots of celebrities use their fame to campaign for candidates, and it's no secret that the owners of media empires are the most consequential allies of political hopefuls. Musk just happened to tick all three of those boxes. And Musk is a media mogul.

I often wonder if he would enjoy an institution in London called Speakers' Corner. It's an area in Hyde Park where mad people can speak to the even madder people who choose to listen to them, and anyone can stand up. Nobody's voice is amplified or suppressed, and there are no restrictions on subject matter except conventions on human rights (i.e. you can't tell people to hurt each other). It's pretty close to free speech absolutism and it does have digital allegories - i.e. there are "digital town squares."

But like Speakers' Corner, digital town squares must grant equitable reach to all users, allow almost all content without moderation, and dispense with algorithms that interfere with that unfettered and equitable communication. Such platforms are disasters.

Remember when we all played Chat Roulette - fifteen years ago, time flies - and got randomly paired with other users who weren't moderated? That was unfettered and equitable communication, and it quickly descended into gross dudes squeezing out knuckle mayonnaise in front of non-consenting strangers. Yuck. It is much better that platforms have moderation and (for most users) algorithms to promote content they deem "good" and suppress content they deem "bad," just like X does.

But such moderation and algorithms add up to something familiar to anyone in traditional media - they are, for all intents and purposes, an editorial policy. They determine what kind of content is allowed, what's desirable, what might be permissible on occasion and what's never to be shown. And, just like editorial policies, they almost always end up reflecting the beliefs and biases of their masters. Musk is thus a media mogul.

What's new about Elon Musk follows from how he wears that title. Old-era media moguls - Hurst, Maxwell, Murdoch, etc. - used (and use) their positions to influence politics, but somehow the voting public has always failed to realise how much power they've held over democratic governments. This is despite the best efforts of William Randolph Hurst, who served in the House of Representatives, ran for President, started a war, and was the real-life inspiration for Citizen Kane. He couldn’t have shouted about his power any louder. Yet, eighty years after Orson Wells immortalised him in Hollywood, people still weren’t pushing back on the power of the super-rich, super-famous owners of heavyweight media organisations.

I would follow that paragraph up with something pithy like never doubt the ignorance of the voting public, but Musk appears to have succeeded where Hurst failed. Musk has made his influence not only obvious and ostentatious, but offensive to many. Millions of users have already left X and both of its rival platforms - Threads and Bluesky - are peppered with anger towards him and anyone who appears to support him.

This is a new kind of anger.

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