tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/elon-musk-13147/articlesElon Musk – The Conversation2024-03-25T12:40:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2256112024-03-25T12:40:09Z2024-03-25T12:40:09ZAmazon, SpaceX and other companies are arguing the government agency that has protected labor rights since 1935 is actually unconstitutional<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582234/original/file-20240315-26-ku55bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=76%2C35%2C2919%2C2092&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed in 1933 the law that led to the National Labor Relations Board's emergence.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FDRSignsWagnerPeyserAct1933/61439bda58874be9b582a59e2875c561/photo?Query=fdr%20wagner%20act&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3175/Amazon_complaint.pdf?1711137053">Amazon</a>, <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3174/Space_X_complaint.pdf?1711136921">SpaceX</a>, <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3177/Starbucks_Brief.pdf?1711327299">Starbucks</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board">Trader Joe’s have all responded</a> to allegations that they have violated labor laws with the same bold argument. The <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/">National Labor Relations Board</a>, they assert in several ongoing legal proceedings, is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/business/economy/amazon-labor-nlrb.html">unconstitutional</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3174/Space_X_complaint.pdf?1711136921">SpaceX, for example, says</a> that the NLRB is engaging in “an unlawful attempt … to subject Space X to an administrative proceeding whose structure violates Article II, the Fifth Amendment, and the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.”</p>
<p>If these companies prevail, the entire process for holding union elections and for prosecuting employers who break labor laws – in place since the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/national-labor-relations-act">days of the New Deal</a> – could collapse. That would <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board">leave U.S. workers more vulnerable to exploitation</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/301/1/">The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the board</a> nearly a century ago, soon after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the law that created the NLRB and made clear that workers have the right to organize and bargain collectively. Justices have also rejected similar arguments in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/295/602/#tab-opinion-1934749">cases involving other agencies</a>.</p>
<p>As a law professor who <a href="https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/kate-andrias">researches labor law and constitutional law</a> and a former labor organizer, I am deeply concerned, but not surprised, by these attacks on the federal agency that has protected U.S. workers’ right to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/national_labor_relations_act_nlra">since the 1930s</a>.</p>
<p>These corporations seem to believe they will find a sympathetic audience before the conservative justices that occupy six of the Supreme Court’s nine seats. In a series of prior cases, the conservative justices have already <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1530">weakened administrative agencies</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-285">cut back on workers’ rights</a>.</p>
<h2>Growing support for unions</h2>
<p>The corporate attack on the NLRB also seems to be a response to <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.aspx">growing support for unions among Americans</a>.</p>
<p>Workers at the companies that are challenging the NLRB’s constitutionality have all begun to organize unions in recent years, with numerous, high-profile, union-organizing wins. Workers across numerous sectors, including auto, education, health care and Hollywood, have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/briefing/uaw-strike.html">recently held successful strikes</a>.</p>
<p>What’s more, the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/jennifer-abruzzo-national-labor-relations-board/">NLRB has been more assertive in prosecuting employers</a> for violating workers’ rights, and it has been revising rules in ways that make it easier for workers to organize.</p>
<p>For example, it has made it possible for <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/national-labor-relations-board-issues-final-rule-to-restore-fair-and">the unionization process to move faster</a> and has sought to <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-general-counsel-launches-new-10j-injunction-initiative-when-employers">quickly reinstate workers</a> who are illegally fired for organizing unions, rather than waiting years for litigation to play out.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People in t-shirts that say 'Starbucks Workers United' t-shirts and face masks jump with joy." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/583871/original/file-20240324-26-xwd6re.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2021, these Buffalo, N.Y., Starbucks employees were the first to win a union election at one of the chain’s stores.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/StarbucksUnion/f154ff4352bb4ba3b2b5838817b164dd/photo?Query=starbucks%20union&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=188&currentItemNo=64">AP Photo/Joshua Bessex</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Supreme Court and big business</h2>
<p>This is not the first time that big business has tried to use constitutional law arguments in an effort to <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nulr/vol118/iss4/3/">stop union organizing and limit workers’ rights</a>.</p>
<p>From the 1890s to the 1930s, during what is known as the “<a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/198us45">Lochner era</a>,” corporations argued that laws protecting workers’ rights, including the right to organize unions or be paid a minimum wage, violated their “freedom to contract” and exceeded Congress’ power under the Constitution.</p>
<p>Back then, the Supreme Court routinely sided with business.</p>
<p>It struck down hundreds of laws, including <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/261us525">minimum wage laws</a>, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/198us45">overtime laws</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/keating-owen-child-labor-act">laws prohibiting child labor</a>. It prohibited strikes, including in the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/labor-day-pullman-railway-strike-origins">railroad</a> and <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/259/344/">mining</a> industries. It allowed <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/221us418">labor leaders to be jailed</a>.</p>
<p>These rulings helped corporations grow wealthier and more powerful.</p>
<p>Only after <a href="https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/320-the-turbulent-years">mass uprisings by over 1 million workers</a>, economic distress wrought by the Great Depression and overwhelming popular support for the New Deal did the Supreme Court finally change course, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/300us379">recognizing that it had made a mistake</a>.</p>
<p>During the New Deal, the justices ruled that Congress has the power under the Constitution to pass minimum labor standards and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/301us1">to create agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board</a>, to protect workers and consumers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The nine members of the Supreme Court, as of 2024, seated and standing in a group." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582236/original/file-20240315-26-3abjp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Six of the the Supreme Court’s nine members are conservatives, leading to many pro-business rulings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/united-states-supreme-court-associate-justice-sonia-news-photo/1431393388?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Letting agencies make decisions</h2>
<p>Now, nearly 100 years later, the NLRB’s foes contend that the labor board violates the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/separation_of_powers">separation of powers</a> – the constitutional principle that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government have distinct powers – because it mixes executive and judicial functions.</p>
<p>They also argue that the board is unconstitutional because presidents cannot fire the <a href="https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/who-we-are">NLRB’s members or administrative law judges</a> whenever they want.</p>
<p>And opponents of the NLRB claim that the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/administrative_law_judge_(alj)">use of administrative law judges</a> – jurists who preside over and adjudicate cases regarding alleged violations of the law – violates the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/right_to_jury_trial">constitutional right to a jury trial</a>. </p>
<p>But the Supreme Court has long permitted all of these features, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/301us1">not only for the NLRB</a> but for <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/295us602">other government agencies</a> as well.</p>
<p>And for good reason.</p>
<p>No provision of the Constitution prohibits Congress from designing government agencies in this way. And Congress believed that these design choices would help the agency function well.</p>
<p>For example, by prohibiting presidents from replacing all of the NLRB’s administrative law judges for any reason or no reason at all, Congress sought to ensure independence of those judges.</p>
<p>Having each violation of law litigated before a federal jury, rather than administrative law judges deciding cases, could take a lot longer to resolve cases.</p>
<h2>Assessing what’s at stake</h2>
<p>If these corporations prevail with their constitutional challenges, the NLRB will no longer be able to function.</p>
<p>Currently, it can be <a href="https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/rebuilding-worker-voice-in-todays-economy">very difficult for workers to organize unions</a>, partly because of insufficient penalties and protections in labor law. But if the corporations win, there will no longer be an agency in place to safeguard workers’ rights to organize unions and to negotiate fair contracts with their employers.</p>
<p>Indeed, this threat goes beyond labor rights.</p>
<p>If the NLRB is found to violate the Constitution, other government agencies could be at risk as well, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. In my view, that would endanger investors, voters and consumers – all Americans.</p>
<p>There is reason to believe the Supreme Court could side with big business if a lawsuit challenging the board’s constitutionality reaches it.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court in its current configuration is <a href="https://minnesotalawreview.org/article/a-century-of-business-in-the-supreme-court-1920-2020/">more pro-business than it has been in a century</a>. The justices who make up its conservative majority have shown that they are willing to overrule long-standing labor precedents through decisions that have <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-1466">reduced union funding</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-107">restricted workers’ access to unions</a>.</p>
<p>The conservative justices have also indicated that they may limit the powers of <a href="https://www.govexec.com/management/2023/11/supreme-court-appears-ready-deal-another-blow-federal-agencies-administrative-powers/392348/">administrative agencies beyond the NLRB</a>. Most notably, the conservative majority on the court recently crafted a rule known as the “<a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/today/what-critics-get-wrong-and-right-about-the-supreme-courts-new-major-questions-doctrine/">major questions</a>” doctrine, which says Congress must set particularly clear rules when it authorizes agencies to regulate on matters of political or economic significance.</p>
<p>Using this doctrine, the court has overturned a Biden administration regulation designed to <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-1530">protect the environment</a> and has rejected its initial <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/2022/22-506">student loan forgiveness program</a>.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court is hearing several other cases this year that threaten administrative agencies, including one that would allow courts to give <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-discard-chevron/">less deference to reasonable agency rules</a> and one that <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-jarkesy/">challenges the use of administrative law judges</a> by the Securities and Exchange Commission.</p>
<h2>Seeing room for optimism</h2>
<p>There is no way to know for certain how the Supreme Court will rule on a case concerning the constitutionality of the NLRB or other federal agencies. There may not be enough votes to overturn years of well-established precedent, even among the conservative justices.</p>
<p>And on labor rights more generally, there is <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/nulr/vol118/iss4/3/">reason for optimism</a>.</p>
<p>Workers are organizing in greater numbers than they have in decades. History teaches that when there is sufficient popular support for unions and workers’ rights, and sufficient mobilization among workers, the <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374532376/thewillofthepeople">Supreme Court sometimes backs off</a> and corporations give up their fight against workers’ rights. </p>
<p>Indeed, even Starbucks recently agreed <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/02/28/starbucks-workers-union-collective-bargaining-litigation-labor-relations-landmark-moment">to begin negotiating with its workers</a> after years of <a href="https://www.nrn.com/news/labor-board-claims-starbucks-refusing-negotiate-144-unionized-cafes">illegally – according to the NLRB – refusing to bargain</a> with them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Earlier in her career, Kate Andrias served as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama, and as an organizer with the Service Employees International Union. She frequently provides advice on policy initiatives to legislators and workers’ rights organizations and works on related litigation. </span></em></p>Nearly a century after the National Labor Relations Board’s creation, big corporations are arguing that it violates the US Constitution.Kate Andrias, Professor of Law, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253822024-03-15T17:34:38Z2024-03-15T17:34:38ZElon Musk’s brain implant company offers an intriguing glimpse of an internet connecting human minds<p>Elon Musk’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15077864/elon-musk-neuralink-brain-computer-interface-ai-cyborgs">company called Neuralink</a>, launched in 2016, aims to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-elon-musk-neuralink-20170421-htmlstory.html">implant a piece of technology</a> in people’s brains that would allow them to control a computer or phone by thought alone. This is otherwise known as a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3497935/">brain-computer interface</a>. </p>
<p>After years of <a href="https://theconversation.com/neuralink-put-a-chip-in-gertrude-the-pigs-brain-it-might-be-useful-one-day-145383">experimenting on animals</a>, Neuralink recently announced the implantation of one of their devices in the brain of a person.</p>
<p>Yet “neurotechnology”, of which this is a form, holds the promise of alleviating human suffering and allowing <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06377-x">people with disabilities to regain lost capacities</a>.</p>
<p>And it raises further questions. Would people without disabilities also embrace technology that directly connects with their brains and nervous systems? What would happen in future if people were able to link themselves to devices, infrastructure and even other people’s brains in a kind of brain-computer internet?</p>
<p>It’s now time to begin to think about those questions. Medical conditions such as <a href="https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/locked-syndrome">locked-in syndrome</a> prevent people from communicating or moving their limbs. Neuralink’s device is initially aimed at restoring capacities to people with such conditions by controlling a computer cursor to communicate, or using a robotic arm to feed themselves. </p>
<p>However, the longer term aspirations of the company, as expressed by Musk, include the capacity to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/28/elon-musk-wants-to-put-a-fitbit-in-your-skull-to-summon-your-tesla/?sh=f71cac7586a9">summon a self-driving vehicle by thought alone</a>. These aspirations suggest that neurotechnology might connect people to a wide variety of technological systems currently in everyday use.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-brain-is-the-most-complicated-object-in-the-universe-this-is-the-story-of-scientists-quest-to-decode-it-and-read-peoples-minds-222458">The brain is the most complicated object in the universe. This is the story of scientists' quest to decode it – and read people's minds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>What are brain-computer interfaces?</h2>
<p>Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) detect the electrical activity in the brain connected to a person’s intentions. For example, if a person wants a cursor to move to the right, they might imagine waving their hand. This brain activity is decoded and converted into a command for a cursor. </p>
<p>This approach can work with a robotic arm, the lights in a smart home, a video game, or <a href="https://www.usf.edu/news/2018/mind-machine-students-to-compete-usf-first-ever-brain-drone-race.aspx">even a drone or robot</a>. A BCI can be thought of as a “universal controller”, or as the eminent neuroscientist Professor Rafael Yuste has described it, <a href="https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/rafael-yuste-lets-act-its-too-late">an iPhone for the brain</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Elon Musk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581735/original/file-20240313-22-mv5ska.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elon Musk believes BCIs could be used to control self-driving vehicles by thought alone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-june-16-2023-elon-2318800285">Frederic Legrand - COMEO / Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Neurotechnology can be invasively implanted in the brain or nervous system, or come in the form of wearable technology, such as a headset or earbuds. Air traffic controllers with external headsets can have their brains monitored to alert them when their attention levels are dropping. </p>
<p>Children in <a href="https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/mind-control-chinas-classrooms">Chinese high schools</a> have already had their brains monitored by teachers. The company <a href="https://www.brainwavescience.com/">Brainwave Science</a> even offers a product to security services and police that can monitor suspects’ brains during interrogations.</p>
<p>However, things might go even further, as forms of direct <a href="https://theconversation.com/brain-to-brain-interfaces-the-science-of-telepathy-37926">brain to brain communication</a> are being tested. Instead of calling your friend or texting them, you might one day communicate telepathically. Rudimentary forms of direct brain to brain communication between humans (and even between humans and various animals) have already been achieved.</p>
<h2>Military uses</h2>
<p>Various militaries are also interested in the potential of “super soldiers” enhanced with neurotechnology, as they could operate more effectively in challenging environments, such as urban settings.</p>
<p>This would incorporate weapon systems, sensing and monitoring the human brains of military personnel in a distributed system of battlefield control. A particularly striking example of this approach comes in the form of the <a href="https://www.uts.edu.au/news/tech-design/mind-control-robots-reality">thought-controlled robotic dogs</a> that have recently been demonstrated by the Australian Army.</p>
<p>This brings to mind the fictional <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borg">Borg civilisation</a> from Star Trek, who are a similar mix of biology and machine parts. The alien Borg are individuals connected by neurotechnology that operate together as an entity. The implications of an interconnected system of humans and machines enabled by neurotechnology is something we should start to think about, along with what values <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290974852_We_Are_the_Borg_Human_Assimilation_into_Cellular_Society">that society might have</a>.</p>
<p>We can envisage all kinds of scenarios. In future, it’s possible that those who operate critical infrastructure in cities could have their brains monitored to prevent accidents. People with mobility issues might increasingly interact with devices in their home, turning lights on and off and controlling domestic robots via their brain-computer interfaces. </p>
<h2>Wider take-up?</h2>
<p>At some point, people without disabilities could also decide to dispense with handheld remote control appliances in favour of controlling devices with their brains. Prisoners and offenders in the community could be monitored in real-time to assess their <a href="https://lsj.com.au/articles/a-clockwork-orange-again/">mental states</a>.</p>
<p>In time, these separate applications might start to make connections with each other in service of enhanced efficiency, commercial expediency, and social control. Neurotech could emerge as an essential infrastructure that becomes the key interface of human relationships with technological systems.</p>
<p>What emerges from all of this? There has some been some thinking and action in relation to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-quarterly-of-healthcare-ethics/article/minding-rights-mapping-ethical-and-legal-foundations-of-neurorights/2F3BD282956047E1E67AA9049A2A0B68">the human rights</a> and broader <a href="https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/topics/research/how-will-brain-monitoring-technology-influence-the-practice-of-law">legal implications of neurotechnology</a>. But much of the debate is rather individualistic in orientation and neglects the wider societal implications of changing human relationships with technological systems. </p>
<p>Consequently, we need a discussion about the larger purpose of neurotechnology, its use and implications. This needs input from a variety of groups, such as infrastructure specialists, designers, architects, human computer interaction specialists and community groups.</p>
<p>Neurotechnology is likely to have diverse impacts across society: in the home, the workplace, the criminal justice system and networks of infrastructure.</p>
<p>Teasing out the emerging issues across these different sectors should enable us to anticipate the harms and benefits of neurotechnology. This will allow us to shape its development to support humans and the environment. </p>
<p>To paraphrase the Borg: resistance may not be futile after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Allan McCay is a member of Standards Australia's Brain-computer interface committee.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Marvin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Could the technology move beyond medical applications and into wide use?Simon Marvin, Director, Urban Institute, University of SheffieldAllan McCay, Academic Fellow, University of Sydney Law School, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243872024-03-06T17:45:13Z2024-03-06T17:45:13ZSpacesuits need a major upgrade for the next phase of exploration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579865/original/file-20240305-18-mik4ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C0%2C3822%2C2160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-taps-axiom-space-for-first-artemis-moonwalking-spacesuits/">NASA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Humans have long dreamed of setting foot on the Moon and other planetary bodies such as Mars. Since the 1960s, space travellers have donned suits designed to protect them from the vacuum of space and stepped out into the unknown.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://spacenews.com/polaris-dawn-private-astronaut-mission-slips-to-mid-2024/">the Polaris Dawn mission</a>, which is to include the first spacewalk organised by a private company, has been delayed. This is due to complications with the design and development of a suitable spacesuit. </p>
<p>Moon suits are also one of the key elements of Nasa’s Artemis lunar programme that have yet to be delivered. A report released in November 2023 said that the contractor making the suits is having <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106256#:%7E:text=To%20develop%20Artemis%20space%20suits,report%20examining%20the%20Artemis%20enterprise.">to revisit aspects of the design provided by Nasa</a>, which could introduce delays.</p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://time.com/5802128/alexei-leonov-spacewalk-obstacles/">the first spacewalk</a>, by the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, took place in 1965. Later, <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/the-apollo-program/">12 Nasa astronauts would walk on the lunar surface</a>, between 1969 and 1972, using technology that would be eclipsed by today’s smartphones. So it’s not unreasonable to ask why it can still be difficult to design and build spacesuits to do the same thing.</p>
<p>Much has changed since the Apollo missions planted flags on the Moon. The <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/01/20/us-china-india-japan-and-others-are-rushing-back-to-the-moon.html">geopolitics driving space travel have shifted</a>, and spacesuits are no longer expected to be just a form of protection. Instead, they are a critical way to improve the productivity of astronauts. This involves a rethink of not just the suits themselves, but the technology that supports them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Crew Dragon approaching the ISS" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579872/original/file-20240305-30-sdnkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Polaris Dawn mission uses modified version of the Crew Dragon spacecraft to perform the first commercial spacewalk.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/view-of-spacex-crew-dragon-endeavour-approaching-station/">Nasa</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An array of powerful telecommunications technologies to connect astronauts with space stations and ground control sits alongside multisensory cameras, temperature readers and proximity sensors in present-day spacesuits.</p>
<p>Situational awareness – understanding key elements in the environment, such as the health of an astronaut – is a core tenet for modern spacesuit design and critical for the operator’s safety. The ability of a suit to track heart rate and other vital signs is important in a vacuum, where levels of oxygen need constant monitoring. </p>
<p>Expectations around the risks astronauts take have changed for the better. And the level of investment it takes to produce a spacesuit necessitates that it can be used for future tasks that may include lunar settlement in the next few decades.</p>
<p>The trade off that engineers must make when incorporating wearable technology like those already mentioned is weight. Will greater situational awareness result in a spacesuit that is too heavy to move in effectively? </p>
<p>When Elon Musk first hinted at challenges with the extravehicular activity spacesuit for Polaris Dawn <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1745941814165815717">in a presentation to SpaceX employees in January</a>, it was not difficulties with connected technology that he discussed, but of redesigning “the suit so that you actually move around in it”.</p>
<h2>Situational awareness</h2>
<p>However, when talking about mobility in a spacesuit, you need to consider the tasks that you want that mobility to support. </p>
<p>Before the advent of modern spacesuits, Apollo astronauts struggled to carry out missions. When drilling into the surface of the Moon with a hand drill to collect samples, astronauts found it difficult to provide enough downwards force to counteract the Moon’s weaker gravity. It was not until the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576522002879">invention of a zero-gravity drill</a>, decades later, that this problem would be addressed.</p>
<p>The current exploration of <a href="https://digital-library.theiet.org/content/books/ce/pbce131e">pneumatic exoskeletons</a>, providing the support necessary for movement in low gravity could be part of a solution. However, newer spacesuits may also need to interface with hardware, like robotic drills that exist outside the suit. This will also necessitate more mobility in spacesuits. </p>
<h2>Working with robots</h2>
