It was a breaking information alert to carry the spirits and make the guts sing. A tech billionaire arrested as he stepped off his non-public jet and detained by the French authorities. Completely satisfied days!
As a result of whereas the UK police have been charging people who incited violence on-line throughout this summer time’s riots, the person who helped to gas its flames – Elon Musk – has merely tweeted his approach by way of it.
It turned out – as a result of you’ll be able to’t have all of it – that the person arrested and subsequently charged in France this week was not Elon. It was his bro-in-arms, Pavel Durov, an Elon-alike who based the encrypted messaging app Telegram, although for the informal observer it may be arduous to inform the place Durov ends and Musk begins.
Simply because the flattening impact of algorithms signifies that espresso retailers in Brooklyn and Bristol look the identical today, so it’s with the bros. From Wim Hof ice baths to a food regimen of grass-fed beef, social media algorithms have created a tech-masculine splendid and tech-masculine life-style fuelled by the form of fundamental strongmen they each appear to admire, chief amongst them Vladimir Putin.
Musk has kind for chatting with Putin on the cellphone and whereas Durov claims to have been pushed into exile by the Russian authorities, it’s arduous to sq. that with the stream of supportive statements from Russian ministers final week demanding his “rescue”.
Each labour below the obvious eugenicist perception {that a} man of superior intelligence has an obligation to unfold his seed as broadly as potential – it was revealed earlier this yr that Durov has fathered 100 kids by sperm donation whereas Musk makes use of extra conventional strategies corresponding to impregnating his workers. Crucially, though Musk was born in South Africa and Durov in St Petersburg, the language they converse is similar: specious, self-serving lies dressed up as ideology.
Final week noticed maybe the primary main showdown between the pseudo cryptolibertarianism they each espouse and that old school, resolutely analogue idea often known as the nation state. For anybody who has spent any time pondering the intergalactic ranges of entitlement among the many tech broligarchy and the – till now – whole impunity they’ve confronted, the arrest and subsequent charging of Durov was a singular second.
It’s the primary time a tech CEO has discovered himself within the uncomfortable place of really being pressured to take duty for his actions. Whereas this appeared, on the floor, like a second wherein there may lastly be some form of day of reckoning for the tech edgelords, that has but to be seen.
Durov’s arrest was adopted, days later, by one other geopolitical first: on Friday, a Brazilian choose ordered the nation’s telecoms company to block entry to X throughout all the nation as a result of Musk had didn’t adjust to a courtroom order.
It’s the primary time a western nation has imposed such a ban and the nation of 200 million folks is X’s fourth largest market. And though Musk’s efforts to painting this because the work of an “unelected pseudo-judge” in search of to destroy free speech for “political functions”, it was truly down to a different old school idea Musk is ill-acquainted with: rule of regulation.
It’ll be months and years earlier than the downstream penalties of Durov’s arrest and Musk’s defiance of the Brazilian authorities are identified – whether or not this can be a second wherein the nation state reasserts itself over the lawless wastelands of the web, the nowhereville past the attain of any regulation influentially described by the poet John Perry Barlow 28 years in the past in his Declaration of the Independence of Our on-line world.
Or whether or not it’s the alternative. As a result of simply as historical past is informed by the winners, right here’s the factor about proudly owning your individual world speech platform: you get to manage whose speech is heard. And in Musk’s case, meaning him. He will get to inform the story. He controls the narrative. And he has already broadcast his model of Durov’s arrest and the courtroom proceedings in Brazil to his 196 million followers. He’s the final word arbiter of “reality”.
Besides it’s not reality, it’s snake oil. Though Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist”, a gussied-up time period that supposes some deeper philosophical pondering behind his actions, this isn’t ideology, it’s grift.
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Musk believes in free speech in the identical approach that he believes in free Teslas. Free for him, very costly for everybody else. In between a stream of tweets on how “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy” and “Censorship is a certainty if Dems win” was one other one wherein he gloated a few ruling in his libel case towards Media Issues for America.
As a result of this can be a free speech absolutist who’s suing an NGO who dared to criticise him. The case towards has been known as a traditional Slapp, or strategic lawsuit towards public participation, issued with the intention of intimidating and silencing, as a choose in California dominated earlier with regard to a different swimsuit he introduced towards one other NGO. “This case is about punishing the defendants for his or her speech,” he stated.
Musk isn’t a reality teller, he’s a reality tornado. Like Donald Trump, he does the direct reverse of what he truly says. He’s a free speech absolutist who has complied with 83% of requests from authoritarian governments to take away content material from X, usually as obvious leverage to advance his enterprise pursuits.
This isn’t a civilisational battle for the way forward for “free speech”. And Durov isn’t a hero. The expenses towards him embrace the decidedly unfuturistic crime of cash laundering and his lower than heroic failure to suppress the unfold of sexual photos of youngsters.
It’s truly a civilisational battle for the reality. What we have to resist is that this can be a battle that Musk is successful. His reality is solely louder, quicker, disseminating additional. His algorithms are spreading his metaphorical seed, spawning a whole technology of mini-Musks and would-be Musks who dream of electrical Cybertrucks.
More and more, 2024 is beginning to really feel like a tear in actuality. That is Musk’s world and we’re residing in it now.
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