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<\/picture> <\/div>\nDoes Elon Musk know what he’s doing? <\/strong>Every move “chief twit” Elon Musk<\/a> has made since purchasing Twitter<\/a> has been closely and widely scrutinized\u2014with a lot of folks quickly jumping to the conclusion that Twitter is now doomed.<\/p>\n Musk has been making a lot of eyebrow-raising moves. He dissolved Twitter’s current board<\/a> and became its sole director. (It’s “just temporary,” he tweeted<\/a>.) He shared<\/a> a conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband. And The Verge<\/em> reported<\/a> on Sunday that Musk is planning on charging people $20 per month to keep the blue check mark that signifies verified status.<\/p>\n Some of these moves are defensible; others are not. But no matter what Musk does, people seem hellbent on crying catastrophe. For instance, a lot of folks are now insisting<\/a> that Musk’s Twitter<\/a> has become a haven for racism<\/a>.<\/p>\n Much of this stems from a report that “use of N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after Elon Musk’s takeover<\/a>.” But the jump seems to have come from a coordinated attempt by trolls to test limits, not some sort of new normal on the platform.<\/p>\n And other attempts to portray Twitter as newly toxic ring hollow, considering offensive language and conspiracy theories thrived on the site long before Musk took over, and that Musk insisted (at least as of late last week) that no content moderation changes had yet been made<\/a>.<\/p>\n Overall, it smacks of people<\/a> just looking for reasons to pillory Musk. He’s become a larger-than-life boogeyman to many on the left, hellbent (in their minds, at least) on not just making changes to a social media platform people voluntarily use but destroying democracy:<\/p>\n There is a tiny possibility Elon Musk is trying to distract us from the fact we have 9 days to save democracy.<\/p>\n — Maya May (@mayaonstage) October 30, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n