<p>Offloading tasks, previously carried out by humans, to robots will be part of the future of space exploration. It’s a primary way that engineers will also be able to enhance the mobility of astronauts in spacesuits.</p>
<p>For example, when an astronaut goes on a spacewalk to inspect the condition of part of a space station and make any possible repairs, they are supported by a robotic arm that ensures they don’t float off into space. While jointed, this arm is rigid and can limit an astronaut’s movement.</p>
<p>An approach currently being explored to extend this range of movement is a climbing robot, that is attached to both the astronaut and the space station, that an individual can control through their spacesuit. This would allow the astronaut to move around the space station faster and with a greater range of movement than before, allowing them to reach and repair hard-to-access areas like corners.</p>
<p>While the eventual hope is that robots themselves can assess any damage to the space station and repair it, due to possible disruptions in normal operations, humans must be ready to step in. Possible disruptions could be natural, like a small meteor shower damaging the robot, or human-made, like hacking carried by a hostile group or state.</p>
<p>For the types of activities we want to accomplish in the future, this human-robot collaboration will be instrumental. Building a base on the Moon, as both <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/four-things-weve-learned-about-nasas-planned-base-camp-on-the-moon-180980589/">the US</a> and <a href="https://spacenews.com/china-attracts-moon-base-partners-outlines-project-timelines/">China</a> plan to do, will involve construction work and drilling, which humans will not be able to accomplish alone. Modern spacesuits will need to provide an interface to work with this new technology, and we can expect the suits to evolve in step with robotics.</p>
<p>The relationship between humans and robots is changing. It will go beyond spacewalks and robots’ previous uses as limited tools, to a situation where they are cooperative partners in space. The objectives of ten or 20 years from now, like building lunar settlements, exploring mineral deposits on the Moon and efficiently repairing space station modules can only be achieved using robotics. </p>
<p>Modern spacesuits will be a key foundation of this collaborative relationship, forming the interface where astronauts and robots can work together to achieve shared goals. So when we do once again leave our footprints on other worlds, we will no longer be alone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yang Gao has received funding from UKRI, UKSA and ESA on conducting space related research. </span></em></p>The next generation of spacesuit needs to do more than simply protect an astronaut from the vacuum of space.Yang Gao, Professor of Robotics, Head of Centre for Robotics Research, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235372024-03-05T14:34:39Z2024-03-05T14:34:39ZDonations by top 50 US donors fell again in 2023, sliding to $12B − Mike Bloomberg, Phil and Penny Knight, and Michael and Susan Dell led the list of biggest givers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578433/original/file-20240227-22-ys3u32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3008%2C1868&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Penny Knight and Phil Knight were the second-largest givers of 2023.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wishtv.com/news/education/indiana-lawmakers-join-gop-led-states-trying-to-target-college-tenure/">Michael Hickey/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The top 50 American individuals and couples who gave or pledged the most to charity in 2023 committed US$12 billion to foundations, universities, hospitals and more. That total was 28% below an inflation-adjusted $16.5 billion in 2022, according to the <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/page/philanthropy-50">Chronicle of Philanthropy</a>’s latest annual tally of these donations.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. asked <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VYsdAEIAAAAJ&hl=en">David Campbell</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=c__VVwsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Angela R. Logan</a> and <a href="https://philanthropy.iupui.edu/people-directory/moody-michael.html">Michael Moody</a>, three scholars of philanthropy, to assess the significance of these gifts and to consider what they indicate about the state of charitable giving in the United States.</em></p>
<h2>What trends stand out overall?</h2>
<p><strong>David Campbell:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/donations-by-top-50-us-donors-dropped-sharply-to-16-billion-in-2022-bill-gates-elon-musk-mike-bloomberg-and-warren-buffett-lead-the-list-of-biggest-givers-199732">As was the case in 2022</a>, more than one-third of these big gifts – $4.4 billion – went to donors’ personal foundations. Another $764.3 million flowed into donor-advised funds. Also known as DAFs, these charitable savings accounts make it possible for donors to reserve assets such as cash, stocks and bonds for future charitable gifts.</p>
<p>That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that a significant amount of the money these wealthy Americans technically gave away in 2023 didn’t get in the hands of charities right away. And while foundations must <a href="https://www.ncfp.org/2008/10/15/what-is-the-5-payout-rule/">give away or spend 5% of their assets every year</a>, there are no such requirements for DAFs.</p>
<p>Many of the same wealthy people make this list every time, and they stick with a few main priorities. Media mogul and former New York City Mayor <a href="https://www.bloomberg.org/public-health/">Mike Bloomberg</a>, for example, puts a lot of his charitable money into public health.</p>
<p><strong>Michael Moody:</strong> One thing that stands out for me is what’s missing. This list doesn’t include some billionaires known to give significant amounts of money to charity, and it doesn’t reflect all the ways that the wealthiest Americans seek to do good aside from giving to charitable organizations. </p>
<p>The list leaves out anonymous donors, such as the one who in 2023 <a href="https://www.mcpherson.edu/2023/07/mcpherson-college-establishes-1-billion-endowment/">catapulted the endowment of McPherson</a>, a small college in Kansas, past the $1.5 billion mark. It also omits a very prominent billionaire donor: author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.</p>
<p>Scott openly discusses her giving in periodic essays posted to the internet, including one in December 2023 when she described the <a href="https://yieldgiving.com/essays/giving-update/">more than $2.1 billion she had given</a> in the previous 12 months to <a href="https://yieldgiving.com/gifts?essay=20231206">360 nonprofits</a>.</p>
<p>However, this sort of self-disclosure doesn’t fit the <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/how-the-chronicle-compiled-its-list-of-the-top-50-donors-of-2022">Chronicle of Philanthropy’s methodology</a>. To avoid counting the same donation twice, it acknowledges only those gifts that go directly to charities or are made to foundations and other intermediaries such as DAFs. Without specific information from Scott or her representatives about which vehicles she uses and how much money she funnels through them each year, they leave her off the list. </p>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/investing/elon-musk-charity-donation/index.html">probable omission is Elon Musk</a>, one of the richest people in the world, who leads several companies and <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/elon-musk-donated-1.95-billion-in-tesla-stock-in-2022">designated billions for charity in 2021 and 2022</a>. He has said little about his giving. Details about gifts he’s made to his foundation or other charities usually surface only through mandatory legal filings. Also, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-says-spacex-tesla-neuralink-boring-company-are-philanthropy-2022-4?r=US&IR=T">Musk has argued that his companies</a> are his best “philanthropy.”</p>
<p>Similarly, other billionaires who regularly make this list also say they use money to do good in ways beyond the charitable gifts summarized here.</p>
<p>John Arnold, who made a fortune by starting and running a hedge fund, and his wife, Laura Arnold, as well as Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, often point to ways they pursue their philanthropic goals through for-profit means, as well as through gifts to their foundations and DAFs. <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/laura-and-john-arnold-foundation-to-restructure-as-llc">They reserve large chunks of their fortunes</a> in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/technology/zuckerbergs-philanthropy-uses-llc-for-more-control.html">limited liability companies</a>, which are private corporations that they use to either make charitable donations or invest in what they believe are socially responsible companies.</p>
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<h2>What surprises you about the biggest donors?</h2>
<p><strong>Campbell:</strong> Last year, <a href="https://theconversation.com/donations-by-top-50-us-donors-dropped-sharply-to-16-billion-in-2022-bill-gates-elon-musk-mike-bloomberg-and-warren-buffett-lead-the-list-of-biggest-givers-199732">I predicted</a> that Melinda French Gates, the ex-wife of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, would make the 2023 list and she did. French Gates was the ninth-largest donor of 2023, while her former husband was No. 16.</p>
<p>French Gates has charted her own course by creating <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/melinda-french-gates-effort-aims-to-accelerate-womens-power-and-influence?sra=true">Pivotal Ventures</a>, a limited liability company. But she has continued to give primarily by funding the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest private source of <a href="https://pages.devex.com/rs/685-KBL-765/images/the-top-10-foundations-funding-development.pdf">funding for international development</a>.</p>
<p>French Gates indicated that she <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/melinda-french-gates-no-longer-pledges-bulk-of-her-wealth-to-gates-foundation-11643808602">plans to branch out</a> with her philanthropy. But she and Bill <a href="https://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/leadership?division=Co-chairs%20and%20Board%20of%20Trustees">still co-chair the foundation</a> bearing their names.</p>
<p><strong>Angela Logan</strong> Most <a href="https://www.dafresearchcollaborative.org/national-study-dafs7">donor-advised funds aren’t massive</a>. Only 1% of those accounts held balances of $10 million as of late 2021, according to a recent report. Yet, some of the biggest donors of 2023 deposited far more than that.</p>
<p>Tech executive Michael Dell and his wife, Susan Dell, have infused theirs with $486 million, while Phil Knight, the founder of the athletic apparel and footwear company Nike, and his wife, Penny Knight, placed $104 million in their DAF. <a href="https://www.dell.org/what-we-do/">Both couples</a> also have <a href="https://www.causeiq.com/organizations/knight-foundation,911791788/">their own foundations</a>.</p>
<p>I believe it’s worth watching to see whether in the future more of the biggest donors will take this route, rather than creating their own family foundations.</p>
<p>One concern is that there is <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/an-unlikely-event-the-israel-hamas-war-could-finally-spark-daf-reform">no obligation for donors to disclose gifts</a> they make through DAFs, another <a href="https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/public-disclosure-and-availability-of-exempt-organizations-returns-and-applications-requirements-for-private-foundations">difference between them and foundations</a>.</p>
<p>If more of the biggest donors take the DAF route, rather than forming foundations or giving directly to charities, the public would lose access to information about where philanthropic dollars go. And that could potentially further erode trust in charitable giving and nonprofits.</p>
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<h2>What concerns do you have?</h2>
<p><strong>Campbell:</strong> While these gifts are formidable, I still think about those who are not showing up. Only 23 of the top givers are from the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/">Forbes 400 list</a> of the wealthiest Americans.</p>
<p>I find it surprising that many of those with the most to give away are outflanked by others’ generosity. Only 13 of the year’s top donors have signed <a href="https://givingpledge.org/">the Giving Pledge</a>, a “promise by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.” This fact leads me to wonder what the long-term plans are for many of the other top donors.</p>
<p>Will they sign to the Giving Pledge? What makes them willing to give so much today but not commit for tomorrow? </p>
<p><strong>Logan</strong> Similarly, I’m struck by the lack of diversity in terms of age among the top givers. More than half of them are over 80. Only one person listed among the youngest members of the Forbes 400 list, Zuckerberg, also made the cut.</p>
<p>Even more intriguing is that, in addition to Zuckerberg, five more of the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/savannahborn/2023/10/03/the-youngest-billionaires-on-the-2023-forbes-400-list/">youngest members of the Forbes 400</a> have signed the Giving Pledge: Airbnb co-founders Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk and Brian Chesky; Brian Armstrong, CEO of the cryptocurrency platform Coinbase; and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. </p>
<p>What makes them willing to commit so much tomorrow but less inclined to give as much today? </p>
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<h2>What do you expect to see in 2024 and beyond?</h2>
<p><strong>Logan:</strong> I feel as though this has been stated every four years since I turned 18, but the 2024 U.S. presidential election will be the most consequential in the nation’s history.</p>
<p>I suspect that in this election cycle, donors are putting more of their philanthropic dollars toward preserving democracy, voter education and the causes that matter to Americans on the left, right and center.</p>
<p>Additionally, even if the conflict between Israel and Hamas ends soon, I expect to see an increase in giving in 2024 to combat both antisemitism and Islamophobia and for that to continue going forward. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/us/hate-crimes-antisemitism-anti-muslim-dg/index.html">Hate-related crimes</a>, including those targeting Muslims and Jews, have been rising in the U.S. since 2014. And they have surged since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel launched its war on Gaza. That could drive further giving along the lines of the $100 million that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft provided his <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/robert-kraft-patriots-israel-anti-semitism-0cf70cb4">Foundation to Combat Antisemitism</a> in 2023.</p>
<p><strong>Moody:</strong> I expect that most of the biggest gifts will keep going to foundations and DAFs, as well as higher ed and medical causes. That pattern seems to hold steady, regardless of whatever new culture war, political fight or international conflict is in the headlines.</p>
<p>However, as Angela Logan notes, there are hints that we’ll see more major gifts focused on issues like ethnic conflict, bigotry or racial justice and uplift. One notable example of this in 2023 was the Knights’ <a href="https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/phil-knight-invests-400-million-in-portland-s-albina-neighborhood">$400 million pledge to revive a struggling Black neighborhood</a> in Portland, Oregon.</p>
<p>But the world of philanthropy can be surprising sometimes. Donors can make choices no one saw coming, and new donors can burst on the scene. With <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/business/ubs-billionaires-report/index.html">new billionaires emerging</a> at a swift pace, it’s hard to predict what’s going to happen next.</p>
<p>Consider, for instance, the news announced in late February 2024 that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/26/nyregion/albert-einstein-college-medicine-bronx-donation.html">Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion</a> to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.</p>
<p>Gottesman is a former professor at that medical school. Her husband, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/business/dealbook/david-s-gottesman-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1">David “Sandy” Gottesman</a>, was a billionaire investor who died in 2022 without putting any strings on what she should do with their fortune. This gift broke with some common conventions.</p>
<p>While she did stipulate that the funds should be be used to make the school tuition-free forever, she didn’t tie the gift to <a href="https://charitylawyerblog.com/2021/06/28/charity-naming-rights-how-to-do-it-right/">naming rights</a>. She insisted, instead, that the college keep its name. Initially, she even <a href="https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/dr-ruth-gottesman-just-gave-1-billion-to-make-tuition-free-at-this-bronx-medical-school-it-comes-with-a-surprising-catch.html">wanted to give the money anonymously</a>. </p>
<p>Will other big donors now follow suit?</p>
<p><em>The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding for The Conversation U.S. and provides funding for The Conversation internationally. Arnold Ventures provides funding for The Conversation U.S.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223537/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Campbell is the Chair of the Board of the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angela R. Logan is the Board President of the Nonprofit Academic Centers Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Moody does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Three philanthropy scholars discuss several trends in giving by the wealthiest Americans highlighted in this yearly report. Among them: Much of this money doesn’t go to charities right away.David Campbell, Professor of Public Administration, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkAngela R. Logan, Associate Teaching Professor of Management & Organization, St. Andre Bessette Academic Director of the Master of Nonprofit Administration, University of Notre DameMichael Moody, Professor of Philanthropic Studies, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225562024-02-14T13:25:12Z2024-02-14T13:25:12ZSeveral companies are testing brain implants – why is there so much attention swirling around Neuralink? Two professors unpack the ethical issues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575184/original/file-20240213-26-hubky4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2083%2C1427&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brain-computer interfaces have the potential to transform some people's lives, but they raise a host of ethical issues, too.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/artificial-intelligence-brain-royalty-free-image/1195715936?phrase=brain+computer&adppopup=true">Andriy Onufriyenko/Moment via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Putting a computer inside someone’s brain used to feel like the edge of science fiction. Today, <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-106118">it’s a reality</a>. Academic and commercial groups are testing “brain-computer interface” devices to enable people with disabilities to function more independently. Yet Elon Musk’s company, Neuralink, has put this technology front and center in debates about safety, ethics and neuroscience.</em> </p>
<p><em>In January 2024, Musk announced that Neuralink <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752098683024220632">implanted its first chip</a> in a human subject’s brain. The Conversation reached out to two scholars at the University of Washington School of Medicine – <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/nancy-s-jecker-phd-sheher">Nancy Jecker, a bioethicst</a>, and <a href="https://neurosurgery.uw.edu/bio/andrew-l-ko-md">Andrew Ko, a neurosurgeon</a> who implants brain chip devices – for their thoughts on the ethics of this new horizon in neuroscience.</em> </p>
<h2>How does a brain chip work?</h2>
<p>Neuralink’s coin-size device, called N1, is designed to enable patients to carry out actions just by concentrating on them, without moving their bodies.</p>
<p>Subjects in <a href="https://neuralink.com/pdfs/PRIME-Study-Brochure.pdf">the company’s PRIME study</a> – short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface – undergo surgery to place the device in a part of the brain that controls movement. The chip records and processes the brain’s electrical activity, then transmits this data to an external device, such as a phone or computer.</p>
<p>The external device “decodes” the patient’s brain activity, learning to associate certain patterns with the patient’s goal: moving a computer cursor up a screen, for example. Over time, the software can recognize a pattern of neural firing that consistently occurs while the participant is imagining that task, and then execute the task for the person. </p>
<p><a href="https://neuralink.com/#mission">Neuralink’s current trial</a> is focused on helping people with paralyzed limbs <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7o39CzHgug">control computers or smartphones</a>. Brain-computer interfaces, commonly called BCIs, can also be used to control devices <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2023.2211602">such as wheelchairs</a>.</p>
<h2>A few companies are testing BCIs. What’s different about Neuralink?</h2>
<p>Noninvasive devices positioned on the outside of a person’s head <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/challenges-and-advances-brain-computer-interfaces">have been used in clinical trials for a long time</a>, but they have not received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for commercial development. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young woman in a green shirt sits with a wired contraption on her head as four other people look on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575212/original/file-20240213-18-6c2r7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A visitor experiences a BCI system during the 2023 China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/visitor-experiences-domestic-brain-computer-interface-news-photo/1648339155?adppopup=true">Li Xin/Xinhua via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are other brain-computer devices, like Neuralink’s, that are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00304-4">fully implanted and wireless</a>. However, <a href="https://neuralink.com/pdfs/PRIME-Study-Brochure.pdf">the N1 implant</a> combines more technologies in a single device: It can target individual neurons, record from thousands of sites in the brain and recharge its small battery wirelessly. These are important advances that could produce better outcomes.</p>
<h2>Why is Neuralink drawing criticism?</h2>
<p>Neuralink <a href="https://twitter.com/neuralink/status/1661857379460468736?lang=en">received FDA approval</a> for human trials in May 2023. Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752098683024220632">announced the company’s first human trial</a> on his social media platform, X – formerly Twitter – in January 2024.</p>
<p>Information about the implant, however, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/want-details-elon-musks-brain-implant-trial-youll-have-ask-him-2024-02-02/">is scarce</a>, <a href="https://neuralink.com/pdfs/PRIME-Study-Brochure.pdf">aside from a brochure</a> aimed at recruiting trial subjects. Neuralink did not register at <a href="https://clinicaltrials.gov/">ClinicalTrials.gov</a>, as is <a href="https://clinicaltrials.gov/policy/faq">customary, and required by some academic journals</a>. </p>
<p>Some scientists are troubled by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00304-4">this lack of transparency</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.112.965798">Sharing information about clinical trials is important</a> because it helps other investigators learn about areas related to their research and can improve patient care. Academic journals can also be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/25152459211007467">biased toward positive results</a>, preventing researchers from learning from unsuccessful experiments. </p>
<p>Fellows at the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank, have warned that Musk’s brand of “<a href="https://www.thehastingscenter.org/the-neuralink-patient-behind-the-musk/">science by press release, while increasingly common, is not science</a>.” They advise against relying on someone with a huge financial stake in a research outcome to function as the sole source of information.</p>
<p>When scientific research is funded by <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105396">government agencies</a> or <a href="https://sciencephilanthropyalliance.org/">philanthropic groups</a>, its aim is to promote the public good. Neuralink, on the other hand, embodies <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/what-is-private-equity">a private equity model</a>, which is <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/4365741-private-equity-is-buying-up-health-care-but-the-real-problem-is-why-doctors-are-selling/">becoming more common</a> <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12719/ethically-challenged">in science</a>. Firms pooling funds from private investors to back science breakthroughs may strive to do good, but they also strive to maximize profits, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2021-107555">can conflict with patients’ best interests</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A phone screen shows a white page that says 'Elon Musk,' positioned below an abstract black design and the word 'NEURALINK.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575187/original/file-20240213-22-j0czv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neuralink’s first human implant was announced on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, in January 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elon-musk-account-on-twitter-and-neuralink-emblem-displayed-news-photo/1247138943?adppopup=true">NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2022, the U.S. Department of Agriculture <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-faces-federal-probe-employee-backlash-over-animal-tests-2022-12-05/">investigated animal cruelty</a> at Neuralink, according to a Reuters report, after employees accused the company of rushing tests and botching procedures on test animals in a race for results. The agency’s inspection found no breaches, according to a letter from the USDA secretary to lawmakers, which Reuters reviewed. However, the secretary did note an “adverse surgical event” in 2019 that Neuralink had self-reported. </p>
<p>In a separate incident also reported by Reuters, the Department of Transportation <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-brain-implant-company-violated-us-hazardous-material-transport-rules-2024-01-26/">fined Neuralink</a> for violating rules about transporting hazardous materials, including a flammable liquid. </p>
<h2>What other ethical issues does Neuralink’s trial raise?</h2>
<p>When brain-computer interfaces are used to help patients who suffer from disabling conditions function more independently, such as by helping them communicate or move about, this can profoundly improve their quality of life. In particular, it helps people recover a sense of their own agency or autonomy – one of <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/ethics-medicine/bioethics-topics/articles/principles-bioethics">the key tenets</a> of medical ethics. </p>
<p>However well-intentioned, medical interventions can produce unintended consequences. With BCIs, scientists and ethicists are particularly concerned about the potential for <a href="https://theconversation.com/brain-computer-interfaces-could-allow-soldiers-to-control-weapons-with-their-thoughts-and-turn-off-their-fear-but-the-ethics-of-neurotechnology-lags-behind-the-science-194017">identity theft, password hacking and blackmail</a>. Given how the devices access users’ thoughts, there is also the possibility that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02419-x">their autonomy</a> could be manipulated by third parties. </p>
<p>The ethics of medicine requires physicians to help patients, while minimizing potential harm. In addition to errors and privacy risks, scientists worry about <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00304-4">potential adverse effects</a> of a completely implanted device like Neuralink, since device components are not easily replaced after implantation.</p>
<p>When considering any invasive medical intervention, patients, providers and developers seek a balance between risk and benefit. At current levels of safety and reliability, the benefit of a permanent implant would have to be large to justify the uncertain risks.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>For now, Neuralink’s trials are focused on patients with paralysis. Musk has said his ultimate goal for BCIs, however, is to help humanity – <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/7/17/20697812/elon-musk-neuralink-ai-brain-implant-thread-robot">including healthy people</a> – “<a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/30/1007786/elon-musks-neuralink-demo-update-neuroscience-theater/">keep pace” with artificial intelligence</a>.</p>
