The wild, the weird and the warped – creeping through an X-rated jungle

Much as I despise Donald Trump, there are people who support him who rank very close to the man himself in my low estimation. Of these, a few deserve a special place in the underworld.

Not the cult followers, for they no longer seem capable of thinking autonomously. The people I have no time for are those who support him for the motive of personal gain rather than as a result of Trump’s manipulation. I’m talking of the zillionaire tax dodgers, the would-be government appointees, the politicians who are supporting a candidate whom they know to be a truly bad person, the religious leaders who go through logical hoops to justify urging their faithful to vote for a man who is a living repudiation of all the principles of their faith.

For my money, first among the rabble of courtiers is Elon Musk. This is a guy whom I’ve admired in the past for his success in building Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. Unlike Trump’s imaginary businesses, Mr Musk has built real enterprises with obvious value. True, he’s always been slightly odd. Yet oddness often lies on the flip-side of extreme talent.

My high opinion of him went sour when he bought Twitter. Not so much because he bought a social media business. After all, someone has to own them. More because of how he has used Twitter to propagate his vision of society, particularly where free speech is concerned. At least that’s how it seems to me.

For a long time, Twitter, whose name he changed to X, has been like a vast planet. It’s been impossible to visit every part of it. Most of us put up with the stuff its algorithms want us to see. Often though, those algorithms don’t get the message when they show us stuff we don’t care for.

In the past, that’s meant things that are mildly distasteful, sublimely uninteresting or plain stupid. Now, however, it’s hard to wade through a hundred posts without being invited to watch a act of extreme violence – a murder perhaps, an accident in gruesome detail, combat deaths in Ukraine or Russia. Block the sender and another one pops up. I don’t want to make the obvious link between a 12-year-old school shooter and the gruesome content they can freely watch on Mr Musk’s site. But if we’re normalising the portrayal of real-life death and destruction, are we surprised when people decide to create their own videos?

And what else do we expect when Mr Musk’s algorithms determine that an elderly fool like me will be entertained by videos posted under labels like Dead Guy Hub, Girl Fight TV and Crazy Fight Clips?

Here in the UK, if a broadcaster attempted to post such material, they would be shut down immediately for violating OFCOM rules, such as:

“Programmes must not include material (whether in individual programmes or in programmes taken together) which, taking into account the context, condones or glamorises violent, dangerous or seriously antisocial behaviour and is likely to encourage others to copy such behaviour.”

As for Mr Musk’s cherished devotion to free speech, is it really a violation of that freedom to prevent young kids from accessing snuff videos?

In the great man’s defence, perhaps there’s an argument that since violence is such a normal part of our online lives, we should no longer cast a veil over the real thing, just as we should ignore the powerful taboo, still prevalent in the west, that discourages us from seeing dead people. But by the same principle, why doesn’t he allow people to post hard porn?

Since I have no influence with Mr Musk, my only sanction is to walk away. Why then, you might ask, if I object to so much of the content it shows, do I still engage with Twitter? Well, it’s still a place where I can find political commentary from across the globe. And yes, I will freely admit that Trumpian effuent does’t hold a monopoly on political content on the site.

But Twitter/X must think I’m a strange chap. Unsolicited content that appears on a regular basis on my feed also includes classical music videos and rock clips some of which which in the morning I have to listen to with headphones to avoid frightening the horses, not to mention my slumbering wife.

Aside from the video nasties, what I find most disturbing is Musk’s loud and relentless personal promotion of Trump. In this he is different from most media proprietors. Whereas although Rupert Murdoch, for example, is well known for leaning to the right, you almost never hear him express his own opinions. Instead he leaves it to his various mouthpieces, such as Fox News and the London Times to act as their master’s voice.

Elon Musk, on the other hand, makes no pretension of anything except a laser focus on getting Trump elected. He’s quite happy to share his own opinions as well as retweet the most dubious assertions of others, particularly when it comes immigration, which is one of his pet obsessions.

He would have you believe that there’s a whole branch of government dedicated to letting in as many illegal immigrants as possible and making them citizens as soon as possible, so that in gratitude they will keep the Democrats in power for ever. Which in my opinion is pure bullshit, not least because most new citizens in the US do what everyone else does, which is to vote according to their interests. Call me a cynic, but I rarely see much in the way of gratitude or loyalty in modern politics.

These days, since he declared for Trump, his rhetoric is not confined to immigration. Here, for example, is a small excerpt from his speech at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally the other day:

“The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms. They want to take away your right to vote effectively.”

In one respect, is Mr Musk skating on rather thin ice, at least as far as US law is concerned? Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act draws a distinction between acting as the publisher of internet content on the one hand, and the distributor on the other. Currently, social media sites such as X and Facebook are considered to be “platforms”. When they show content from third parties, the law states that in effect they’re acting as distributors, as opposed to providers. This gives them a defence against prosecution for providing what the law defines as harmful material.

Under Section 230, there are three tests that must be met if that defence can be validated:

1. The defendant must be a “provider or user” of an “interactive computer service”.
2. The cause of action asserted by the plaintiff must treat the defendant as the “publisher or speaker” of the harmful information at issue.
3. The information must be “provided by another information content provider”, i.e., the defendant must not be the “information content provider” of the harmful information at issue.

But if the owner of a site (Elon Musk in the case of X) publishes “harmful” information on his site under his own name, by my reading of the law the site may be protected, but does the owner, in a personal capacity, have the same defence?

No doubt the owner of X, Tesla, Starlink and SpaceX has a battery of lawyers who assure him he’s fireproof. What disturbs me somewhat is that the guy has 200 million followers, many of whom are prepared to believe what he says because he is who he is. And no doubt many of those followers are also devotees of Donald Trump, who in my view is the most detestable presidential candidate in modern history.

What motivates him in supporting Trump I have no idea. There are plenty of theories floating about and possibly more than one reason. Vanity could be one of them. Trump’s offer of a role as an adviser to a his administration clearly appeals. Since Mr Musk can’t be president himself (he wasn’t born an American citizen), perhaps the next best thing would be to sit at the right hand of the most powerful man in the world.

Should that come to pass, I wish him good luck. Trump’s cronies tend not to last very long in a state of grace. Should Trump fail, it will be interesting to see what Elon Musk does next, and whether expediency causes him to reset his principles in order to weather a less sympathetic climate than that promised by the orange monster. For I sense that by jumping into politics he’s made a few enemies he didn’t have before. And a man who operates on so many fronts risks descending into paranoia through not knowing where the next threat is coming from.

Not a recipe for a quiet life, either on Mars or back here on dear old Earth.