You probably don’t feel sorry for Elon Musk for buying Twitter – but I do

If you’re running a large online platform, everyone is going to complain, and everyone is going to claim censorship

I’ve been trying to escape Twitter for years because I see the dangers (AFP via Getty Images)

I know you don’t feel sorry for Elon Musk. Surely he already has too much power and/or is going to run Twitter into the ground anyway. Why would you feel sorry for the richest man in the world?

This article isn’t about whether Elon Musk is crazy or some kind of demi-god – I sit somewhere in the middle: 60 per cent fan, 40 per cent hater – nor is it on whether I know he’s going to ruin Twitter or make it amazing. Who knows what the future holds? It’s more that I feel sorry for the world of pain coming his way.

I’ve had a bit of experience running online communities and I know for a fact they are a huge f****** pain the bum. Apologies for the language, but there is no way to sugarcoat this. In a different life, over 20 years ago, I started an online forum for British Asians called Barfi Culture. Come and chat and flirt with other Asians, I said! They did – in their tens of thousands. People of South Asian heritage logged on from as far away as Canada, Malaysia and even Singapore, and they chatted and flirted away. Some even got married (I kid you not).

But the thing about online platforms is that people want to discuss politics and religion and race – their identities in other words – and that’s where it got messy and annoying and frustrating. And if you know anything about Asian people and religion – they take that stuff really seriously. So you can just imagine the headaches I had in trying to maintain a semblance of order and trying to be even-handed with everyone.

Running a platform like Twitter must be the world’s biggest pain in the bum, from which you have no escape, and one that will haunt you 24/7 when you’re doing it. Do you want that life? I certainly don’t.

I’ve been trying to escape Twitter for years because I see the dangers: how it sucks you in, how it warps your perspective, how it can radicalise people or ruin their mental health, or worse. But it’s also a place where ideas and campaigns are shared, where all the elites hang out. If you want to know what intelligent people (and the world’s idiots) are thinking – there’s no better place. You just have to be good at making the distinction. And the problem is we are all bad at making that distinction.

A few days ago, Yishan – a former co-founder of Reddit, one of the world’s largest online forums (surely you know this?) – wrote a thread about the pain coming Elon Musk’s way. Here’s the crux of what he said:

"The problems [of censorship at social networks] are NOT about politics, or topics of discussion. They are about all the ways that humans misbehave when there are no immediately visible consequences, when talking to (essentially) strangers, and the endless ingenuity they display trying to get around rules."

In other words, you can’t really solve a problem like Twitter. If you’re running a large online platform, everyone is going to complain, everyone is going to claim censorship, everyone thinks they’re the victims, and everyone thinks higher powers are biased against them.

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Yishan continues: "After Reddit, I took a break, and now I work in the world of Real Atoms. It is hard.  It is VERY hard. Like eating glass, as Elon would put it. But it is not as hard as running a social network.  And if Elon knows what’s good for him AND HUMANITY, he won’t do it – he will stick with the Real Atoms, which is what we really need."

The thing is, we do need Elon Musk to concentrate on something else other than Twitter. He has revolutionised the world of electric transport and space travel, and he needs to carry on doing that instead.

But I also know how Twitter can suck you in and keep you there. And when you’re running the whole damn platform, well, there is no escape. And especially when the media is obsessed by your every tweet and every word.

In my case, one day I just had too much and I abruptly shut down Barfi Culture. I put a sign up saying people should get on with their lives, and walked away for good. But you can’t just walk away from something like Twitter. It has too much power and you have too much responsibility.

And this is why I feel sorry for Elon Musk. Twitter may need saving, but other people are very capable of doing it. He is about to bring upon himself a world of pain that he will regret.