<p>This raises questions about another core tenet of medical ethics: <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41465-018-0108-x">justice</a>. Some types of supercharged brain-computer synthesis could exacerbate social inequalities if only wealthy citizens have access to enhancements.</p>
<p>What is more immediately concerning, however, is the possibility that the device could be increasingly shown to be helpful for people with disabilities, but become unavailable due to loss of research funding. For patients whose access to a device is tied to a research study, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2023.04.016">prospect of losing access after the study ends</a> can be devastating. This raises thorny questions about whether it is ever ethical to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2016-103868">provide early access</a> to breakthrough medical interventions prior to their receiving full FDA approval.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365700467_The_Unique_and_Practical_Advantages_of_Applying_A_Capability_Approach_to_Brain_Computer_Interface">Clear ethical and legal guidelines are needed</a> to ensure the benefits that stem from scientific innovations like Neuralink’s brain chip are balanced against patient safety and societal good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Brain-computer interface devices have the potential to boost users’ autonomy, especially for people who experience paralysis. But that comes with risks, as well.Nancy S. Jecker, Professor of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine, University of WashingtonAndrew Ko, Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery, School of Medicine, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224582024-02-07T17:30:26Z2024-02-07T17:30:26ZThe brain is the most complicated object in the universe. This is the story of scientists’ quest to decode it – and read people’s minds<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573721/original/file-20240206-26-8guoy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=299%2C119%2C3586%2C2874&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">HuthLab researchers (l-r) Alex Huth, Shailee Jain and Jerry Tang behind an fMRI scanner in the University of Texas's Biomedical Imaging Center.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://cns.utexas.edu/news/podcast/brain-activity-decoder-can-reveal-stories-peoples-minds">Nolan Zunk/UT Austin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the middle of 2023, a <a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2023/05/01/brain-activity-decoder-can-reveal-stories-in-peoples-minds/">study</a> conducted by the HuthLab at the University of Texas sent shockwaves through the realms of neuroscience and technology. For the first time, the thoughts and impressions of people unable to communicate with the outside world were translated into continuous natural language, using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and brain imaging technology.</p>
<p>This is the closest science has yet come to reading someone’s mind. While advances in neuroimaging over the past two decades have enabled non-responsive and minimally conscious patients to control a computer cursor with their brain, HuthLab’s research is a significant step closer towards accessing people’s actual thoughts. As Alexander Huth, the neuroscientist who co-led the research, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/science/ai-speech-language.html">told the New York Times</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This isn’t just a language stimulus. We’re getting at meaning – something about the idea of what’s happening. And the fact that’s possible is very exciting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Combining AI and brain-scanning technology, the team created a non-invasive brain decoder capable of <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.29.509744v1">reconstructing continuous natural language</a> among people otherwise unable to communicate with the outside world. The development of such technology – and the parallel development of <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2516-1091/ac23e6/meta">brain-controlled motor prosthetics</a> that enable paralysed patients to achieve some renewed mobility – holds tremendous prospects for people suffering from neurological diseases including <a href="https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/locked-syndrome#:%7E:text=Locked%2Din%20syndrome%20is%20a,communicate%20with%20blinking%20eye%20movements">locked-in syndrome</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/quadriplegia">quadriplegia</a>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Report on HuthLab’s ‘mind reading’ research by CBS Austin.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the longer term, this could lead to wider public applications such as fitbit-style <a href="https://insider.fitt.co/a-50k-fitbit-for-your-brain/">health monitors for the brain</a> and <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-94544-6_4">brain-controlled smartphones</a>. On January 29, Elon Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752098683024220632">announced</a> that his Neuralink tech startup had implanted a chip in a human brain for the first time. He had previously told followers that Neuralink’s first product, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752118131579867417">Telepathy</a>, would one day allow people to control their phones or computers “just by thinking”.</p>
<p>But alongside such technological developments come major <a href="https://theconversation.com/mri-scans-and-ai-technology-really-could-read-what-were-thinking-the-implications-are-terrifying-205503">ethical and legal concerns</a>. It’s not only privacy but the <a href="https://theconversation.com/freedom-of-thought-is-being-threatened-by-states-big-tech-and-even-ourselves-heres-what-we-can-do-to-protect-it-220266">very identity of people</a> that may be at risk. As we enter this new era of so-called <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2408019-mind-reading-ai-can-translate-brainwaves-into-written-text/#:%7E:text=Using%20only%20a%20sensor%2Dfilled,person's%20thoughts%20into%20written%20words.">mind-reading technology</a>, we will also need to consider how to prevent its potential to help people being outweighed by its potential to do harm.</p>
<h2>Humanity’s greatest mapping challenge</h2>
<p>The brain is the <a href="https://today.uconn.edu/2018/03/complicated-object-universe/">most complicated object in the universe</a>. It contains more than 89 billion neurons, each connected to around 7,000 other neurons that send between ten and 100 signals every second. The development of AI was based on the brain and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-soon-become-impossible-for-humans-to-comprehend-the-story-of-neural-networks-tells-us-why-199456">concept of neurons working together</a>. Now, the way AI works with deep learning is helping us understand much more clearly how the brain works.</p>
<p>By fully mapping the structure and function of a healthy human brain, we can determine with great precision what goes awry in diseases of the brain and mind. In 2009, <a href="https://humanconnectome.org/">the Human Connectome Project</a> was launched by the US National Institute of Health with the goal of building a map of the structure and function of a healthy human brain. Similar initiatives were launched in Europe in 2013 (<a href="http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/">the Human Brain Project</a>) and China in 2016 (<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627316308005?via%3Dihub">the China Brain Project</a>).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Human Connectome video by BrainFacts.org.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This daunting endeavour may still take generations to complete – but the scientific ambition of mapping and reading people’s brains dates back more than two centuries. With the world having been circumnavigated many times over, Antarctica discovered and much of the planet charted, humanity was ready for a new (and even more complicated) mapping challenge – the human brain.</p>
<p>These efforts began in earnest in the late 18th century with the development of a systematic framework for scientists to ask how the brain and its regions produce psychological experiences – our thoughts, feelings and behaviour. One of the earliest attempts was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/phrenology">phrenology</a>, pioneered by the Austrian physician and anatomist Franz Joseph Gall.</p>
<p>While this long-discredited science may now be best known for the <a href="https://artsci.case.edu/dittrick/online-exhibits/explore-the-artifacts/phrenology-bust-1850/">decorative busts</a> sold in flea markets, it was all the rage by the early 19th century. Gall and his assistant Johann Spurzheim suggested that the brain was organised along 35 psychological functions, each linked to a different underlying region.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Across the world, we’re seeing unprecedented levels of mental illness at all ages, from children to the very old – with huge costs to families, communities and economies. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/tackling-the-mental-health-crisis-147216?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=ArticleTop&utm_campaign=MentalHealthSeries">In this series</a>, we investigate what’s causing this crisis, and report on the latest research to improve people’s mental health at all stages of life.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Just as you might start lifting dumbbells if you want larger biceps, phrenology argued that the more you use a particular psychological function, the more the brain region underlying it should grow – leading to a corresponding lump in your skull. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1445-2197.2005.03426.x">According to Gall and Spurzheim</a>, some of these functions (including memory, love of offspring and the instinct to kill) were shared with animals, whereas others (such as wit, poetic ability and morality) were uniquely human.</p>
<p>Throughout the British empire and later in the US, phrenology was used to justify classism, colonialism, slavery and white supremacy. Queen Victoria had readings done on her children, but Napoleon Bonaparte was not a fan. When Gall moved to Paris in 1807 to perform much of his phrenological theorising, France’s emperor pronounced: “It is an ingenious fable which might seduce the <em>gens du monde</em>, but could not stand the scrutiny of the anatomist.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old shop window with a large phrenology sign" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572529/original/file-20240131-15-j86pu0.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A phrenology shop in New Orleans in 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phrenology_Shop_in_New_Orleans_1936_by_Peter_Sekaer.jpg">Peter Sekaer/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1860s, “locationist” views of how the brain worked made a comeback – though the scientists leading this research were keen to distinguish their theories from phrenology. French anatomist Paul Broca discovered a region of the left hemisphere responsible for producing speech – thanks in part to his patient, Louis Victor Leborgne, who at age 30 <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/the-man-who-couldnt-speakand-how-he-revolutionized-psychology/">lost the ability to say anything</a> other than the syllable “tan”. Today, <a href="https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-0-387-79948-3_655">Patient Tan</a> remains one of psychology’s most famous case studies, and <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/brocas_area_is_the_brains_scriptwriter_shaping_speech_study_finds">Broca’s area</a>, in the frontal cortex, is one of the most important language regions of the brain, playing a critical part in putting our thoughts into words.</p>
<p>Similarly, German neuroanatomist Korbinian Brodmann’s <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/461884a#:%7E:text=Korbinian%20Brodmann's%20Localisation%20in%20the,cell%20type%20and%20laminar%20structure.">map of 52 distinct regions of the cerebral cortex</a>, first published in 1909, is still an important tool of contemporary neuroscience – and today’s neuroscientists continue to ask <a href="https://psu.pb.unizin.org/psych425/chapter/locationist-and-one-network-views-of-emotions-in-the-brain/">some of the same questions</a> as these pioneers: are our thoughts, feelings and behaviour produced by the collective action of the brain, or specific brain regions?</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A map of different areas of the brain" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=763&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572528/original/file-20240131-15-6poatr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brodmann’s brain map.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brodmann_areas.jpg">Vysha/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In modern neuroscience studies, hi-tech scanning tools such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow researchers to map the brain by measuring changes in local blood flow that are linked to changes in local neural activity. This approach depends on <a href="https://academic.oup.com/brain/article-abstract/51/3/310/309681?redirectedFrom=fulltext">the findings</a> of American physiologist John Fulton almost a century ago. Fulton was treating Walter K, a 26-year-old sailor suffering from headaches and vision failure. When using his eyes after leaving a dark room, the patient sensed a noise in the back of his head, located over the visual cortex. This stronger pulse of activity was not replicated by other sensory inputs, for example when smelling tobacco or vanilla.</p>
<p>Over the remainder of the 20th century, this first observation of the link between local cerebral blood flow and brain function was built on by neuroscientists including American <a href="https://dm5migu4zj3pb.cloudfront.net/manuscripts/101000/101994/JCI48101994.pdf">Seymour Kety</a> and Swedish collaborators <a href="https://karger.com/ced/article-pdf/11/1/71/2335730/000047614.pdf">David Ingvar</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24955823">Neils Lassen</a>. Their pioneering work paved the way for modern brain mapping, led by the ground-breaking work of <a href="https://www.braingate.org/about-braingate/">BrainGate</a> – a multidisciplinary research unit originating in the neuroscience department at Brown University in the US state of Rhode Island.</p>
<h2>The first clinical trial</h2>
<p>Prototype brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) record and decode a patient’s brain activity, translating it into actions that can be carried out by a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8979628/">neural cursor, prosthetic limb or powered exoskeleton</a>. The ultimate goal is wireless, non-invasive devices that help patients communicate and move with precision in the real world. AI is critical to this goal, and is <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(21)00096-6#secst0015">already being used to help BCI systems</a> produce finely controlled, rapid <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2552/abfaaa/meta">motor movements</a>.</p>
<p>In 2004, <a href="https://www.braingate.org/about-braingate/">BrainGate</a> began the first clinical trial using BCIs to enable patients with impaired motor systems (including spinal cord injuries, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32809731/#:%7E:text=Brainstem%20infarction%20is%20an%20area,provide%20precise%20diagnosis%20and%20management.">brainstem infarctions</a>, locked-in syndrome and muscular dystrophy) control a computer cursor with their thoughts.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.patientcareonline.com/view/paralyzed-man-thinks-robotic-devices-motion">Patient MN</a>, a quadriplegic since being stabbed in the neck in 2001, was the trial’s first patient. After neuroscientist Leigh Hochberg’s team implanted electrodes over the hand-arm region of the patient’s primary motor cortex, they <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04970">reported</a> that Patient MN was able to open emails, draw figures using a paint program, and operate a television using a cursor. In addition, brain activity was linked to the patient’s prosthetic hand and robotic arm, enabling rudimentary actions including grasping and transporting an object. What’s more, these tasks could be done while the patient was having a conversation, suggesting they did not even demand the full concentration of the patient.</p>
<p>Other quadriplegic patients subsequently used BCI devices connected to multi-joint robotic arms to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11076">pick up and drink from a cup</a> – and in <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1545968314554624">2015</a>, a patient with locked-in syndrome was shown operating a point-and-click keyboard five years after the device’s implantation. Advanced decoding algorithms saw their cursor control <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3953">improve</a> such that patients went from typing <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.aac7328">24 characters per minute</a> in 2015 to <a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/18554">39 characters per minute</a> two years later.</p>
<p>Also in 2017, BrainGate clinical trials reported the first evidence that BCIs could be used to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140673617306013?via%3Dihub">help patients regain movement</a> of their own limbs by bypassing the damaged portion of the spinal cord. One patient with a <a href="https://www.spinalinjury101.org/details/levels-of-injury">high-cervical</a> spinal cord injury was able to reach and grasp a cup eight years after sustaining his injury.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cg5RO8Qv6mc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">BrainGate breakthrough video by Brown University.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then in 2021, the Braingate team reported that quadriplegic patients were now using a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8218873/">wireless system in their own homes</a> to control a tablet computer – an important first step toward a future where BCI devices can help people move and communicate outside the confines of the hospital or laboratory. Furthermore, the researchers said they anticipate “significant advances and paradigm shifts in neural signal processing, decoding algorithms and control frameworks” in the quest to make such devices available to the wider public.</p>
<p>Beyond Braingate’s successes, another team led by American neurosurgeon Edward Chang <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06443-4">recently reported</a> using surgically implanted <a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/39/22/4299.full.pdf">electrocorticogram</a> electrodes to create a “digital avatar” that could convey what a paralysed patient wants to say. With the help of AI, the BCI decoded muscle movements related to speech the patients were thinking in their minds (as opposed to decoding the actual semantic content).</p>
<p>Activity patterns emerging from the specific brain region that is critical for speech are the key focus for this type of BCI. One expert not involved in the research <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/23/paralysed-woman-able-to-speak-through-digital-avatar-for-first-time">told the Guardian</a>: “This is quite a jump from previous results. We’re at a tipping point.”</p>
<h2>A new era of ‘mind reading’ technology</h2>
<p>Brain activity has long been recorded by non-invasive imaging methods such as fMRI and electroencephalography (EEG). But having been primarily envisaged as a tool for diagnostics and monitoring, it is now also a core element of the latest neural communication and prosthetic devices.</p>
<p>A landmark moment came in 2012, when a team led by Canada-based neuroscientist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvUvY_JrUgA">Adrian Owen</a> used neuroimaging to establish a <a href="https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/75999517/Sorger_2012_Brain_computer_interfaces_for_communcication_with.pdf">line of communication</a> with people suffering from <a href="https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/disorders-of-consciousness/">disorders of consciousness</a>. Despite being behaviourally non-responsive and minimally conscious, these patients were able to answer yes-or-no questions just by using their minds. For patients unable to communicate via facial or eye movements (methods that had been available to locked-in patients for many years), this was a very promising evolution.</p>
<p>Now, a decade on, the <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.29.509744v1.full">HuthLab research</a> at the University of Texas constitutes a paradigmatic shift in the evolution of communication-enabling neuroimaging systems.</p>
<p>In the study’s first stage, participants were placed in an fMRI scanner and their brain activity was recorded while they listened to 16 hours of podcasts (the model training dataset consisted of 82 five to 15-minute stories taken from the <a href="https://themoth.org/radio-hour">Moth Radio Hour</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/column/modern-love-podcast">Modern Love)</a>. This brain activity data was then linked to audio fragments the participants were listening to, in order to map what their brain activity patterns looked like when they had specific semantic content in their minds.</p>
<p>Next, the same participants were exposed to new audio fragments they had never heard before, or alternatively were asked to imagine a story. The decoder was then applied to this new set of brain activity data, to “reconstruct” the stories the participants had been listening to or imagining – with some <a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.29.509744v1.full">striking results</a>. For instance, when a patient was played this audio:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t have my driver’s licence yet and I just jumped out right when I needed to, and she says: ‘Well, why don’t you come back to my house and I’ll give you a ride?’ I say OK.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>… the decoder reconstructed it as follows:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She is not ready – she has not even started to learn to drive, yet I had to push her out of the car. I said: ‘We will take her home now’ and she agreed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While there were also a considerable number of mistakes over the entirety of the trial, the reconstruction of continuous language solely on the base of brain activity patterns, including some exact word matches, is arguably the closest we have yet come to truly reading someone’s thoughts.</p>
<p>Whereas the brain’s capacity to produce motor intentions is shared across species, the ability to produce and perceive language is uniquely human. Thus, decoding actual semantic content from brain activity in regions used in language perception (primarily the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11109/#:%7E:text=The%20association%20cortices%20include%20most,and%20the%20generation%20of%20behavior.">association</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499919/">prefrontal</a> regions of the brain’s cortex) seems more fundamental to what makes us human.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Columns of text comparing actual words with those decoded by the HuthLab brain technology" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=201&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572526/original/file-20240131-19-2rcmmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=252&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Semantic examples from the HuthLab study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UT Austin</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Also, the HuthLab study used non-invasive fMRI technology – a form of neuroimaging that measures oxygen levels of blood in the brain in order to make inferences on brain activity. The disadvantage of fMRI is that it can only take slow measurements of brain signals (typically, one brain volume every two or three seconds). The study overcame this by using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence">generative AI</a> language models (akin to ChatGPT) that predict the probability of word sequences, and thus what words are most likely to come next in someone’s thoughts.</p>
<p>The researchers also worked with patients watching silent short film clips. They demonstrated that the system could be used not only to decode semantic content entertained through auditive perception, but also through visual perception.</p>
<p>Importantly, they also explicitly addressed the potential threat to a person’s mental privacy posed by this kind of technology. Jerry Tang, one of the study’s lead researchers, <a href="https://cns.utexas.edu/news/podcast/brain-activity-decoder-can-reveal-stories-peoples-minds">stated</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We take very seriously the concerns that it could be used for bad purposes and have worked to avoid that. We want to make sure people only use these types of technologies when they want to and that it helps them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The very fact this semantic decoder has to be trained on each person separately, with their cooperation over a long period of time, constitutes a robust safeguard. In other words, one of the major hurdles in the development of language decoders – the fact they are not universally applicable – constitutes one of the strongest safeguards against privacy violations.</p>
<p>However, while there is no risk of a malevolent company being able to read the thoughts of a random person in the street any time soon, there are nonetheless important ethical, legal and data protection concerns that must be considered as this technology develops.</p>
<p>We have already seen the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html">consequences</a> of unfettered corporate access to personal data and online behaviour. Although we are a long way off from neural data being collected and processed at such scale, it is important to consider burgeoning ethical questions in the early stages of technological progress.</p>
<h2>The ethical implications are immense</h2>
<p>Losing the ability to communicate is a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17483107.2022.2146217">deep cut to one’s sense of self</a>. Restoring this ability gives the patient greater control over their lives and their ability to navigate the world – but it could also give other entities, such as corporations, researchers and other third parties, an uncomfortable degree of insight into, or even control over, the lives of patients.</p>
<p>Even other types of intimate biological data, such as that about our genomes or our biometrics, do not come as close to approximating our private inner lives as neural data. The ethical implications of providing access to such data to scientific and corporate entities are potentially immense.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Text of UN resolution 51/3" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=532&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572536/original/file-20240131-25-g07hqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=668&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UN resolution 51/3.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G22/525/01/PDF/G2252501.pdf?OpenElement">UNHRC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is reflected in <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/2023/call-inputs-study-human-rights-council-advisory-committee-neurotechnology-and#:%7E:text=At%20its%20fifty%2Dfirst%20session,promotion%20and%20protection%20of%20all">Resolution 51/3</a> of the UN Human Rights Council, which commissioned a study on “the impact, opportunities and challenges of neurotechnology with regard to the promotion and protection of all human rights” in time for the council’s 57th session in September 2024. However, whether the introduction of novel human rights is warranted to address the challenges posed by neurotechnology remains a hotly debated issue among human rights experts and advocacy groups.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://neurorightsfoundation.org/mission">NeuroRights Foundation</a>, based at Columbia University in New York, argues that novel rights surrounding neurotechnologies will be needed for all humans to preserve their privacy, identity, and free will. The potential vulnerability of disabled patients makes this a particularly important problem. For example, Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disease that affects movement, is co-morbid with dementia, which affects the ability to reason and think clearly.</p>
