Last week I saw a reprehensible and delusional post from Elon Musk on his social media platform, X.
Shortly thereafter I read Robert Reich’s Guardian opinion piece on how Elon Musk has gained a concerning level of power over US national security.
For certain, Musk is a genius. He is our era’s Thomas Edison and Henry Ford combined. But he is also a man who has unfettered control of virtually all the world’s satellite internet service through Starlink. On a whim he can shut down a country’s ability to communicate and perhaps its ability to defend itself.
I cannot in good conscience be part of a platform run by such a powerful and egomaniacal person.
Musk is on pace to be the world’s first trillionaire by 2027 and my absence from X will have no impact on him whatsoever. But with my dropping out he will have one fewer active users to tout when he courts advertisers for his social media platform.
I do want to continue to have engaging data visualization discussions. I just won’t be having them on X. You can find me here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swexler/