<p>In line with this approach, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/neurotech-neurorights">Chile was the first country</a> that adopted legislation to address the risks inherent to neurotechnology. It not only <a href="https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/chile-pioneering-protection-neurorights">introduced a new constitutional right</a> to mental integrity, but is also in the process of adopting a bill that bans selling neurodata, and subjects all neurotech devices to be regulated as medical devices, even those intended for the general consumer. The proposed legislation recognises the intensely personal nature of neural data and considers it <a href="https://restofworld.org/2021/chile-neuro-rights/">akin to organ tissue</a> which cannot be bought or sold, only donated. But this legislation has also faced criticism, with legal scholars <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2589295921000059?casa_token=A9_9ASQthlMAAAAA:FXJiHZARnjPp6IjA7jHBqHzrHCAxoTY0s9um1nWWi9rE5so52ssahLBwwwkb5YTQGKR-sznGAg">questioning</a> the need for new rights and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-022-09504-z#Sec1">pointing out</a> that this regime could stifle beneficial BCI research for disabled patients.</p>
<p>While the legal action taken by Chile is the most impactful and far-reaching to date, <a href="https://spanish-presidency.consilium.europa.eu/en/news/leon-declaracion-european-neurotechnology-human-rights/">other countries</a> are considering following suit by updating existing laws to address the developments in neurotechnologies.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chile’s pioneering neurotechnology regulation – report by Al Jazeera English.</span></figcaption>
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<p>One of the cornerstones of ethical research is the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430827/#:%7E:text=Introduction,undergo%20the%20procedure%20or%20intervention.">principle of informed consent</a>. <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26497727/">Particular attention</a> must be paid to the capacity of paralysed patients and their family members to understand and consent to novel experimental therapies. Patients with a very limited ability to communicate may not be able to answer more extensive questions associated with the obtaining of informed consent, which is often more complex than a simple opt-in procedure. Also, not all potential risks and side-effects (both physical and mental) can be foreseen, making it difficult for physicians to adequately inform their patients.</p>
<p>At the same time, it is important <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-015-9712-7">to keep in mind</a> that denying treatment to a patient whose only hope may be communicating through BCI presents a significant opportunity cost, such as a lifetime without communication, that may be very well greater than the costs of participation in experimental treatments. The appropriate balance to strike for clinicians and researchers will be challenging to determine.</p>
<p>In a burgeoning new era of big (brain) data, longstanding ethical concerns about the hacking, leaking, unauthorised use or commercial exploitation of personal data will be amplified in the case of sensitive data on a person’s thoughts or movements (as controlled through neuroprosthetics). Paralysed patients may be particularly vulnerable to neurodata theft given their reliance on caregivers, and increasingly, the BCI technologies themselves, to communicate and move around the world. Care must be taken to ensure that information disclosed by a BCI represents a patient’s true and consensual thoughts.</p>
<p>And while it is likely that the first advances in neurotech will be therapeutic in nature, such as for disabled and neurodivergent patients, future advances are likely to involve consumer applications such as <a href="https://bci.games/">entertainment</a>, as well as for <a href="https://theconversation.com/brain-computer-interfaces-could-allow-soldiers-to-control-weapons-with-their-thoughts-and-turn-off-their-fear-but-the-ethics-of-neurotechnology-lags-behind-the-science-194017#:%7E:text=For%20example%2C%20a%20soldier%20in,more%20rapid%20response%20to%20threats.">military and security</a> purposes. The growing availability of neurotechnology in a commercial context that is generally subject to far less regulation only amplifies these ethical and legal concerns.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/freedom-of-thought-is-being-threatened-by-states-big-tech-and-even-ourselves-heres-what-we-can-do-to-protect-it-220266">Freedom of thought is being threatened by states, big tech and even ourselves. Here’s what we can do to protect it</a>
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<p>Data protection laws should be assessed on their ability to account for the new risks arising from increasing access to and collection of neurodata by organisations and entities of different types. Take the example – for the time being completely hypothetical – of using BCI to infer the thoughts of suspects in police interrogations.</p>
<p>One might say that BCI cannot be used in police interrogations as the error rate of misinterpreting a person’s neural data is currently unacceptably high, although accuracy could improve in the future. Or, one might say that BCI should never be used to “read” a person’s brain without their consent, regardless of the technology’s accuracy. Or, one might say that using BCI for interrogations is justified under certain extreme circumstances, such as when crucial information is needed to save someone’s life, and the suspect is refusing to cooperate.</p>
<p>Different people, societies, and cultures will disagree on where to draw the line. We are at an early stage of technological development and as we begin to uncover the great potential of BCI, both for therapeutic applications and beyond, the need to consider these ethical questions and their implications for legal action becomes more pressing.</p>
<h2>Decoding our neuro future</h2>
<p>This is a groundbreaking moment in our quest to understand the inner workings of our brains and minds. In the past year alone, neuroscientists have <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06094-5">reversed spinal disabilities</a>, translated MRI data into text to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01304-%209.epdf">understand what someone is thinking</a>, and begun to <a href="https://twitter.com/neuralink/status/1661857379460468736?cxt=HHwWgMDSoeqejZAuAAAA">conduct clinical trials</a> to help people interact with objects using thoughts alone, something already seen in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcz-Hq1NP98">trials with monkeys</a> two years ago. Such developments could all lead to transformative impacts on people’s lives.</p>
<p>At the same time, it’s important to note that research such as the HuthLab study uses a very small sample, and that the training process for its semantic decoder is complex, time-consuming and expensive. Add to this the fact that fMRI, although non-invasive, is a non-wearable neuro-imaging technique, and it is clear these methods are not set to leave a strictly organised laboratory setting any time soon.</p>
<p>However, the HuthLab researchers <a href="https://cns.utexas.edu/news/podcast/brain-activity-decoder-can-reveal-stories-peoples-minds">suggest</a> that in time, fMRI could be replaced by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNRIS) which, by “measuring where there’s more or less blood flow in the brain at different points in time”, could give similar results to fMRI using a wearable device.</p>
<p>Certainly, the <a href="https://www.neurotech.com/investment-digest">exponential global investment</a> in the development of neurotechnologies such as this, by governments and private actors alike, shows that the world is eager to create accessible BCIs that are suited to function as medical devices, but also as commercial consumer goods. By the middle of 2021, the total investment in neurotechnology companies amounted to just over US$33 billion (around £26 billion).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Neuralink’s first human brain implant – report by Sky News.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the most high-profile companies is Musk’s <a href="https://neuralink.com/">Neuralink</a>. “Initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” Musk tweeted on January 29, of his neurotech startup’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/30/1227850900/elon-musk-neuralink-implant-clinical-trial">first implanted chip in a human brain</a>. The implant is said to include 1,024 electrodes, yet is only slightly larger than the diameter of a red blood cell. <a href="https://twitter.com/neuralink/status/1716973591684653555">According to Neuralink</a>: “Its small size allows threads to be inserted with minimal damage to the [brain] cortex.”</p>
<p>While this wireless implant is currently being developed as a medical device, aiming at enhancing the quality of life for patients suffering from various neurological diseases (Neuralink’s clinical trial has enlisted people aged 22 and above living with quadriplegia), Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752119586470949056">stated on X-Twitter</a> that the ultimate aim is to create a device that “enables control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking”.</p>
<p>Indeed, commercial neuro-imaging devices are already on the market. The <a href="https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/journal-of-biomedical-optics/volume-27/issue-07/074710/Kernel-Flow--a-high-channel-count-scalable-time-domain/10.1117/1.JBO.27.7.074710.full?webSyncID=cc96715c-8678-b272-ce9d-a31d41322dc9&sessionGUID=467762ac-1ce5-a61d-96e9-9042d3bc6d99&_ga=2.177093349.1194737154.1696754253-1060044912.1696754253&cm_mc_uid=86756417056816967542535&cm_mc_sid_50300000=84585101696754253521&SSO=1">Kernel Flow</a>, for example, is a commercially available, wearable headset that uses fNRIS technology to monitor brain activity. Another prominent player in commercial neuro-imaging, Emotiv, has developed <a href="https://www.emotiv.com/?campaignid=17057185126&adgroupid=138768698289&network=g&device=c&utm_term=emotiv%20eeg&utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_content=644974459432&utm_campaign=Brand&hsa_acc=5401365090&hsa_cam=17057185126&hsa_grp=138768698289&hsa_ad=644974459432&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-343485221404&hsa_kw=emotiv%20eeg&hsa_mt=p&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwpompBhDZARIsAFD_Fp9Pf4GC78tnxQw2h90QpHzibYCJenjkzWEsTArqRrXxCWkfdVmK1VkaAjeREALw_wcB">earpods incorporating EEG technology</a> that are able to monitor brain activity for signs of focus, attention and stress – with the stated ambition of boosting the wearer’s productivity at work.</p>
<p>While the era of big data has enabled increasingly personalised and complex approximations of people’s inner lives through our biometrics, genetics and online presence, nothing has been so powerful as to capture the inner workings of our minds – yet.</p>
<p>But as HuthLab’s research suggests, and Musk’s pronouncements claim, this may now not be so very far away. The dawn of a new era of brain-computer interfaces should be treated with great care and great respect – in acknowledgement of its immense potential to both help, and harm, our future generations.</p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Sheir received funding from the EPSRC (grant number EP/V026518/1). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timo Istace receives funding from Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas J. Kelley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Elon Musk’s Neuralink begins inserting chips into human brains, we trace the history of ‘mind reading’ technology and assess the potential risks and rewardsNicholas J. Kelley, Assistant Professor in Social Psychology, University of SouthamptonStephanie Sheir, Research Associate, Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Hub, University of BristolTimo Istace, PhD Researcher in Neurotechnology and the Law, University of AntwerpLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209142024-02-06T15:50:06Z2024-02-06T15:50:06ZHow valuable is Elon Musk’s ‘charismatic’ leadership? That’s the 56 billion dollar question<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573155/original/file-20240202-19-3051f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C59%2C4872%2C3176&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-usa-2-october-2022-2221500907">kovop/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Maybe the Tesla directors who agreed to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68150306">pay Elon Musk US$56 billion</a> were just feeling generous. Or maybe, as the judge who cancelled this “unfathomable” deal suggested, they really were “starry eyed” and swayed by Musk’s “superstar appeal”.</p>
<p>In her ruling, <a href="https://time.com/6590293/elon-musk-wealth-tesla-pay-excessive-court-ruling/">Kathaleen McCormick said</a> those who decided to give Musk the biggest pay cheque in corporate history could have been “swept up by the rhetoric” surrounding one of the world’s best known CEOs. Certainly Musk – and his style of leadership – seems to be constantly in the spotlight. </p>
<p>The German sociologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Weber-German-sociologist">Max Weber</a> (1864-1920) might have described his leadership style as “charismatic”. <a href="https://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/anthro/documents/media/jaso18_1_1987_26_48.pdf">Weber saw charisma</a> as the possession of a particular type of authority which stemmed from admirers attributing extraordinary qualities to a single person. </p>
<p>He said such leaders, whether they worked in politics or industry, appeared to have a “gift of grace” (from the Greek origins of the word “charisma”) – a special something which sets them apart, and allows them to create change in a way that would be impossible for lesser mortals. </p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1742715019853946">My research</a> suggests that charismatic leadership seems to be enjoying a renaissance, having fallen out of fashion over the past two decades. </p>
<p>Charismatic leaders used to be everywhere. They seemed to be the ideal of big business in the west from the late 1970s until the turn of the century. In the US, for example, Lee Iacocca was often credited as being <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/lee-iacocca-ford-chrysler-mustang-cars-united-states-death-a8987811.html">the saviour of Chrysler</a> for making the car manufacturer profitable after it had been on the verge of bankruptcy. </p>
<p>Similarly, Jack Welch, as CEO of General Electric, was famous for his management style and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/07/was-jack-welch-the-greatest-ceo-of-his-day-or-the-worst">merciless cost-cutting</a>, which preceded extraordinary growth at the company founded by Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan. In the UK, the likes of Richard Branson and Alan Sugar were celebrated as characterful innovators who made large amounts of money.</p>
<p>But a series of business scandals during the early 2000s – such as the <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742715005057671?casa_token=facq9Sdzs98AAAAA:RbqSaSE4oPmFk0M6Gjy2GvFUska8n7LySZCmkfd5VGVc3BYNNdkPhN2wFXj2EQQXErULcUSM2EIomw">collapse of Enron</a> and telecommunications giant WorldCom – saw charismatic leadership start to fall out of favour. </p>
<p>This trend was accelerated by the global financial crisis in 2008, and a growing awareness about climate change and gender inequality – issues which seemed to call for new, more responsible and democratic styles of leadership.</p>
<h2>The return of charisma?</h2>
<p>So, the charisma-based model of management went out of fashion, replaced by leadership styles described as <a href="https://theconversation.com/open-honest-and-effective-what-makes-jacinda-ardern-an-authentic-leader-132513">“authentic”</a> (leaders who are true to themselves) or <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carstentams/2018/03/09/bye-bye-heroic-leadership-here-comes-shared-leadership/">“shared”</a>, when leadership is a deliberately collective endeavour.</p>
<p>The CEOs of the most famous global companies ten years ago, such as ExxonMobil and Walmart, were not household names. But today, the bosses of corporations such as Meta, Amazon and Tesla are world famous. So why the change?</p>
<p>Partly, this came about after the economic boom following the 2008 global financial crisis saw tech firms <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/06/is-big-tech-now-just-too-big-to-stomach">rapidly increase in value</a> – success that was often credited to the founder. Figures such as Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman came to be perceived as entrepreneurial heroes rather than “mere” CEOs, increasing their prominence and public profiles.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-visionaries-of-silicon-valley-mean-profits-are-prioritised-over-true-technological-progress-219795">How the 'visionaries' of Silicon Valley mean profits are prioritised over true technological progress</a>
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<p>Another factor comes from living in a time of crisis. The Harvard sociologist Rakesh Khurana <a href="https://hbr.org/2002/09/the-curse-of-the-superstar-ceo">warned back in 2002</a> that the adulation enjoyed by some charismatic CEOs as “saviours” distracts us from other people’s contribution to a particular company’s success. </p>
<p>The search for Khurana’s “saviour” figures seems to offer a simple escape route from worries over climate change, war and economic turbulence. When Musk <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/09/elon-musk-colonize-mars/">fantasises about saving humankind</a> by colonising space, and the disgraced crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried proposes <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20231009-ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-believed-in-effective-altruism-what-is-it">the eradication of world poverty</a>, they present themselves as redemptive figures to audiences beyond their investors and employees.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Man wearing cape and business suit perched above cityscape." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573759/original/file-20240206-22-vwvfe7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Here to save the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/hero-219603286">lassedesignen/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Furthermore, in a world increasingly reliant on algorithms, business has become somewhat dehumanised. People may be yearning for leadership with a (super)human face. </p>
<h2>A more crowded stage</h2>
<p>None of this means, however, that charismatic leaders will attain the same degree of dominance they did in the 1980s and ’90s. If the charismatic leader is making a comeback, it is a comeback on a more crowded stage. They may be popular in certain circles, but so too is the leader as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-men-can-become-role-models-for-gender-inclusivity-in-the-workplace-210157">champion of diversity</a>, <a href="https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5537-how-to-be-ethical-leader.html">or ethics</a>, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0018726711418388">or human relationships</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/rizz-i-study-the-history-of-charisma-heres-why-the-word-of-the-year-is-misunderstood-219673">Rizz: I study the history of charisma – here's why the word of the year is misunderstood</a>
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</p>
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<p>While charismatic leaders receive the lion’s share of attention, many of us would surely prefer to have a boss who is less grandiose and more modest in their leadership style. That could be someone like <a href="https://www.gm.com/company/leadership.detail.html/Pages/bios/global/en/corporate-officers/Mary-Barra">Mary Barra</a> at General Motors or <a href="https://www.novonordisk.com/about/executive-management/lars-fruergaard-jorgensen.html">Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen</a> at Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. Or it could be one of the countless leaders whose names do not appear in the media nearly every day.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/17/elon-musk-by-walter-isaacson-review-pillock-genius-or-both">recent biography</a> of Musk shows, the Tesla boss holds history-defining influence via his business interests in a social media platform, satellite technology and cars. So, perhaps the big question is how we can best moderate the enormous concentration of power accumulated by some charismatic leaders. Cutting US$56 billion from an enormous personal fortune might be a step in the right direction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sverre Spoelstra does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Different management styles are available.Sverre Spoelstra, Associate professor, Copenhagen Business School, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2224832024-02-05T13:31:44Z2024-02-05T13:31:44ZWhy Elon Musk’s ‘self-driving’ of Tesla’s board and its decision to pay him $56B collided with the law – and what happens next<p><em><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-02/elon-musk-meets-his-match-in-shakespeare-quoting-delaware-judge?sref=Hjm5biAW">Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick</a> has <a href="https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2024/02/01/tesla-musk-case-post-trial-opinion/">blocked Elon Musk’s US$55.8 billion pay package</a>, which <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/court-rejected-elon-musks-558b-pay-package-worth-106846409">Tesla’s board of directors approved in 2018</a> through a process she found to be “deeply flawed.”</em> </p>
<p><em>No CEO of a publicly traded U.S. company has ever been <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musks-55-billion-tesla-pay-package-struck-down-by-judge-3e619f53?mod=hp_lead_pos9">paid this much</a> for one year’s work, according to Equilar, which tracks corporate leadership data. Pay for the 10 highest-paid executives, including Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, reportedly <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/05/heres-how-much-the-10-highest-paid-us-ceos-earn.html">maxed out at around $250 million</a> in 2022.</em> </p>
<p><em>The Conversation asked <a href="https://www.udel.edu/faculty-staff/experts/justin-p-klein/">Justin P. Klein</a>, the director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, to explain McCormick’s reasoning.</em></p>
<h2>Why did the judge block Musk’s pay package?</h2>
<p>McCormick’s opinion began with a good question: “Was the richest person in the world overpaid?”</p>
<p>She concluded, in this reference to Musk – whose <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/elon-r-musk/">fortune was estimated to be worth $205 billion</a> before the ruling and consists largely of his <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/01/elon-musk-wealth-net-worth-companies/">Tesla shares and stock options, along with his SpaceX stake</a> – that he was. </p>
<p>This legal defeat may have <a href="https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-ceo-pay-compensation-tesla-f5ad4ce659a73a1209dc99a583d7b883">knocked Musk out of his perch</a> atop the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, making him the second-wealthiest, the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#1e2714563d78">media outlet calculated</a>. </p>
<p>McCormick ruled against Musk in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2024/jan/31/three-cheers-for-the-delaware-judge-who-stood-up-to-elon-musk">Tornetta v. Musk</a>, a lawsuit filed on behalf of an investor who owned only nine Tesla shares – and by extension virtually all of the company’s stockholders. Ultimately, she determined that Musk’s compensation plan was considered and approved by a board of directors that was <a href="https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-ceo-pay-compensation-tesla-f5ad4ce659a73a1209dc99a583d7b883">not sufficiently independent or objective</a>.</p>
<p>The compensation plan was subject to a vote by the rest of Tesla’s shareholders. But the information they received left out key details and contained inaccurate statements.</p>
<p>This pay package deserved close scrutiny because of its enormity, McCormick observed. She called it the “largest potential opportunity ever observed in public markets by multiple orders of magnitude.”</p>
<h2>What was wrong with Tesla’s board?</h2>
<p>McCormick concluded that many of Tesla’s board members, including <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459018009339/tsla-def14a_20180606.htm">his brother Kimbal Musk</a>, had close financial and social relationships with Elon Musk and that they were beholden to him due to these ties.</p>
<p>The board approved this compensation plan without <a href="https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/03/19/compensation-committee-guide-2020/">following commonly accepted norms</a>, according to the ruling. Further, McCormick found that the directors allowed Musk to control the process for approving the compensation plan, dictating the terms, amount and timing.</p>
<p>Board members apparently made no efforts to benchmark the plan as compared to <a href="https://ceoworld.biz/2023/05/26/the-highest-paid-tech-ceos-in-the-united-states/">compensation paid to executives of comparable companies</a>, a critical and typical step in any situation like this.</p>
<p>Musk was in control of Tesla, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/07/executive_compensation.asp">a publicly traded company</a>, that should have standard protocols in place regarding its compensation practices.</p>
<p>There was no negotiation between Musk and the compensation committee or the board regarding the amount and terms of the plan, the chancellor found. This is both inconsistent with widely accepted <a href="https://www.huntonak.com/en/insights/six-key-considerations-executive-contract-negotiations.html">compensation setting practices</a> and striking due to the scale of the pay package. </p>
<p>“Musk launched a self-driving process, recalibrating the speed and direction along the way as he saw fit,” McCormick wrote. “The process arrived at an unfair price. And through this litigation, the plaintiff requests a recall.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large low-lying building with a vast parking lot." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573203/original/file-20240203-19-w8ldss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tesla corporate headquarters, in Travis County, Texas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-an-aerial-view-the-tesla-corporate-headquarters-is-seen-news-photo/1454072958">Brandon Bell/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What factors are boards supposed to consider in setting CEO pay?</h2>
<p>In deciding what CEOs should earn, boards or compensation committees should consider the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/managing-wealth/guide-ceo-compensation">company’s performance under the leadership of the CEO</a> and the executive’s own personal performance. They should also review what comparable companies take into consideration when making decisions about their own CEO’s compensation.</p>
<p>Other metrics or considerations may be taken into account, too. These may include whether the company has made <a href="https://worldatwork.org/resources/publications/workspan-daily/how-dei-will-shape-executive-compensation-in-changing-legal-climate">progress in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion</a>, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11846-022-00538-4">employee retention</a>, <a href="https://hbr.org/2023/02/linking-executive-pay-to-sustainability-goals">sustainability and environmental performance</a>, worker safety practices, risk management and <a href="https://www.hrpolicy.org/insight-and-research/executive-compensation/executive-pay-legislation-and-regulation/">compliance with laws and regulations</a>.</p>
<p>Around the time of this compensation decision, Musk was the subject of a <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/elon-musk-says-420-price-tesla-buyout-tweet-not-joke-testimony">Securities and Exchange Commission probe</a> over alleged fraud stemming from what the SEC said were <a href="https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/complaints/2018/comp-pr2018-219.pdf">misleading statements</a> regarding his plans to take Tesla private at $420 per share – a part of a tweet widely regarded as a cannabis joke.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226">settlement Musk reached with the SEC</a> forced him to pay a $20 million fine and step down as the company’s chairman for at least three years. It also required the appointment of two new independent Tesla board members and a requirement that he preclear certain public statements.</p>
<p>The company was not taken private.</p>
<p>In 2023, a <a href="https://electrek.co/2023/02/03/elon-musk-found-not-guilty-in-the-tesla-420-take-private-case/">jury found Musk not liable</a> for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit-jury/index.html">related losses by Tesla investors</a> who sued over the incident. Tesla shares closed at $187.91 on Feb. 2, 2024, far below that $420 price that unleashed litigation. The company’s share prices closed at <a href="https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/202401297494/tesla-on-pace-for-worst-month-since-december-2022-data-talk">$409.97 in November 2021</a> – the highest point to date.</p>
<p>The board could have considered this incident a negative factor when making its decisions about Musk’s compensation.</p>
<h2>What process are boards supposed to follow in setting CEO pay?</h2>
<p>In setting CEO compensation, all members of boards or <a href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/governance-insights-center/library/compensation-committee.html">compensation committees</a> should be truly independent and objective, with no interest in the outcome.</p>
<p>They should consider engaging compensation experts and benchmark or seek information on executive compensation at comparable companies.</p>
<p>These decisions require careful consideration of all components of the CEO’s compensation and how the pay package should be structured. That includes how much of the pay should be provided as cash, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/restrictedstock.asp">restricted stock</a>, which may not be sold for a period of time, and <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stockoption.asp">stock options</a>, which provide the right to purchase stock at a predetermined price before a particular time in the future. </p>
<p>When stock prices rise a great deal, stock options soar in value. That’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/business/elon-musk-tesla-pay-package.html">what happened with Musk’s colossal pay package</a>.</p>
<h2>What happens now?</h2>
<p>Musk may decide to appeal to the Supreme Court of Delaware. On the other hand, Musk could ask Tesla’s board, its compensation committee – or both of them – to revisit and revise his compensation plan, taking into account the objections spelled out in the ruling.</p>
<p>That would include both the amount – $55.8 billion – and the process by which it was set.</p>
<p>Musk, however, <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/delaware-elon-musk-wants-tesla-to-vote-on-switching-corporate-registration-to-texas/">appears to be seeking a third option</a>. “Tesla will move immediately to hold a shareholder vote to transfer (the) state of incorporation to Texas,” <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752922071229722990">he posted on X</a>, his social media platform previously known as Twitter.</p>
<p>Even if Musk were to prevail and change Tesla’s jurisdiction of incorporation, it would not be likely to affect this decision.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1752922071229722990"}"></div></p>
<h2>Is Delaware particularly tough on corporate leaders?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/13/why-more-than-60percent-of-fortune-500-companies-incorporated-in-delaware.html">Delaware is the corporate home</a> of more than 60% of Fortune 500 companies even though it’s the country’s second-smallest state.</p>
<p>One reason for its popularity with businesses of all kinds is that Delaware’s courts are quite experienced, with a great deal of expertise in considering business matters and cases of this kind. Musk’s court case was heard in its <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chancery">Court of Chancery</a>, a system that primarily decides <a href="https://courts.delaware.gov/chancery/jurisdiction.aspx">corporate legal matters</a>.</p>
<p>Although Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1752455348106166598?s=20">suggested that standards in Delaware are overly strict</a> in another message he posted on X after the ruling, this kind of case is very rare.</p>
<p>One of few similar lawsuits was filed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/business/media/ruling-upholds-disneys-payment-in-firing-of-ovitz.html">against former Disney CEO Michael D. Eisner</a> over his $140 million severance package. In 2005, Chancellor William B. Chandler III of the Delaware Chancery Court let it go, while acknowledging the apparent impropriety of paying an executive so much.</p>
<p>“Despite all the legitimate criticisms that may be leveled at Eisner, especially at having enthroned himself as the omnipotent and infallible monarch of his personal Magic Kingdom,” <a href="https://casetext.com/case/in-re-walt-disney-co-derivative-litigation">Chandler wrote</a>, “I nonetheless conclude, after carefully considering and weighing all the evidence, that Eisner’s actions were taken in good faith.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin P. Klein directs the advisory board of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick is an ex officio member of that center's advisory board.</span></em></p>Musk can’t dodge this ruling by moving Tesla’s incorporation to Texas.Justin P. Klein, Director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223732024-02-01T17:33:59Z2024-02-01T17:33:59ZThe first Neuralink brain implant signals a new phase for human-computer interaction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572513/original/file-20240131-19-40gn6h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C5765%2C3994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Neuralink is developing devices that enable direct communication between the human brain and computers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-first-neuralink-brain-implant-signals-a-new-phase-for-human-computer-interaction" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/neuralink-implants-brain-chip-first-human-musk-says-2024-01-29">first human has received a Neuralink brain chip implant</a>, according to co-founder Elon Musk. The neurotechnology company has started its first human trial since <a href="https://www.reuters.com/science/elon-musks-neuralink-gets-us-fda-approval-human-clinical-study-brain-implants-2023-05-25/">receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration</a> in 2023.</p>
<p>The trial’s focus is on an implant that could potentially allow people with <a href="https://neuralink.com/patient-registry/">severe physical disabilities to control digital devices using their thoughts</a>. The study involves <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/musks-neuralink-start-human-trials-brain-implant-2023-09-19/">implanting a brain chip</a> — called a brain-computer interface implant — in the region of the brain that controls movement intention. </p>
<p>Musk has said the patient who received the implant — <a href="https://www.cnet.com/health/medical/neuralinks-brain-chip-is-now-in-a-human-your-skull-is-safe-for-now/">fittingly named Telepathy</a> — is “recovering well” and that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection.” No other details about the trial have been provided yet.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1752098683024220632"}"></div></p>
<p>This development is more than just a technical milestone; it represents a major leap in potential human-computer interaction, raising important questions about the integration of advanced technology with the human body and mind.</p>
<h2>Neuralink’s mission</h2>
<p>Neuralink’s <a href="https://neuralink.com/">stated mission</a> is to “create a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow.” This mission communicates two key approaches. </p>
<p>In the short term, the focus will be on individuals with medical needs. The long-term vision extends far beyond this, alluding to a goal of augmenting human potential. This suggests Neuralink envisions a future where its technology transcends medical use and becomes a tool for cognitive and sensory enhancement in the general population.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/z7o39CzHgug?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A video from Neuralink about its first human clinical trial.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The evolution of Neuralink presents a range of possible future scenarios. The first scenario envisions successful trials leading to adoption in niche markets, signifying a breakthrough but with restricted scope. </p>
<p>The second, more optimistic scenario, involves widespread acceptance after successful human trials, with the potential to revolutionize our interaction with technology. And the third — a more pessimistic view — considers the venture’s failure, driven by many societal, technological, legal and medical factors. </p>
<h2>The realistic scenario</h2>
<p>In the most realistic scenario, Neuralink is expected to achieve success by focusing on medical applications for individuals with severe disabilities. This targeted approach is likely to <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18179367">resonate with consumers in need of life-changing technologies</a>, which will drive early adoption within this specific demographic. </p>
<p>In this case, wider acceptance from the broader consumer base will hinge on various factors, including the technology’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.05019">perceived usefulness</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2015.12.010">privacy implications and the overall risk-benefit perception</a>.</p>
<p>Socially, Neuralink’s trajectory will be significantly influenced by <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies5040031">public and ethical discussions</a>. Issues surrounding data security, long-term health implications and equitable access will likely dominate public discourse. </p>
<p>Widespread acceptance of Neuralink’s technology will depend on its medical efficacy and safety, combined with Neuralink’s ability to address ethical concerns and gain public trust.</p>
<h2>The optimistic scenario</h2>
<p>In the optimistic scenario, Neuralink’s technology transcends its initial medical applications and integrates into everyday life. This scenario envisions a future where the technology’s benefits are clearly demonstrated and recognized beyond its medical use, generating interest across various sectors of society.</p>
<p>Consumer interest in Neuralink would extend beyond those with medical needs, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.13040">driven by the appeal of enhanced cognitive abilities and sensory experiences</a>. As people become more familiar with the technology, concerns about invasiveness and data privacy may decrease, especially if Neuralink can provide robust safety and security assurances.</p>
<p>From a societal standpoint, the optimistic scenario sees Neuralink as a catalyst for positive change. The technology could bridge gaps in human potential, offering new ways of interaction and communication. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A middle-aged man in a suit gestures while speaking" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572512/original/file-20240131-17-g477cl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elon Musk, co-founder of Neuralink, speaking at VivaTech, one of Europe’s largest tech and start-up fairs, in June 2023 in Paris, France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although ethical concerns would still exist, the potential benefits in education, workforce productivity and overall quality of life could outweigh them. Regulatory bodies might adopt more accommodating policies, influenced by public enthusiasm and the technology’s track record in improving lives.</p>
<p>In this scenario, Neuralink becomes a symbol of human advancement, seamlessly integrating into daily life and opening new possibilities in human-machine interaction. </p>
<p>Its success would set a precedent for other technologies at the intersection of biology and technology, like <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pmbts.2021.01.002">gene editing technologies </a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a034306">bioelectronic medicine</a>, paving the way for a future where such integrations are the norm.</p>
<h2>The pessimistic scenario</h2>
<p>In the pessimistic scenario, Neuralink will face significant challenges that hinder its widespread adoption and success. <a href="https://rdcu.be/dxnKL">This scenario considers the possibility of the technology failing to meet the high expectations set for it</a>, either due to technological limitations, safety concerns or ethical dilemmas.</p>
<p>From a technological standpoint, the complexity of interfacing directly with the human brain could be more complex than anticipated, leading to underwhelming performance or reliability issues. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies5040031">Physical and psychological safety concerns</a> might also be more significant than initially thought, with potential long-term health implications that could deter both consumers and medical professionals.</p>
<p>The invasive nature of the technology and privacy concerns related to brain data could lead to widespread public apprehension. This skepticism could be compounded if early applications of the technology are perceived as benefiting only a select few, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo68657177.html">exacerbating social inequalities</a>.</p>
<p>Ethically, the prospect of brain-computer interfaces could raise questions about <a href="https://rdcu.be/dxstZ">human identity</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-018-9466-4">autonomy and the nature of consciousness</a>. These concerns might fuel public opposition, leading to stringent regulatory restrictions and slowing down research and development.</p>
<p>In this scenario, Neuralink’s ambitious vision might be curtailed by a combination of technological hurdles, public mistrust, ethical controversies and regulatory challenges, ultimately leading to the project’s stagnation or decline.</p>
<p>While Neuralink presents numerous possibilities, its journey isn’t merely about technological advancement. The outcome of this venture holds key implications for the future of neural interfaces and our understanding of human capabilities, underscoring the need for a thoughtful approach to such innovation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omar H. Fares does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Neuralink’s first human trial is more than just a technical milestone; it represents a major leap in potential human-computer interaction.Omar H. Fares, Lecturer in the Ted Rogers School of Retail Management, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211572024-01-29T15:44:46Z2024-01-29T15:44:46ZFrom Twitter to X: one year on, are white supremacists back?<p>On 28 October 2022, just one day after acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk published a message that summed up his vision for its future: “The bird is free”.</p>
<p>The social network’s emblematic blue colour quickly gave way to the black X – reminiscent of the dark web – when Musk’s X Corp, took control. Soon after, the billionaire announced the <a href="https://www.platformer.news/p/why-some-tech-ceos-are-rooting-for">restoration of 62,000 previously suspended accounts</a>, including – and this was to make headlines – that of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>The technology mogul clearly stated his intention: to transform Twitter into a platform where freedom of speech would approach the absolute. In so doing, he <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-outsourced-content-moderators/">gutted the site’s moderation mechanisms</a>, intended to reduce hate speech and counter the epidemic of misinformation on the platform. Put in place at the encouragement of the <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662">US Congress</a>, Musk felt that they had no place in the brave new world of X.</p>
<p>Predictably, this new direction generated polarised reactions in the United States. Some feared a rise in extremism, in particular supremacist movements, due to the spread and possible normalisation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/21/great-replacement-theory-antisemitism-racism-rightwing-mainstream">racist and anti-Semitic content</a>. At the same time, others saluted the new “freedom of expression”, and even called for the accounts of white nationalist leaders to be reinstated.</p>
<p>Just over a year later, Musk retweeted his original message on the anniversary of his takeover, embellishing it with the word <em>freedom</em>. So what is the actual state of white nationalist accounts on the social network, and what are the foreseeable implications for the evolution of extremism in public discourse?</p>
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<h2>The persistent suspension of white nationalist leaders</h2>
<p>X carried out an initial wave of restorations of suspended accounts <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/08/tech/twitter-unbanned-users-returning/index.html">from November 2022</a>, including white-nationalist leaders suspended from 2017 to 2021. The waves of <a href="https://www.cjr.org/language_corner/deplatform.php">“deplatforming”</a> started after the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/19/us/charlottesville-unite-the-right-civil-trial-how-we-got-here/index.html">Charlottesville “United the Right” rally that turned deadly</a> and continued through the <a href="https://theconversation.com/twitter-permanently-suspends-trump-after-u-s-capitol-siege-citing-risk-of-further-violence-152924">assault on the US Capitol</a>. </p>
<p>During that period, the accounts of well-known figures such as Ku Klux Klan icon <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/david-duke-twitter-ban/index.html">David Duke</a> were suspended. The measure also affected less high-profile but equally important individuals, such as <a href="https://www.cnet.com/culture/white-nationalist-jared-taylor-american-renaissance-sues-twitter-for-account-suspension/">Jared Taylor</a>, founder of the white supremacist website <a href="https://www.amren.com/">American Renaissance</a>, and <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/25370/chapter-abstract/192454202">Greg Johnson</a>, publisher of the white nationalist magazine <em>Counter-Currents</em>.</p>
<p>Even with Musk’s arrival, however, these and other accounts have remained inaccessible. Because they all promote the idea of a racial state in the United States based on a homogeneous white identity, their content contradicts X’s new security rules, which prohibit <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/x-rules">associations with violent or hateful entities</a>. Other key accounts were deactivated by Elon Musk’s teams, such as that of the anti-Semitic and white nationalist psychologist <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/kevin-macdonald">Kevin MacDonald</a> in April 2023.</p>
<p>While the persistent absence of these leaders deprives a fragmented movement of points of ideological convergence, this does not mean that the platform is free of anti-democratic racialism. Many minor figures already on Twitter have managed to slip past X’s new rules and establish themselves as the new voices to follow.</p>
<p>The platform carried out a second wave of restorations in January 2023, and while it didn’t restore high-profile theorists of racialism, groups close to white nationalism, such as Nick Fuentes’s <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/explainers/groypers/">Groypers</a>, have attempted to reestablish themselves.</p>
<h2>The intellectual dark web or “authentic” right-wing X</h2>
<p>Musk’s Twitter tends to favour an essentialising line of the <a href="https://intellectualdarkweb.site/">intellectual dark web</a>, a motley collection of personalities who claim academic qualifications in order to define themselves as thinkers. Their shared ideology is often based on a biological conception of gender, crystallising traditionalist roles that confine men to a productive, masculine power, while assigning women a femininity centred on the home.</p>
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<p>The account of Stefan Molyneux, once part of the <a href="https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1613610719043256331">alt-right movement</a>, was reinstated back in January 2023. With a following of several hundred thousand, he is known for his libertarian views within the <a href="https://unherd.com/2021/12/why-the-right-is-obsessed-with-masculinity/">“manosphere”</a>, a particularly reactionary version of masculinism characterised by militant hostility to anything that its members consider to be “wokism.” This ideological trend has been reinforced by the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2022/11/18/jordan-peterson-returns-to-twitter-immediately-demands-the-site-censor-anonymous-trolls/">reactivation of the accounts of Jordan B. Peterson</a> and <a href="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/james-lindsay-exclusive-part-one">James Lindsay</a>, two figures in this movement.</p>
<p>The “manosphere” also tends to serve as a gateway to other groups adjacent to white nationalism. The synthesis of identity is embodied by the return to X of Bronze Age Pervert (known as “BAP” to his followers), the provocative pseudonym of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/bronze-age-pervert-costin-alamariu/674762/">Costin Alamariu</a>. His world view is based on a rigid sexual hierarchy dominated by alpha males who enjoy ephemeral seduction. It also adds the ambiguity of virile friendships marked by a warrior aesthetic.</p>
<p>Since given a green light by Elon Musk, BAP has found a growing audience, which now exceeds 130,000 followers, an increase of two thirds in one year. Its presence has restored structure to a movement that commonly refers to itself as the “authentic” right-wing Twitter. It has also encouraged a shift from simple anti-woke libertarianism to more overt neo-fascism.</p>
<p>Indeed, BAP is not so different from the white-nationalist accounts that are <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/16/bronze-age-pervert-masculinity-00105427">inaccessible on X</a>. He subscribes to a neo-Nietzschean philosophy, placing his elitist notion of fraternity against ethnic groups. Social relations are essentialised to the extreme: they are no longer euphemistic, but sublimated by the illusion of belonging to a community based on the celebration of a strength that is achieved solely through the domination of others.</p>
<h2>The NatCon movement</h2>
<p>At first glance, X’s rejection of explicitly racialist or anti-Semitic accounts while allowing the presence and growth of an adjacent neo-fascist network may seem paradoxical. There are several possible explanations.</p>
<p>From a semiotic point of view, this faction of the extreme right has developed its own codes of language that enable it to bypass the recommendation algorithms. Masculinist discourses, which take a stand against gender theories, seem to be favoured by Elon Musk. Indeed, he made his opposition to the “woke virus” explicit when he reinstated the satirical <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/the-babylon-bees-twitter-account-reinstated-elon-musk-suspension-transgender-joke-back">Babylon Bee</a> account. </p>
<p>The right-wing extreme influencers returning to the platform tend to gravitate towards the “NatCon” movement, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/national-conservatism-conference/594202/">nationalist conservatism</a> bringing together various illiberal political branches, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/national-conservatism-conference/594202/">under the leadership of Yoram Hazony</a>. From 2019, BAP received the support of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/174656/claremont-institute-think-tank-trump">the Claremont Institute</a>, a think tank closely associated with the NatCon network, for the <a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/are-the-kids-altright/">promotion of its book _Bronze Age Mindset</a>_.</p>
<p>This inclusion in a key organisation of national conservatism establishes a link to <a href="https://reason.com/2020/08/02/wait-wasnt-peter-thiel-a-libertarian">libertarian Peter Thiel</a>, founder of Palantir, co-founder of PayPal and former associate of Elon Musk. The relationship between a Silicon Valley tycoon and a masculinist philosopher may seem tenuous, yet Thiel is a major donor to the Republican Party and has never hidden his adherence to an anti-democratic ideology akin to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/opinion/marc-andreessen-manifesto-techno-optimism.html">neo-reactionary thinking of Curtis Yarvin</a>. BAPtism enjoys considerable support, and is at the extreme of the <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets">continuum promoting a “New Right”</a>.</p>
<p>The question of white nationalism can therefore be posed in strategic terms. Despite their ideological proximity, the refusal of the NatCon conference organisers to accept the presence of the movement’s leaders is justified by the <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/national-conservatism-trump">concern not to see their image linked to such an openly extreme movement</a>. Association with what is labelled “white nationalism” is seen as detrimental to attracting a broad and diverse audience. On the contrary, staging its rejection helps to reassure and reinforce NatCon’s respectability.</p>
<p>In the conference rooms and on X, NatCon seems to have set about rebuilding a movement on the basis of new codes and new figures. It is these choices that will determine whether the anti-democratic project can be perceived as acceptable, and whether masculinist extremism can become the political norm in the Republican Party. As far back as 2022, Blake Masters, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senator of Arizona, gained the support of the hard right with a program that was both traditionalist and protectionist.</p>
<p>The Twitter bird may be free, but X is being selective. A year after Elon Musk took control, fears about the rise of white nationalism need to be contextualised and rationalised more than ever. A study of the influential accounts that are actually active shows that the terms of the debate are in danger of shifting from the alt-right to the New Right. As the 2024 elections approach, this framework will be of great importance in analysing the resurgence of all forms of white supremacism in the United States.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221157/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>When Elon Musk took control of Twitter, many were concerned about the reappearance of extremist accounts. In retrospect, X has shown itself to be selective.Sarah Rodriguez-Louette, Doctorante à l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, membre de la Chaire Unesco « Savoir Devenir à l'ère du développement numérique durable»., Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3 Divina Frau-Meigs, Professeur des sciences de l'information et de la communication, Auteurs historiques The Conversation FranceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206642024-01-22T01:03:09Z2024-01-22T01:03:09ZYou can pay to have your ashes buried on the moon. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should<p>When NASA attempted to return to the Moon for the first time in 50 years on <a href="https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/tag/commercial-lunar-payload-services/">January 8</a>, more was at risk than just US$108 million worth of development and equipment.</p>
<p>The agency earned the ire of the Native American Navajo people, who made a bid to stop the launch because of an unusual inclusion in the payload. </p>
<p>The Peregrine lander (which completed its controlled re-entry into the atmosphere <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-science-astrobotic-peregrine-mission-one-concludes/">late last week</a>) was carrying <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/05/world/peregrine-moon-mission-navajo-nation-objection-human-remains-scn/index.html">human ashes</a>, including those of famed science fiction author <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/remains-of-sci-fi-legends-to-burn-in-earth-s-atmosphere-20240119-p5eyic.html">Arthur C. Clarke</a>. A commercial partnership also allowed paying customers to send their mementos to the Moon.</p>
<p>As space exploration becomes increasingly privatised and commercial, you can now send your favourite stuff to the Moon. But what does that mean, both ethically and legally?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/privatised-moon-landings-the-two-us-missions-set-to-open-a-new-era-of-commercial-lunar-exploration-219546">Privatised Moon landings: the two US missions set to open a new era of commercial lunar exploration</a>
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<h2>The Moon open for business</h2>
<p>US company Astrobotic owns the Peregrine, which is the size of a small car. It ran into fatal <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/01/14/1224723508/peregrine-moon-lander-heads-back-toward-earth-and-should-burn-up-in-the-atmosphe">fuel issues</a> shortly after being launched on Vulcan Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral.</p>
<p>On board are “vanity canisters”. The idea arose <a href="https://group.dhl.com/content/dam/deutschepostdhl/en/media-relations/press-releases/2024/pr-dhl-moonbox-20240108.pdf">in a partnership</a> between the firm and global freight company DHL.</p>
<p>Under the deal, anyone can send two and a half centimetre by five centimetre package to the lunar surface for less than US$500. Apart from size, there were a few other limitations on what each package could contain.</p>
<p>Astrobotic, founded in 2007 and based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is one of several US companies providing commercial lunar payload services to NASA to deliver science and technology to the Moon. Peregrine was also carrying <a href="https://www.astrobotic.com/lunar-delivery/manifest/">scientific instruments</a> from six countries and many science teams.</p>
<p>Perhaps surprisingly, sending ashes into space is not new aboard suborbital and Earth orbital flights. </p>
<p>Two American companies make a business of the service starting at just a few thousand dollars – <a href="https://www.celestis.com/">Celestis</a> and <a href="https://elysiumspace.com/">Elysium Space</a>. The practice is embraced by many, including astronauts who have been in space. </p>
<p>A Moon burial (yes, you can buy one) costs more – around US$13,000.</p>
<p>Commercial payloads launched from US soil require <a href="https://www.faa.gov/space/licenses/payload_reviews">approval</a>, but that approval process only covers safety, national security, and foreign policy.</p>
<p>Peregrine, if it had made it, would have marked the first commercial lunar burial. It’s uncharted territory as other worlds become within reach, although it is not the first time it has come up. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-isnt-the-only-planet-with-seasons-but-they-can-look-wildly-different-on-other-worlds-216874">Earth isn't the only planet with seasons, but they can look wildly different on other worlds</a>
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<p>NASA pledged to consult in the future after an outcry from the Navajo when, 20 years ago, it carried some of Eugene Shoemaker’s ashes to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector probe. Like many other indigenous cultures, the Navajo Nation considers the Moon sacred and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PresidentNygren/posts/892377286222557?ref=embed_post">opposes</a> using it as a memorial site. </p>
<p>However, NASA said in a press briefing it <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/08/navajo-human-remains-moon/">had no control</a> over what was on Peregrine, highlighting the gaps between commercial enterprise and international space law. </p>
<h2>A legal minefield</h2>
<p>Another question concerns the rules in individual nations on where and how human ashes can be located, handled, and transported and how those could extend to space. For example, in Germany, ashes <a href="https://canada.diplo.de/ca-en/consular-services/08-OtherConsularServices/death/1101248">must be buried</a> in a cemetery.</p>
<p>With space privatisation accelerating, the ethical and legal maze deepens. </p>
<p>The Outer Space Treaty (OST) <a href="https://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_21_2222E.pdf">declares space</a> the “province of all mankind” while banning national appropriation. </p>
<p>It fails, however, to address what private companies and individuals can do. </p>
<p>The recent <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/artemis-accords/">Artemis Accords</a>, signed by 32 nations, expand protection to lunar sites of historical significance. But these protections only apply to governments, not commercial missions. </p>
<p>And no one owns the Moon to grant burial rights, or any other world or celestial body. </p>
<p>The treaty requires states to authorise and supervise activities in space. It requires “due regard” for the interests of other states. </p>
<p>Many countries have space law that includes grounds for refusing payload items not in their national interest, for example <a href="https://www.peraturan.go.id/files2/uu-no-21-tahun-2013_terjemah.pdf">Indonesia</a> and <a href="https://www.mbie.govt.nz/science-and-technology/space/our-regulatory-regime/#:%7E:text=The%20Act%20regulates%20%E2%80%94%20through%20licences,Innovation%20and%20Employment%20(MBIE)">New Zealand</a>. </p>
<p>Nations apparently without such consideration, including Australia and the US, may need to consider expanding this template with the emergence of the commercial world in a traditionally governmental arena.</p>
<h2>Where to draw a line?</h2>
<p>Earth’s orbit is already clogged with defunct satellites and, further out, items like <a href="https://www.cnet.com/science/space/heres-where-elon-musks-tesla-roadster-is-after-five-years-in-space/">Elon Musk’s Tesla</a>. </p>
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<p>We have already spread space probes across other worlds, including the Moon, Mars, Titan, and Venus, but much may be <a href="https://www.planetary.org/articles/space-trash">treasure rather than junk</a>, according to space archaeologist Alice Gorman. </p>
<p>For example, the Apollo astronauts left official mementos, such as a plaque marking the first human footsteps on the lunar surface. Some have left personal ones, too, like Apollo 16’s Charles Duke, who left a <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/strange-things-humans-have-left-on-moon">framed family photo</a>.</p>
<p>However, sending a clipping of your hair or the ashes of your pet dog to the Moon may not qualify as culturally and historically important. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-moons-south-pole-to-an-ice-covered-ocean-world-several-exciting-space-missions-are-slated-for-launch-in-2024-218000">From the Moon's south pole to an ice-covered ocean world, several exciting space missions are slated for launch in 2024</a>
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<p>The problem, therefore, is where we want to place a line in the sand as we step out into the cosmos onto the shorelines of other worlds. </p>
<p>We cannot turn back the clock on private space enterprise, nor should we. </p>
<p>But this failed mission with ashes and vanity payloads exemplifies the unexplored questions in the legal and ethical infrastructure to support commercial activities. </p>
<p>It is worth pausing for thought on future commercialisation such as mining asteroids and the eventual colonisation of space.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220664/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carol Oliver does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sending human ashes and personal mementoes to the Moon is now possible, but it opens up a maze of legal and ethical conundrums.Carol Oliver, Professor in Science Communication and Astrobiology, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2197952023-12-29T11:41:17Z2023-12-29T11:41:17ZHow the ‘visionaries’ of Silicon Valley mean profits are prioritised over true technological progress<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566638/original/file-20231219-27-jjf9ep.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C31%2C3533%2C1963&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/xiengkhouang-laos-august-24-2023-elon-2351521525">Leefuji/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Technological innovation in the last couple of decades has brought fame and huge wealth to the likes of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Often feted as geniuses, they are the faces behind the gadgets and media that so many of us depend upon. </p>
<p>Sometimes they are <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-what-are-his-most-recent-controversial-moments-13019651">controversial</a>. Sometimes the level of their influence is <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/03/pandoras-box-generative-ai-companies-chatgpt-and-human-rights#:%7E:text=Since%20OpenAI%20released%20ChatGPT%20in,of%20its%20search%20engine%2C%20Bing.">criticised</a>. </p>
<p>But they also benefit from a common <a href="https://hbr.org/2022/11/the-myth-of-the-brilliant-charismatic-leader">mythology</a> which elevates their status. That myth is the belief that executive “visionaries” leading vast corporations are the engines which power essential breakthroughs too ambitious or futuristic for sluggish public institutions. </p>
<p>For there are many who consider the private sector to be far <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2018/gashc4239.doc.htm">better equipped</a> than the public sector to solve major challenges. We see such <a href="https://openai.com/our-structure">ideology</a> embodied in ventures like OpenAI. This successful company was founded on the premise that while artificial intelligence is too consequential to be left to corporations alone, the public sector is simply incapable of keeping up. </p>
<p>The approach is linked to a <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/political-education-silicon-valley/">political philosophy</a> which champions the idea of pioneering entrepreneurs as figureheads who advance civilisation through sheer individual brilliance and determination.</p>
<p>In reality, however, most modern technological building blocks – like <a href="https://qz.com/elon-musks-spacex-and-tesla-get-far-more-government-mon-1850332884">car batteries</a>, space rockets, the <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/yes-government-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/">internet</a>, <a href="https://time.com/4092375/how-the-government-created-your-cell-phone/">smart phones</a>, and <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-navigation-program/gps/">GPS</a> – emerged from <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929310-200-state-of-innovation-busting-the-private-sector-myth/">publicly funded</a> research. They were not the inspired work of corporate masters of the universe.</p>
<p>And my work suggests <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ceo-society-9781786990754/">a further disconnect</a>: that the profit motive seen across Silicon Valley (and beyond) frequently impedes innovation rather than improving it. </p>
<p>For example, attempts to <a href="https://corporatewatch.org/vaccine-capitalism-a-run-down-of-the-huge-profits-being-made-from-covid-19-vaccines/">profit from</a> the COVID vaccine had a <a href="https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-021-00763-8">detrimental impact</a> on global access to the medicine. Or consider how recent ventures into <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/13/elon-musk-spacex-signs-up-first-space-tourist-dennis-tito-starship-flight-around-the-moon">space tourism</a> seem to prioritise experiences for extremely wealthy people over less lucrative but more scientifically valuable missions. </p>
<p>More broadly, the thirst for profit means intellectual property restrictions <a href="https://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/mdocs/en/wipo_ipr_ge_11/wipo_ipr_ge_11_topic6.pdf">tend to restrict</a> collaboration between (and even within) companies. There is also evidence that short-term <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/rethinking-shareholder-primacy-new-innovation-economy">shareholder demands</a> distort real innovation in favour of financial reward. </p>
<p>Allowing executives focused on profits to set technological agendas can incur public costs too. It’s expensive dealing with the hazardous low-earth orbit <a href="https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-conjunction-increase-threatens-space-sustainability">debris</a> caused by space tourism, or the complex regulatory negotiations involved in <a href="https://www.eeas.europa.eu/delegations/australia/world%E2%80%99s-first-ai-law-eu-announces-provisional-agreement-ai-act_en">protecting human rights</a> around AI.</p>
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<img alt="Graphic of rubbish surrounding Earth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566645/original/file-20231219-25-c7z0wq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who pays for the clean up?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-render-space-debris-around-planet-2075749981">Frame Stock Footage/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So there is a clear tension between the demands of profit and long-term technological progress. And this partly explains why major historical innovations emerged from public sector institutions which are relatively insulated from short-term financial pressures. Market forces alone rarely achieve transformative breakthroughs like space programs or the creation of the internet. </p>
<p>Excessive corporate dominance has other dimming effects. Research scientists seem to dedicate <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-research-funding-peer-review-process#1">valuable time</a> towards chasing funding <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8221522/#:%7E:text=We%20identified%20eight%20corporate%20sectors,increase%20reliance%20on%20industry%20evidence">influenced</a> by business interests. They are also increasingly <a href="https://www.macfound.org/media/files/a_future_of_failure_-_public_.pdf">incentivised</a> to go into the profitable private sector. </p>
<p>Here those scientists’ and engineers’ talents may be directed at helping advertisers to better keep hold of <a href="https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/attention_economy_feb.pdf">our attention</a>. Or they may be tasked with finding ways for corporations to make more money from our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/04/shoshana-zuboff-surveillance-capitalism-assault-human-automomy-digital-privacy">personal data</a>. </p>
<p>Projects which might address climate change, public health or global inequality are less likely to be the focus.</p>
<p>Likewise, research suggests that university laboratories are moving towards a <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8221522/">“science for profit”</a> model through industry partnerships. </p>
<h2>Digital destiny</h2>
<p>But true scientific innovation needs institutions and people guided by principles that go beyond financial incentives. And fortunately, there are places which support them. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542432/open-knowledge-institutions/">Open knowledge institutions</a>” and <a href="https://www.oecd.org/cfe/empowering-communities-with-platform-cooperatives-c2ddfc9f-en.htm">platform cooperatives</a> are focused on innovation for the collective good rather than individual glory. Governments could do much more to support and invest in these kinds of organisations. </p>
<p>If they do, the coming decades could see the development of healthier innovation ecosystems which go beyond corporations and their executive rule. They would create an environment of cooperation rather than competition, for genuine social benefit.</p>
<p>There will still be a place for the quirky “genius” of Musk and Zuckerberg and their fellow Silicon Valley billionaires. But relying on their bloated corporations to design and dominate technological innovation is a mistake. </p>
<p>For real discovery and progress cannot rely on the minds and motives of a few famous men. It involves investing in institutions which are rooted in democracy and sustainability – not just because it is more ethical, but because in the the long term, it will be much more effective.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219795/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How corporate dominance holds us all back.Peter Bloom, Professor of Management, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191842023-12-06T10:14:31Z2023-12-06T10:14:31ZThe new Tesla Cybertruck is super-fast and bullet-proof – but who is it for? An expert analyses the design<p>Broadcasting <a href="https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1ZkKzjaBdmLKv">live on X</a> (formerly known as Twitter) last Thursday, Tesla’s CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk said that the Tesla Cybertruck is a car of the future “that looks like the future”.</p>
<p>The design is bold. Not just due to the unusual shape and the stainless steel finish, but also in the product offerings. The stainless steel panels and finish are reminiscent of the ill-fated <a href="https://www.autozine.org/Archive/DeLorean/classic/DeLorean.html">DeLorean DMC-12</a> that, while beloved for its starring role in the <a href="https://www.motortrend.com/features/back-to-the-future-delorean-time-machine-facts/">Back to the Future</a> franchise, was otherwise disastrous for the company and a rather lacklustre car with many issues.</p>
<p>The angular shape, flat surfaces and triangular roof line of the Cybertruck look like nothing else currently on sale. The vehicle is very different from the traditional Tesla line up, which are more curved and jelly mould-like in their appearance. This means they’re highly aerodynamic, with <a href="https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/models">reduced drag</a> to maximise their electric range. </p>
<h2>Inconsistent brand identity</h2>
<p>Automotive manufacturers typically have a design language that underscores all of their vehicles, clearly indicating the brand. This could be signified by a consistent grille design or the shape and form of their cars. Take the kidney-shaped grille on BMWs or Mazda’s <a href="https://www.mazda.co.uk/why-mazda/news-and-events/mazda-news/articles/mazdas-kodo-design-philosophy/">“Kodo” design philosophy</a>, for example, which aims to evoke motion even when the car has stopped. </p>
<p>However, Tesla seems to have designed the Cybertruck to bear no resemblance to any of its other offerings. Externally, at least, there’s no clear brand consistency. </p>
<p>Sure, pickups often look different to cars made by the same company due to their differing functions, however even the <a href="https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/semi">Tesla Semi</a>, a heavy goods vehicle, retains the jelly mould styling and associated aerodynamic benefits of the Tesla cars. Considering the aesthetics of the existing Tesla lineup, the Cybertruck doesn’t really fit in.</p>
<p>So, if Tesla vehicle designs have traditionally been about efficiency, what is the goal for the Cybertruck? In design there is a well know saying that “form follows function”. In Tesla’s lineup to date, their design language clearly speaks to efficiency and dynamism. </p>
<p>However, the rather surprising outcome of the <a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/watch-teslas-cybertruck-delivery-event-183744926.html">Cybertruck delivery event launch</a> on November 30 was the admission by Musk that the angular shape had <a href="https://electrek.co/2019/11/24/teslas-cybertruck-looks-weird-because-otherwise-it-would-break-the-machines-to-make-it/">largely been decided</a> by the material choice: high-strength stainless steel (understood to be <a href="https://stampingsimulation.com/forming-stainless-steel-tesla-cybertruck/">30x cold-rolled stainless steel</a>). This choice has apparently restricted the manufacturing process, resulting in a flatter, angular form.</p>
<p>Why choose a material that is more difficult to form using traditional processes and that compromises your design language and aerodynamic efficiency? The takeaway from the delivery event is that this material has enabled Tesla to make a truck that is bullet proof – which the live stream went to great lengths to demonstrate with the use of a sub machine gun. </p>
<p>So, if form follows function, the key function that has determined the design of the Cybertruck is the requirement to be bullet-proof. For a public-facing consumer vehicle, that’s a rather surprising unique selling point. Especially when taken in the context of Musk’s “why not” reasoning, which <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2023/11/30/elon-musk-boasts-cybertruck-is-apocalypse-proof-at-live-delivery-event/">he followed up</a> with the rather worrying statement:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The apocalypse can come along any moment, and here at Tesla we have the best in apocalypse technology.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The Cybertruck’s safety</h2>
<p>While much of Tesla’s PR relates to the Cybertruck’s robustness and security, concerns around safety mean it will never be able to be sold in Europe – in its launch form at least. This is due to a lack of pedestrian safety. </p>
<p>At the launch event, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-cost-release-date-price/#text22If20you20have20an20argumentappeal20to20a20wider20audience">Musk said</a> of driving the truck: “If you have an argument with another car, you will win.” The Cybertruck appears to focus very much on protecting its occupants, while negating the advances in road safety that consider vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists or even other vehicles. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/cybertruck">Cybertruck weighs 6,843lb</a> (3,104kg). Most non-EV pickups weigh less than 3,000kg and the average car weighs less than half of this again. This higher mass would mean that any collisions with a lighter vehicle could be very serious.</p>
<p>The high bonnet and bumper means that a pedestrian would likely be hit by the ultra-hard stainless steel structure of the front bumper and bodywork, where the grille would traditionally be. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the safety of the Cybertruck.</p>
<p>In contrast, a typical European hatchback is designed so that a pedestrian would fall onto the bonnet, which is made to deform and absorb the impact on the pedestrian’s head. Bonnets of cars are often made from lighter, less dense material such as aluminium for increased pedestrian safety.</p>
<p>While this design feature means the Cybertruck cannot be sold in Europe, it can be sold in North America, Canada and Mexico. That’s because in these markets it falls under a different classification of <a href="https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/tesla-cybertruck-production-europe-news/">light-medium duty truck</a>, meaning that it doesn’t have to adhere to passenger-car pedestrian safety legislation.</p>
<p>This is a shame, as Tesla has recently invested in pedestrian-focused technology for its cars. The Model 3, for example, features a detection system and <a href="https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_eu/GUID-FCD87BBA-BA45-4955-8E3A-2FEBBA7DE9FA.html">active bonnet</a> that lifts to reduce the impact forces of a pedestrian in a frontal collision.</p>
<p>In its design, the aesthetics and safety considerations of the Cybertruck have diverged from Tesla’s previous values. This begs the question: beyond the initial early adopters, celebrities and influencers, who is this truck for? </p>
<p>Surely it won’t appeal to the same core base of existing environmentally-conscious Tesla customers. And a bulletproof, go anywhere, do anything tank with the ability to reach 60mph in 2.6 seconds is quite a tool in the wrong hands.</p>
<p><em>This article has been amended to change the mass of the Cybertruck from 6,843kg, as incorrectly stated by the Tesla website, to 6,843lb, the correct mass.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Watkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The angular shape, flat surfaces and triangular roof line look like nothing else currently on sale.Matthew Watkins, Principal Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189612023-12-05T12:39:05Z2023-12-05T12:39:05ZApple, Disney and other big brands are pulling X ads – why Elon Musk’s latest ‘firestorm’ could bring down the company<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563334/original/file-20231204-24-pf38p6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=74%2C0%2C8256%2C5475&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/paris-france-june-16-2023-elon-2318800313">Frederic Legrand - COMEO/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elon Musk’s recent <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2023/11/16/elon-musk-condemned-after-calling-antisemitic-post-actual-truth/?sh=4ff195024020">endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory</a> on X (formerly Twitter) is the latest in <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-what-are-his-most-recent-controversial-moments-13019651">a series of controversial statements</a> the owner of the social media platform has made since he acquired it in 2022. Major brands including Disney, Apple and Microsoft have decided to pause or suspend their advertising spending on X in recent weeks.</p>
<p>Musk apologised for his post but then used profane language <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_M_uvDChJQ">during an interview</a> with New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin to challenge the advertisers’ decision to suspend their advertising on the platform. He accused them of blackmail, prompting more companies, including <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/walmart-says-it-is-not-advertising-social-platform-x-2023-12-01/">US retail giant Walmart</a>, to announce X ad suspensions.</p>
<p>X chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, has addressed the controversy, pointing out that Musk apologised. She also called his interview “wide ranging and candid” <a href="https://twitter.com/lindayaX/status/1730088124615631060">in a post</a>, and reportedly <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/read-linda-yaccarinos-message-to-x-employees-about-musk-interview.html">told employees in a memo</a> that it was “profound”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1730088124615631060"}"></div></p>
<p>Some brands have been gradually withdrawing their presence from X over the past year anyway. Companies have also acted after a <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/musk-endorses-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory-x-has-been-placing-ads-apple-bravo-ibm-oracle">recent report</a> from left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America said ads on X for <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/647b4c4d-f4d5-46cd-bc26-8c943b6995e7">brands like IBM</a> have been appearing beside pro-Nazi content. X has <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-x-twitter-sues-media-matters-ads-hate-groups/">filed a lawsuit</a> against Media Matters, saying the report was “manufactured” in order to “drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp”. But the most recent advertising freezes are particularly harmful to the platform’s revenues because they unfold during months of the year when it typically sees <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/449143/twitter-revenue-quarter-segment/">increased spending</a> on holiday promotional content.</p>
<p>When a controversial event, statement or issue gains significant attention and triggers a large number of people to express their opinions and criticisms on social media, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167811618300351">researchers</a> call it an online firestorm. This creates virality around a topic, causing real-world implications. For example, in this study of 78 “online firestorms”, 58% of companies involved saw a decrease in short-term brand perceptions, while 40% suffered similar long-term negative effects. But the impact of an online firestorm can vary widely, so what could X expect to happen after this latest controversy? </p>
<h2>Musk’s behaviour affects advertisers and users</h2>
<p>From a commercial standpoint, negative perceptions of Musk’s controversial posts about social and business topics could spill over to affect brands that continue to advertise on X – they may even be seen by consumers as supporting his stance, for example. Consumers often expect brands to take a stand on divisive topics (although <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/09/15/do-consumers-still-value-brands-taking-a-political-or-social-stand/?sh=15160bee7280">less so in recent years</a>). Failure to do so <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/074391562094735">may encourage people</a> to stop using a brand or buying their products. </p>
<p>X’s <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/283119/age-distribution-of-global-twitter-users/">global audience</a> is dominated by users aged between 25 and 49 years old, the age group with the most disposable income per household in many countries, including <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/824464/mean-disposable-income-per-household-by-age-uk/">the UK</a> and <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/980324/us-mean-disposable-household-income-age/">US</a>. So, for businesses that maintain an active presence on X, Musk’s statements could be detrimental. </p>
<p>And from a social perspective, of course, Musk’s behaviour may involuntarily fuel the spread of hateful content and disinformation. Social media platforms and regulators have implemented measures to attempt to combat such content, including <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy">a clear policy on hateful conduct</a> on X. However, Musk’s recent outburst, alongside continued contention around <a href="https://theconversation.com/x-users-will-need-protection-after-the-block-feature-is-removed-heres-why-businesses-are-better-than-people-at-moderating-negative-comments-212290#comment_2931652">content moderation decisions</a>, has set a precedent that could redefine what is deemed acceptable on the platform. </p>
<p>This shift poses the risk of a surge in incendiary and hateful content, contrary to the platform’s established policies. Exposure to such content has well documented <a href="https://hackinghate.eu/news/the-consequences-of-online-hate-speech-a-teenager-s-perspective/">repercussions</a>, including causing <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/calr107&div=51&id=&page=">mental and emotional distress</a>. </p>
<p>Such distress can encourage people to disengage from social media platforms. And for those that don’t leave, a public figure’s endorsement of false or untrue information can fuel the spread of disinformation on social media. The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26891938">repercussions</a> of this are far-reaching, including exacerbating social divisions, causing reputational harm, and undermining public safety.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Magnet with icons representing likes, loves, laughs online." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563333/original/file-20231204-27-gpc1z1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Online comments can attract attention to controversial issues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/social-media-marketing-concept-attracting-emoji-1827209921">oatawa/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Managing online firestorms</h2>
<p>This situation highlights the responsibility that comes with an influential position such as Musk’s in navigating the delicate balance between free expression and responsible communication online. </p>
<p>If X did want to regain some of its lost footing around this issue, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0022242918822300">research shows</a> that managing online firestorms can be challenging, but there are ways to mitigate the worst effects:</p>
<p><strong>1. Respond in a timely way:</strong> Addressing the issue promptly is vital. A delayed response can aggravate the situation and make it more difficult to regain control of the narrative.</p>
<p><strong>2. Be transparent:</strong> Transparency and honesty can help build trust and credibility. Offering an explanation of the steps being taken to rectify the situation could improve internet users’ attitudes towards the platform, organisation or person involved in the firestorm. </p>
<p><strong>3. Engage positively:</strong> Engaging with audiences should be done in a positive and empathetic manner. Responding defensively or disengaging from a firestorm may only escalate the situation. Instead, focusing on finding common ground and solutions, or offering an apology if appropriate, is preferable. </p>
<p>Rather than taking these steps, once advertisers started withdrawing from X, Musk <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2023/11/29/elon-musk-says-advertisers-that-have-left-x-shouldnt-come-back/">placed the blame</a> on their shoulders. He even suggested their actions pose a severe threat to the platform’s survival. But Musk’s penchant for controversial behaviour and outspoken remarks on sensitive social, political and business topics is surely more likely to cause both advertisers and users to continue to depart X, leading to the platform’s demise.</p>
<p>The ongoing tension certainly raises questions about the platform’s future and the role of its high-profile owner in shaping its destiny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218961/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denitsa Dineva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Research explains how to handle the kind of online ‘firestorm’ that X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk is currently experiencing.Denitsa Dineva, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Marketing and Strategy, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186192023-11-27T16:58:08Z2023-11-27T16:58:08ZTesla’s futuristic Cybertruck finally arrives – here’s why the company’s success is riding on it <figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561823/original/file-20231127-17-ptivyk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is this the future?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/izmir-turkey-march-23-2021-tesla-2012287679">arda savasciogullari</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2019, Tesla was in the happy position of being a high-volume, premium-priced leader in the global electric vehicle (EV) market. Deliveries of <a href="https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-q4-2019-vehicle-production-deliveries#:%7E:text=In%202019%2C%20we%20delivered%20approximately,with%20our%20full%20year%20guidance.&text=We%20continue%20to%20focus%20on,newly%20launched%20facility%20in%20Shanghai.">367,500 cars</a> represented 50% growth over 2018. </p>
<p>That included 92,550 of the mid-sized Model 3 cars and 19,450 of the larger Model S and X vehicles during the fourth quarter, implying strong future growth and producing annual revenue of <a href="https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-releases-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2019-financial">US$$24.5 billion</a> (£19.4 billion).</p>
<p>The same year, Tesla announced the Cybertruck. This new futuristic-looking vehicle represented the company’s first move into <a href="https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/best-cars/top-10-best-pickup-trucks">light/pickup trucks</a>. Deliveries were initially planned for 2021. </p>
<p>Yet the Cybertruck has been beset with <a href="https://www.notebookcheck.net/Cybertruck-launch-delayed-by-battery-range-and-stainless-steel-bodyweight-challenges.759342.0.html">delays over things like</a> the weight, making it difficult to achieve an adequate battery range, and the surging cost of bulletproof glass – it will now only be available as an add-on. Deliveries finally begin on November 30, meaning 2024 will be the first full production year. </p>
<p>Tesla has simultaneously been managing a difficult transition. Formerly a disruptive entrant rewriting the rules, it is now an incumbent trying to protect sales volumes and profit margins. A hectic growth strategy has seen a new gigafactory <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_Shanghai#:%7E:text=The%20first%20cars%20to%20be,when%20Saturday%20overtime%20is%20included.">in Shanghai</a> that started output in early 2020, plus two others near Berlin, Germany and Austin, Texas, which both opened in 2022. </p>
<p>In 2023, Tesla <a href="https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-deliveries-and-date-financial-results-webcast-third-quarter-2023#:%7E:text=Tesla%20homepageInvestor%20Relations&text=Our%202023%20volume%20target%20of%20around%201.8%20million%20vehicles%20remains%20unchanged.">expects to sell</a> 1.8 million vehicles overall, roughly double 2021 sales. But things can change very quickly in this industry, and Tesla faces different challenges in its <a href="https://tridenstechnology.com/tesla-sales-statistics/">three main markets</a> of China, Europe and the US. The big question is whether the Cybertruck can resolve them. </p>
<p><strong>Tesla unit sales 2016-23</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tesla unit sales by year" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561867/original/file-20231127-29-htfeyf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/">Statista</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The market breakdown</h2>
<p>In China, Tesla faces multiple competitors, a looming overcapacity in battery production, and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/china-announces-extension-purchase-tax-break-nevs-until-2027-2023-06-21/">changing government rules</a> on incentives and purchase taxes. It has consequently been engaging in “dynamic pricing”, slashing the cost of Model 3s and Model Ys. </p>
<p>This has boosted unit sales, but Tesla is now <a href="https://thechinaproject.com/2023/05/18/chinas-top-15-electric-vehicle-companies/">distant second</a> behind Shenzhen-based BYD, in terms of hybrids and full EVs combined. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/china-tesla-could-win-electric-vehicle-%20price-battle-lose-war-2023-02-13/">Its EV share</a> dropped from 15% in 2020 to 10% in 2022, and is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/teslas-oct-china-made-ev-sales-fall-26-sept-2023-11-02/#:%7E:text=Tesla's%20market%20share%20in%20China's,gross%20margin%2C%20profit%20and%20revenue.">still declining</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Tesla revenues by region (2022)</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing total revenues by region" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561859/original/file-20231127-29-3zgrqq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Europe, Tesla has also been cutting prices in 2023, while broadly sustaining its volume-premium balance. This is the big challenge for any rising producer: producing in higher volumes reduces costs, but erodes exclusivity and therefore the ability to retain premium pricing.</p>
<p>By early 2023 Tesla had captured <a href="https://insideevs.com/news/658490/tesla-reached-50-percent-growth-in-european-registrations-last-month/">about 20%</a> of the EV market, substantially outperforming both volume and premium rivals and increasing share by around 2 percentage points year on year. </p>
<p>The Cybertruck probably won’t unlock more growth in Europe, however. US pickups are a marginal product there, seen as unsuited to many European cities. Indeed, <a href="https://www.electrive.com/2023/11/23/paris-to-vote-on-parking-charge-by-vehicle-size/">Paris is considering</a> higher parking charges for EVs weighing over 2 tonnes, which would include the <a href="https://insideevs.com/reviews/697135/tesla-cybertruck-everything-we-know/">reputedly 3.3-ton</a> Cybertruck. </p>
<p><strong>Tesla vehicle sales by region (2022)</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Tesla vehicle sales by region pie chart" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561861/original/file-20231127-17-qgbjuu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is in the US that this vehicle really matters. Again, Tesla <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-cuts-prices-electric-vehicles-us-market-2023-01-13/">cut prices significantly</a> there in early 2023. The company’s ability to put pressure on rivals this way reflects its production experience and <a href="https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/867/tesla-s-vertical-integration-and-efficiency-show-why-they-re-the-leader-in-evs">famous ownership</a> of its supply chain. Tesla’s unit sales in the US are <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-us-market-share-falls-73e14bb">up 26%</a> year on year, but like in China it is losing share to competitors: down to 57% from 67% a year ago. </p>
<p>The US pick-up segment is important to Tesla’s efforts to retain its premium brand positioning by expanding the product portfolio. but pick-ups are also vital source for the US “big three” manufacturers’ profitability. Non-EVs are dominated by Ford (F-series), GM (Chevrolet Silverado) and Stellantis (Dodge Ram). </p>
<p>Those incumbents have not wasted time since the Cybertruck was announced. Ford launched the F-150 Lightning in May 2021, and by 2024 expects output to be <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-revenue-rises-20-demand-suvs-pickup-trucks-2023-05-02/">150,000 units per year</a>. The niche <a href="https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2022-gmc-hummer-ev-pickup-first-edition-first-test-review/">GMC Hummer EV pick-up</a> was launched by GM in 2022. GM’s <a href="https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/silverado-ev">Silverado EV</a> will also be on the market by mid-2024, as will the <a href="https://www.ramtrucks.com/revolution.html">Dodge Ram in pure EV</a> and range-extender formats.</p>
<p>Other disruptive new entrants have also been busy, although companies such as <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0950465c-b7f9-4cc5-a2b4-4fdc887bbd45">Lordstown Motors</a> and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/12/23792450/canoo-ev-nasa-artemis-defense-government">Canoo</a> have struggled. Most prominent, though still not profitable, is California-based Rivian with its R1T electric pick-up and R1S SUV variant. Rivian is expected to produce <a href="https://insideevs.com/news/689508/rivian-production-deliveries-2023q3">about 50,000 vehicles</a> in 2023 overall.</p>
<h2>Cybertruck prospects</h2>
<p>Tesla has the luxury of <a href="https://insideevs.com/news/690829/tesla-cybertruck-production-capacity-260k-units/">a reported</a> 2 million reservations for the Cybertruck, with a five-year waiting list. Nonetheless, the vehicle will test whether the company can continue combining volume with premium pricing.</p>
<p>There will now be two models, since the lowest-spec single-motor variant seems <a href="https://insideevs.com/reviews/697135/tesla-cybertruck-everything-we-know/">no more</a>. The premium tri-motor Cybertruck will likely be priced at US$80,000. Some innovations in the two models, such as stainless-steel body panels, appear to be more marketing hype than engineering logic. </p>
<p>The styling is polarising, and may not appeal to a traditionally conservative segment. The performance claims are impressive, but possibly unnecessary - the ability to tow 6.4 tonnes will rarely be useful.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fxGNXzSZRqQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The Cybertruck will have a battery-technology edge for now, and access to the widespread and reliable <a href="https://www.tesla.com/en_gb/supercharger">Tesla supercharger network</a>. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/musk-says-tesla-aims-make-200000-cybertrucks-year-2023-10-31/#:%7E:text=O)%20is%20aiming%20to%20make,it%20to%20250%2C000%20in%202025.">Tesla aims</a> to produce 200,000 units in 2024 and potentially 250,000 the year after. If that can be sustained, then the company will again have achieved premium positioning on a volume product.</p>
<p>At this stage, however, there are concerns. Early pre-production models <a href="https://www.torquenews.com/11826/new-cybertruck-prototype-horondously-large-inconsistent-panel-gaps-once-again-raises-tesla">were reported</a> with multiple quality issues around the fit and finish, including large, variable panel gaps, and bubbles or other defects in the plastic film applied to the exterior panels. Those in the industry may recall the <a href="https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/classic-cars/a32380/ford-edsel-history/">Ford Edsel</a>. Unusual styling along with multiple initial production problems resulted in one of the classic industry disasters for this supposedly state-of-the-art car in the late 1950s. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/561879/original/file-20231127-29-pft86n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The 1958 Pacer model of the disastrous Ford Edsel range.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel#/media/File:Edsel_Pacer_1958_(4922383186).jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A lot is riding on the Cybertruck. It will be increasingly difficult to achieve powerful growth on the back of the Model 3/Ys and Model S/Xs. Tesla <a href="https://www.carwow.co.uk/tesla/news/5220/new-tesla-ev-compact-electric-car-hatchback-price-%20specs-release-date#gref">has talked about</a> introducing an entry-level EV at circa £18,000, but has not always delivered on past promises. </p>
<p>If this hasn’t appeared by 2025, Tesla will have an ageing product line and a need to inject more excitement into the brand. It will be protecting its market share against a host of new rivals and resurgent legacy brands. Without a big Cybertruck success, the company will find it ever harder to straddle the volume-premium divide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218619/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Wells does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tesla’s long-delayed entry to the pick-up trucks market starts shipping on November 30.Peter Wells, Professor of Business and Sustainability, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149282023-11-05T13:01:57Z2023-11-05T13:01:57ZUnpacking Elon Musk’s convoluted U.S.-Mexico border visit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557510/original/file-20231103-17-agxdj5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C67%2C680%2C438&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elon Musk and Texas congressman Tony Gonzales stand in front of a group of South American migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://twitter.com/TonyGonzales4TX/status/1708142923626209519">(Twitter/Tony Gonzales)</a></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/unpacking-elon-musks-convoluted-us-mexico-border-visit" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In late September, Elon Musk, the tech billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX, set the internet ablaze with his visit to the Texas-Mexico border to provide what he called an “<a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/why-did-elon-musk-visit-texas-mexico-border-and-what-did-he-say-about-the-migrants/articleshow/104034433.cms?from=mdr">unfiltered</a>” perspective on the border crisis as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/migrants-cross-into-texas-undeterred-by-razor-wire-or-new-asylum-rules-2023-09-28/">thousands of migrants</a>, mostly from Venezuela, crossed the Rio Grande River.</p>
<p><a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707565081750290910?s=20">In a video at Eagle Pass, Texas</a>, Musk calls for a “greatly expanded legal immigration system” that would welcome “hard-working and honest” people and “<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1707525800830828619?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1707525800830828619%7Ctwgr%5E3df67ff84fb408e2c51eceefcad89b5db37b30d0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailysignal.com%2F2023%2F09%2F29%2Felon-musk-visits-eagle-pass-livestreams-real-story-of-whats-happening-at-southern-border%2F">not let anyone in the country who is breaking the law</a>.”</p>
<p>Many were quick to highlight the absurdity of the world’s richest person, who is himself an immigrant, standing before a group of other immigrants calling for stricter policies. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1708283629665927576"}"></div></p>
<h2>Pro-immigrant but anti-asylum?</h2>
<p>Musk’s position on immigration appears convoluted. On the one hand, he says he is “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707525800830828619?s=20">extremely pro-immigrant</a>,” given he is an immigrant to the United States himself. This also makes sense from the perspective of his businesses, which rely on <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7z5px/twitter-employees-on-visas-cant-just-quit">highly skilled migrant workers</a>.</p>
<p>While Musk said he supports legal immigration, he said the U.S. should “not be allowing people in the country if they are breaking the law.” A day before his visit to the border, Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707146779894951982?s=20">tweeted</a> support for a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-trump-wall-us-mexico-border-2023-9">Trump-style wall</a> to securitize the border. He implied that asylum seekers were entering without evidence to support their claims and they could “literally Google to know exactly what to say” to border officers.</p>
<p>Musk’s peddling of right wing anti-refugee rhetoric isn’t surprising, but the misinformation shared in Musk’s self-proclaimed “unfiltered” video may inadvertently bolster border militarization, increased repatriations and the criminalization of vulnerable asylum seekers. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1707565081750290910"}"></div></p>
<p>For example, during Musk’s border visit, congressman Tony Gonzales shares an anecdote about an asylum seeker he saw that had teardrop tattoos on their face. Musk calls this person a “serial murderer and proud of it” and made the leap that America has become the place people “go to escape the law.” </p>
<p>This kind of language plays into tropes that paint immigrants as dangerous and criminal. However, research has demonstrated that immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes. <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/u-s-citizens-most-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-immigrants/">Research from 2022</a> found U.S. citizens are more than two times more likely to be arrested for a violent crime than undocumented immigrants. </p>
<p>In the video, Gonzales claimed there has been zero repatriation. However, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-border-doesnt-need-elon-musks-citizen-journalism">3.6 million people who have crossed into the U.S. illegally have been repatriated</a> since Biden took office. Soon after Musk’s visit, Biden announced that the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/us-resume-direct-deportation-flights-venezuelan-migrants-rcna119107">U.S. was resuming direct repatriation flights for Venezuelans</a> who unlawfully cross the border and have no legal basis to stay. </p>
<h2>An open border for all of Earth?</h2>
<p>The most troubling and sensationalist claim that Musk makes is that the U.S. southern border is an “<a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1707565081750290910?s=20">open border for all of earth…an open border to 8 billion</a>.” Not only is this statement far from the truth, it plays into tropes that immigrants and refugees from the Global South are invading western countries. </p>
<p>It’s a dramatic misconception of the realities of global migration and displacement. The vast majority of refugees are hosted by countries in the Global South. </p>
<p>For example, displacement from <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-venezuela-refugee-crisis-us-border-policies/?fbclid=IwAR0qEfobBJ98gamFou7F0KpdQMo0XvcXivdfeccOs5NGC6-22oxyYbNnplI">Venezuela is now the largest refugee crisis</a> in the world, outpacing refugees from Ukraine and Syria. Of the <a href="https://www.r4v.info/es/refugiadosymigrantes">7.7 million displaced</a>, 85 per cent have moved to neighbouring Latin American countries. Only around <a href="https://www.r4v.info/es/refugiadosymigrantes">700,000 are in the U.S. under temporary protection status</a>, which is only nine per cent of the total displaced population. </p>
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<p>The claim that the U.S. border is open “for all of earth” is plainly wrong, and gives the U.S. credit for what has been a Latin American-led humanitarian response to the Venezuelan crisis. </p>
<p>Musk has been criticized for meddling in international affairs, most recently the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/21/23415242/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine-dod-twitter-david-sacks-russia">Ukraine war</a>. He has <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1576969255031296000?">tweeted a peace proposal</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/19/elon-musk-ukraine-starlink/">provided</a> then <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/07/ukraine-rips-musk-disrupting-sneak-attack-russian-navy.html">shut off Starlink’s satellite</a> network over Crimea and <a href="https://twitter.com/panoparker/status/1318157559266762752">seemingly supported</a> a U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia.</p>
<p>And we are seeing the implications for his misinformation at the border impact the lives of people seeking asylum in the U.S. being portrayed as “serial murderers” and “breaking the law.” As Musk wades into yet another political issue, it is crucial for the public to get their information from credible news sources and research, not billionaires on Twitter.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214928/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yvonne Su does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Elon Musk’s visit to the U.S.-Mexico border played into false tropes that paint asylum seekers as dangerous criminals.Yvonne Su, Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2142682023-11-01T19:24:05Z2023-11-01T19:24:05ZGrandiose visions and arrested development: a new biography considers the contradictory life of Elon Musk<p>Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has his fingers in many pies, none of them your standard Four and Twenty – space exploration, electric cars, AI and social media, among others. </p>
<p>He became a global leader in space exploration when NASA had virtually vacated the field, and his electric vehicle company Tesla, headquartered in the gas-guzzling United States, has by far the <a href="https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/the-10-most-valuable-auto-companies-in-the-world">biggest market capitalisation of any car manufacturer in the world</a>, yet he has few formal qualifications in either field.</p>
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<p><em>Review: Elon Musk: A Biography – Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Many see Musk as a 21st-century idiot savant. Others, watching him reduce an important social media platform – Twitter – to cyber-rubble, think of him simply as an idiot. Maybe both are true, or maybe other readings of his life are true. Aged 52, Musk certainly merits a good, searching biography. </p>
<p>Walter Isaacson seems well credentialed for the task. He has written biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci that have won awards or become bestsellers, or both. </p>
<p>Isaacson began his working life as a journalist. He spent more than two decades at Time during the magazine’s heyday, rising to become editor in 1996. Since then, he has been chief executive of the CNN cable television network, headed the <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/">Aspen Institute</a> (a longstanding non-profit think tank), become a professor of history at Tulane University, and done various jobs for both Republican and Democrat governments. </p>
<p>This year he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by US President Joe Biden.</p>
<p>Isaacson’s virtue as a biographer is his reporter’s ability to gather enormous amounts of material and quickly render it as a (generally) smooth and readable account of a life bursting with dramatic events. His project only began in 2021 and covers events up to <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/20/world/spacex-starship-launch-thursday-scn/index.html">Space X’s unsuccessful Starship rocket launch in April 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Musk made himself available for numerous interviews. He gave Isaacson access to places and people at key moments, such as the purchase of Twitter (now known as X), and regularly emailed Isaacson at 3am with his thoughts – and thought bubbles.</p>
<p>Isaacson also interviewed 130 other people, and his labours have uncovered newsworthy information that has been widely reported – and, in one case, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/09/10/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-biography-review/">corrected</a> – since the book’s publication.</p>
<p>For instance, Isaacson builds on earlier reporting by the Washington Post to reveal the extent to which Musk’s Starlink satellite network has been crucial to the Ukrainian military’s ability to fight Russia’s invasion, providing them with continued access to the internet on the battlefield after the Russians destroyed access to other internet services. He shows how Musk was persuaded by the Russians to temporarily <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk-ordered-starlink-turned-off-ukraine-offensive-biography">cut off the Starlink access</a> after he believed their entreaties that any further victories by Ukraine would provoke nuclear war.</p>
<p>The implications of these remarkable revelations have been examined by the ABC’s Matt Bevan in a recent episode of his <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/if-youre-listening/should-elon-musk-have-stopped-ukraine-attacking-russia-/102929348">If You’re Listening</a> podcast. But even though Isaacson revealed this information, he does not pause to discuss it in any detail. That’s one of the shortcomings of this book.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/starlink-satellites-are-leaking-signals-that-interfere-with-our-most-sensitive-radio-telescopes-215250">Starlink satellites are 'leaking' signals that interfere with our most sensitive radio telescopes</a>
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<h2>Lord of the Flies on steroids</h2>
<p>Perhaps seduced by Musk’s apparent candour or a publisher’s pressure to rush to print, Isaacson accepts his subject’s words without sufficient scepticism. For instance, Musk’s childhood experiences at a veldskool in 1970s South Africa read like Lord of the Flies on steroids. Bullying was the norm and children were encouraged to fight over meagre food rations. “Every few years, one of the kids would die,” writes Isaacson.</p>
<p>Really? Says who? Musk, apparently. No one from the school is listed in the source notes, to confirm or refute this account. Throughout the book, Musk comes off as a shameless self-dramatiser, but that doesn’t mean his biographer should succumb to it.</p>
<p>Isaacson is an adherent of the “grand man” school of history. He has written only one biography of a woman – the Nobel Prize-winning biochemist <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/doudna/facts/">Jennifer Doudna</a>. He is far less interested in, or comfortable with, the role structures and systems play in shaping events.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555695/original/file-20231024-19-l2isp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>As <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/09/18/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-book-review">Jill Lepore pointed out in the New Yorker</a>, Isaacson also has “an executive’s affinity for the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/c-suite.asp">C-suite</a>”, meaning he pays little attention to the people who work for Musk or the impact of his actions on their lives.</p>
<p>The core question driving the biography is: has Elon Musk had to be such an “asshole” (Isaacson’s term) to achieve what he has? Isaacson acknowledges it is much the same question he asked about Steve Jobs in his earlier biography of the Apple cofounder.</p>
<p>I lost count of the times the question, or a variation of it, was posed during the book’s 670 pages, but in classic Time-style both-sidesing, Isaacson keeps toggling between admonishing Musk for behaving like an “asshole” and admiring his ability to get results. He rarely if ever lifts his gaze beyond this binary, which means he ignores lessons learned from all those people, past and present, who have achieved things without treating people appallingly.</p>
<p>It also means achievements are seen solely through the prism of one person’s actions. In a perceptive article in Vox, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23872485/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-biography-review">Constance Grady</a> reminds us that Musk’s determination to override safety concerns in Tesla factories has led to worker injury rates equivalent to those in a slaughterhouse. </p>
<p>Grady allows that Isaacson reports the increased injury rates, but notes his vagueness about exactly what kind of injuries occurred. Citing 2018 <a href="https://revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is-safer-but-it-left-injuries-off-the-books/">work by the Center for Investigative Reporting</a>, she reveals Tesla workers were “sliced by machinery, crushed by forklifts, burned in electrical explosions, and sprayed with molten metal”.</p>
<p>She also notes Isaacson downplaying the company’s experience of COVID-19. Musk, a fervent libertarian allergic to any form of regulation, kept the factory running during the global pandemic. Isaacson says “the factory experienced no serious COVID outbreak”, but Grady reports there were 450 positive cases.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/elon-musks-hardcore-management-style-a-case-study-in-what-not-to-do-194999">Elon Musk's 'hardcore' management style: a case study in what not to do</a>
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<h2>From Twitter to X</h2>
<p>Musk has an immense work ethic and expects everyone working for him to share it. By relentlessly questioning all assumptions – “the laws of physics are unbreakable; everything else is a recommendation” – Musk and those working in his companies have indeed achieved a lot.</p>
<p>I am not really in any position to assess Musk’s contribution to space exploration, AI or car manufacturing. But I am willing to accept the evidence of Isaacson’s biography that they have been substantial – or, in the case of AI, promise to be. </p>
<p>I feel better able to assess Musk’s contribution to social media. Here, the evidence presented by Isaacson and many others is that Musk has damaged, perhaps irretrievably, Twitter – which he has renamed X, a letter of the alphabet to which he seems inordinately attached. Not only has he named one of his children X, he waves away the letter’s other connotations.</p>
<p>In 1999, Musk cofounded the online bank <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com_(bank)">X.com</a>. He soon learned there was another company aimed at revolutionising online transactions, PayPal, founded at around the same time by Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek. </p>
<p>The companies merged in 2000, amid a classic Silicon Valley phallus-waving struggle over who had the idea first and who should take over whom. Levchin derided X.com as a “seedy site you would not talk about in polite company”. “If you want to take over the world’s financial system,” Musk rebutted, “then X is the better name.”</p>
<p>Musk lost the nomenclature war then, but realised his dream more than two decades later when he bought Twitter for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html">US$44 billion</a> and could call it whatever he liked.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fallen-crypto-king-sam-bankman-fried-was-perfectly-positioned-to-make-a-religion-of-himself-213893">Fallen crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried was 'perfectly positioned to make a religion of himself'</a>
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<h2>Impulsive, determined, clueless</h2>
<p>The picture of Musk that emerges in Isaacson’s book is of an impulsive, utterly determined person who is genuinely talented as a physicist and businessperson, and genuinely clueless when it comes to human relationships. He either doesn’t get people or doesn’t care about them – or, more likely, both. </p>
<p>He dotes on his children, especially X (I guess you need to do something to compensate for naming a child after a letter), yet he is capable of breathtaking callousness and rank sexism. He whispered in his first wife’s ear on their wedding night that he was the alpha male in the relationship.</p>
<p>In 2021, Musk’s third wife, Shivon Zilis, was pregnant with twins conceived with Musk by in-vitro fertilisation, and was in a hospital in Texas experiencing complications. At the same time, and in the same hospital, a woman serving as a surrogate for Musk and his ex-wife, Claire Boucher – better known as the Canadian-born musician Grimes – was also experiencing pregnancy complications.</p>
<p>Zilis and Boucher, not to mention the surrogate, did not know about the other’s pregnancy. </p>
<p>As Isaacson drolly comments elsewhere in the book:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Musk developed an aura that made him seem, at times, like an alien, as if his Mars mission were an aspiration to return home, and his desire to build humanoid robots were a quest for kinship.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Musk is on record saying humanity is in danger of not having enough smart people and it is his duty to populate the planet with as many of them as possible. To date, he has 11 children. If that notion sounds disturbingly like eugenics, it is not something Isaacson reflects on as he studiously documents Musk’s chaotic love life.</p>
<p>Nor does he delay his rat-a-tat-tat narration of every twist and turn in Musk’s dramatic life to question his subject’s burning desire to make humanity a “multi-planet civilisation” by colonising Mars. Musk is obsessed with this goal because he is worried about the prospect of our planet being destroyed by the accelerating consequences of climate change. </p>
<p>A laudable ambition, no doubt. But neither he nor his biographer stops to ask: if humanity fails so badly that it destroys this world, why would you think it could make life better on another, already inhospitable planet?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=105&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=105&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556981/original/file-20231031-25-buzfds.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The surface of Mars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mars_pathfinder_panorama_large.jpg">NASA/JPL, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<h2>Startling achievements and childish petulance</h2>
<p>It is easy and tempting to poke fun at Musk. Perhaps this is because his personality combines grandiose visions with arrested development, startling achievements with childish petulance. His idea of dieting is to get hold of the diabetes medication Ozempic – the dieter’s drug du jour – begin an intermittent fasting regime, then make his first meal of the day a bacon-and-cheese burger and sweet-potato fries topped with a cookie-dough ice-cream milkshake. </p>
<p>Or do you remember how Musk responded in 2018 to a mild rebuke of his frenetic desire to play the hero rescuing children trapped in a cave in Thailand with a purpose-built mini-craft? That’s right, by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter">labelling one of the actual rescuers a “pedo guy”</a>.</p>
<p>But it is dangerously easy. Social media plays an important role in modern society. Whatever its benefits, and they are many, the algorithms embedded in social media platforms – by their owners, let’s not forget – neatly sidestep nuance and reason in debate, turbo-charge conflict and emotion, and play a role in the spread of misinformation and disinformation.</p>
<p>Musk is now the owner of one such social media platform. But since buying Twitter last year, he has not been able to bend it to his will. His mistake – perhaps fatal, according to Isaacson – appears to be that he sees it as a technology company, something he understands, when it is really an “advertising medium based on human emotions and relationships”, something he does not understand.</p>
<p>Musk proclaims himself a free-speech advocate, but he has already displayed flagrant biases. He allowed Ye (formerly Kanye West) to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/21/kanye-west-returns-to-twitter-after-restrictions-for-antisemitic-posts.html">tweet anti-Semitic remarks</a>. He tweeted a florid conspiracy theory about the savage <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/27/politics/paul-pelosi-attack-video-release/index.html">attack on Paul Pelosi</a>, husband of the then speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. And he has asserted China’s repression of the Uyghurs was an issue that “<a href="https://campaignforuyghurs.org/cfu-denounces-elon-musks-deeply-troubling-comments-on-uyghur-genocide/">had two sides</a>” – perhaps because China was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59863859">important to his car company, Tesla</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wrong-elon-musk-the-big-problem-with-free-speech-on-platforms-isnt-censorship-its-the-algorithms-182433">Wrong, Elon Musk: the big problem with free speech on platforms isn't censorship. It's the algorithms</a>
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<p>Musk has become obsessed by what he calls the “woke-mind virus”, which he believes is infecting social discourse. Whatever the excesses and blind spots of those on the progressive side of politics, Musk sees this virus almost everywhere. </p>
<p>A longtime devotee of comics and science fiction, he has increasingly given rein to his conspiratorial tendencies, as if he really thinks The Matrix trilogy was a documentary series. In one of his 3am tweets, Musk wrote: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci”. As Isaacson trenchantly comments: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It made little sense, wasn’t funny, and managed, in just five words, to mock
transgender people, conjure up conspiracies about the 81-year-old public health
official Anthony Fauci, scare off more advertisers, and create a new handful of
enemies who would now never buy Tesla.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nor does Musk’s belief in free speech extend to the social media postings of Twitter employees or their comments on internal Slack messaging. He trampled on the company’s internal culture of healthy dissent, peremptorily firing three dozen employees who had criticised the company.</p>
<p>His longstanding, largely successful mantra of getting things done cheaply and quickly, regardless of impediments, finally ran aground after he proposed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/technology/twitter-layoffs.html">cutting the company’s workforce by 75%</a>. </p>
<p>Just before Christmas last year he decided it was imperative to move all the company’s servers from Sacramento to Oregon as a way of saving money. Remember how presidential aspirant <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/24/ron-desantis-2024-twitter-launch-tech-outage">Ron De Santis’ big live interview on X went horribly wrong</a> earlier this year? That was because of problems with the servers, writes Isaacson. </p>
<p>More recently, the drastic cutting of the site’s moderators led to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/09/x-formerly-twitter-amplifies-disinformation-amid-the-israel-hamas-conflict.html">floods of misinformation</a> following the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7.</p>
<p>Musk has also begun to realise that advertising, which previously comprised 90% of Twitter’s revenue, is susceptible to public perceptions. It fell by more than half in the first six months of Musk’s ownership, according to Isaacson. </p>
<h2>Geopolitical implications</h2>
<p>As mentioned earlier, Musk has found himself playing a key role in a war with geopolitical implications. </p>
<p>Immediately before invading Ukraine in early 2022, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-behind-cyberattack-against-satellite-internet-modems-ukraine-eu-2022-05-10/">Russia launched a malware attack</a> that crippled the US satellite company providing internet service to Ukraine. Its deputy prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, reached out to Musk via Twitter, appealing for help.</p>
<p>Musk did, donating US$80 million worth of technology to Ukrainian forces, including Starlink’s <a href="https://www.space.com/ukraine-russia-war-spacex-starlink-satellite-internet">solar and battery kits</a>, which were able to defeat Russian efforts to jam them. </p>
<p>Musk’s intervention was widely praised, but in September 2022, when the Ukrainians planned to use Starlink to guide a drone attack on the Russian naval fleet at Sevastopol in Crimea, he refused to help. He had been listening to the Russian ambassador, who had reached out to him a few weeks before. </p>
<p>Russia had annexed Crimea in 2014 and the ambassador persuaded him not only of Russia’s inalienable right to Crimea, but of the prospect of nuclear war if the Ukrainians were allowed to try and retake it. He told Isaacson he had been studying foreign policy and military history: “Musk explained to me the details of Russian law and doctrine that decreed such a response.”</p>
<p>Has technology put an individual private citizen in such a position before? </p>
<p>Individual companies, such as the Krupp manufacturing company, notoriously played an important role in arming Nazi Germany. Individual media proprietors, such as Rupert Murdoch, have played a role in encouraging war, as when Murdoch’s media outlets overwhelmingly editorialised in favour of the United States invading Iraq in 2003.</p>
<p>The combination of new global communication technologies and decades of unwillingness by governments to find ways to regulate them adequately has now put one unelected citizen, as childishly impulsive as he is brilliant, in a rare position. </p>
<p>The question is not simply, is he equipped to make such decisions, but how and why has it come to this?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Ricketson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some see Elon Musk as an idiot savant; others think of him simply as an idiot. How did an unelected citizen come to wield such power?Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2109562023-10-27T12:17:55Z2023-10-27T12:17:55ZWhy Elon Musk is obsessed with casting X as the most ‘authentic’ social media platform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555929/original/file-20231025-19-mfd5h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C5521%2C3772&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">X CEO Elon Musk has argued that his social media platform allows users to 'be their true selves.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/elon-musk-ceo-of-tesla-and-x-arrives-for-the-ai-insight-news-photo/1678314548?adppopup=true">Nathan Howard/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With X, formerly known as Twitter, hitting the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html">one-year anniversary</a> of Elon Musk’s US$44 billion takeover of the social media platform, it can feel disorienting to try to make sense of all that’s gone down. </p>
<p>Blue check-mark verifications <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/technology/personaltech/twitter-blue-check-musk.html">got hawked</a>. Internal company documents about content moderation policies <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/14/1142666067/elon-musk-is-using-the-twitter-files-to-discredit-foes-and-push-conspiracy-theor">got laundered</a>. A puzzling rebrand to “X” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/24/elon-musk-x-twitter-rebrand-logo/">got hatched</a>. And a literal cage match with Meta head Mark Zuckerberg was on again and, ultimately, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/zuckerberg-musk-cage-fight.html">off again</a>.</p>
<p>It appears unclear what, precisely, Musk’s ambitions are for the platform. But when a threatening competitor, Threads, emerged in summer 2023, he may have offered a brief window of insight.</p>
<p>A clone of X, Threads <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/10/threads-meta-twitter-zuckerberg/">rolled up 100 million users</a> in less than a week after its June launch, becoming the fastest-growing app of all time. Musk promptly erupted with two attacks on Zuckerberg’s creation.</p>
<p>The first was catty and, as such, invited notice within digital spaces programmed to promote outrage. <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1676770522200252417?lang=en">Musk declared</a>, “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1676770522200252417"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678686570122199040">The second</a> – “You are free to be your true self here” – was more overlooked, yet revealed an essential premise that social media companies must sell to all their users.</p>
<p>As I argue in my new book, “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36333">The Authenticity Industries</a>,” authenticity represents the central battle for social media companies. They design their platforms to demonstrate and facilitate genuine self-performance from users. That’s what makes for dependable data, and dependable data – sold to advertisers – is <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-georgetown-speech-authentic.html">what makes the internet economy hum</a>.</p>
<p>Silicon Valley’s commitment to the ideal of authenticity remains ironclad, even as more and more people are starting to recognize that <a href="https://theconversation.com/taylor-swifts-eras-tour-is-a-potent-reminder-that-the-internet-is-not-real-life-209325">the internet isn’t real life</a>.</p>
<h2>A life performed</h2>
<p>Over the past decade, Instagram – with its glossy, obsessively manicured tableaux – became the aesthetic antithesis against which all other social media platforms measure that authenticity. </p>
<p>Instagram tinted life by allowing users to apply sun-kissed, nostalgic filters to their photographs. To scrub clean any blemishes on selfies posted there, add-ons like Facetune enabled magazine-quality Photoshopping <a href="https://digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-rejection-of-internet-perfection?s=r.">and topped paid-app charts</a>. Instagram became your highlight reel: galleries of far-flung travels and mouth-watering food porn exquisitely curated – a life performed as much as lived.</p>
<p>“[Instagram’s] basically almost designed to make your friends jealous,” one executive at TikTok <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36333">confided to me</a>. “It kind of makes me depressed a little bit sometimes when I go on Instagram and I feel, like, ‘Oh, I’m not fit enough. I’m not successful enough.’”</p>
<p>Over time, #NoFilter caveats, blurry photo dumps and shameless “finsta” accounts – a portmanteau of “fake” and “Instagram” – <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/bereal-authenticity-performance-online-instagram">arose as forms of authenticity backlash</a> to the “false happiness” of the posed lifestyles appearing on users’ feeds.</p>
<p>Heck, even Instagram knew it had a problem, copy-and-pasting Snapchat’s signature ephemerality and <a href="https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-instagram-stories">launching its disappearing Stories feature</a> to lower the pressure on users to post perfection.</p>
<p>If ever a platform, then, has been deserving of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/business/media/miquela-virtual-influencer.html">Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s 2019 quip</a> that “social media, to date, has largely been the domain of real humans being fake,” it’s probably Instagram.</p>
<h2>Different flavors of the same thing</h2>
<p>Recall Musk’s second, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678686570122199040">more revelatory rejoinder</a> on behalf of X: “You are free to be your true self here.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1678686570122199040"}"></div></p>
<p>For two decades, this has been the first commandment of social media promotion – both by platforms and on them.</p>
<p>More broadly, all online communication bears the burden of proof in this vein: It must compensate for the absence of face-to-face verifiability, which a 1993 Peter Steiner <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog">cartoon for The New Yorker</a> satirized with the caption, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”</p>
<p>Research confirms this. One <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/1/10">clever study</a> by media scholars Meredith Salisbury and Jefferson Pooley scoured the publicity pablum, CEO platitudes and app store copy from Friendster onward, finding that nearly every site leans on the same rhetorical clichés – like “real life” and “genuine” – as a means of defining itself against the purported phoniness of other sites.</p>
<p>But this might well be the narcissism of tiny differences at work, with Threads only the latest instance of social media copycatting. </p>
<p>In 2020, Wired <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/social-media-giants-look-the-same-tiktok-twitter-instagram/">incisively tallied</a> how <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/introducing-fleets-new-way-to-join-the-conversation">X’s Fleets</a>, a 24-hour posting-expiration feature, was a copy of Instagram’s Stories, which was itself originally ripped off from Snapchat. <a href="https://influencermarketinghub.com/what-is-snap-spotlight/">Snapchat developed Spotlight</a> for short-form video content, comparable to Instagram’s Reels and YouTube’s Shorts, all of which were an attempt to fend off TikTok, itself a reincarnation of Vine.</p>
<p>And all of these, including last year’s 56 million-times-downloaded viral sensation, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/17/bereal-copy-tiktok-instagram-snapchat/">BeReal</a> – where users snap unfiltered, unposed selfies for friends at random times daily – have promised users the opportunity to be their true selves. </p>
<p>In as much as Musk has pursued anything in his first year as Chief Twit, that seems to be his ambition: engineering a space with no social guardrails, where any inhibitions of decorum are ignored in favor of speaking, authentically, from the heart.</p>
<h2>Ambitions don’t match reality</h2>
<p>To a certain kind of personality, that’s probably an alluring offer. Indeed, Zuckerberg’s original – and still most enduring – platform triumph, Facebook, depended on designing a website that induced an online performance of a “true” offline self.</p>
<p>Those norms were embedded in design choices, as Zuckerberg made plain his disregard for our <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/708488/the-presentation-of-self-in-everyday-life-by-erving-goffman/">multistage, two-faced selves</a> in an <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Facebook-Effect/David-Kirkpatrick/9781439102121">oft-quoted line</a>, “You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.”</p>
<p>“Single-identity authenticity” was Facebook’s early market strategy, and the nascent website initially required users to register with a college email address. The design choice may well have been critical to Facebook vanquishing its closest early competitors, <a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/556413/friendster-rise-and-fall-jonathan-abrams">Friendster</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/the-rise-and-fall-of-myspace/69444/">Myspace</a>.</p>
<p>“The .edu email system served as this authenticating clearinghouse,” one early Facebook executive <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=36333">explained to me</a>, a phrasing that could as easily be applied to the utility of Instagram accounts today for Threads. “Really, users 0 through 10 million were all verified and authenticated by the .edu email system, [while] Myspace had 57 Jennifer Anistons.”</p>
<p>That authenticating clearinghouse would soon vanish as Facebook opened itself up to users not enrolled in college – like, say, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-russia-fake-accounts-126-million">the disinformation agents</a> who have meddled in U.S. elections from Russia.</p>
<h2>A regression to the meanest</h2>
<p>All this competition makes for authenticity jockeying: Musk attempted to parry Zuckerberg’s Threads threat with his invitation to convene strangers who will stop being polite and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World_(TV_series)">start getting real</a>. </p>
<p>But in an ominous echo of Rupert Murdoch’s $500 million <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/as-myspace-sells-for-35-million-a-history-of-the-networks-valuation/241224/">write-off</a> of Myspace, Musk’s $44 billion purchase has struggled with those bot-and-blue check mark difficulties of user verification.</p>
<p>None of this is to say Threads will eventually triumph over X, even as the crisis in the Middle East – and the misinformation circulating because of it – <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2023/10/x-twitter-elon-musk-israel-hamas-gaza-misinformation-meta-threads.html">seems to have initiated</a> another exodus of defectors from X. After all, a month after its launch, Threads had already lost <a href="https://gizmodo.com/threads-has-lost-more-than-80-of-daily-active-users-1850707329">an estimated</a> 80% of its daily active users.</p>
<p>Threads’ vibes may have been cheerful and friendly at the outset – disingenuously so, according to Musk – but it may well prove that, eventually, all social media sites regress toward the meanest. </p>
<p>Musk would probably call that “authenticity.” On X, you might not be able to trust the veracity of the user or the information they’re spreading. But you can be sure that they don’t feel like they have to bite their tongue and act nice.</p>
<p>Social media company names may change. But when identity is the most lucrative commodity they trade in, their fetishization of authenticity won’t.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Serazio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With identity the most lucrative commodity social media platforms trade in, their fetishization of authenticity remains ironclad.Michael Serazio, Associate Professor of Communication, Boston CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2161932023-10-23T15:58:53Z2023-10-23T15:58:53ZX/Twitter: imposing a US$1 bot tax on new customers will only make the platform’s problems worse<p>X, formerly known as Twitter, <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/not-a-bot">is testing</a> a subscription plan called “Not a Bot” of US$1 equivalent per annum in New Zealand and the Philippines. Those who don’t subscribe will still be able to log in to view content and follow other accounts, but won’t be able to interact through tweeting, liking, sharing or bookmarking content. The plan is limited to new accounts and only the browser version of the platform, as opposed to the mobile app. </p>
<p>As the name of the plan suggests, X has positioned Not a Bot as a means to deter bots. Bots are fake accounts running on automated scripts, usually created by malicious actors to spread fake news and drive advertising traffic. They are present in <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1264226/human-and-bot-web-traffic-share/">large numbers</a> not just on X but also other platforms such as <a href="https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/inside-facebook-bot-farm/">Facebook</a>. </p>
<p>Bots have been a dominant theme since Musk took charge of Twitter a year ago. His <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-chaos-elon-musk-lash-out-blue-check-reversal-2023-4?r=US&IR=T">troubled move</a> to start charging for blue checkmarks was part of the same battle, while he also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/17/elon-musk-twitter-deal-bot-tesla">previously tried</a> to get out of buying the company on the grounds that the previous board hadn’t been clear with him about bot levels. Introducing a broader system of charges to tackle bots is a bold move, but there’s a good chance it will only make the company’s problems worse. </p>
<h2>The bot arms race</h2>
<p>Ever since the Musk takeover, X’s financial woes seem to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-says-twitters-cash-flow-still-negative-ad-revenue-drops-2023-07-15/">have only increased</a>. Despite aggressive layoffs of thousands of employees and a <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-to-gut-twitter-infrastructure-cut-costs-by-1b-annually/">sharp reduction</a> in server capacity, the company has yet to reach positive cashflow (though new CEO <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/10/ceo-says-x-formerly-twitter-is-close-to-break-even/#:%7E:text=X%20CEO%20Linda%20Yaccarino%20claims,pretty%20close%20to%20break%20even.%E2%80%9D">Linda Yaccarino has said</a> breakeven is close). This is because its revenues have shrunk as fast, falling <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/technology/twitter-ad-sales-musk.html">approximately 59%</a> in the year to May as advertisers have exited due to increased hate speech and ads featuring things like online gambling and marijuana products. This, combined with the increased debt burden from the takeover, has put X under serious pressure to achieve a turnaround. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-em-runescape-em-developer-wins-suit-against-bot-maker">Internet companies</a> have long been in an <a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-05-fake-facebook-accounts-never-ending-bots.html">arms race</a> with bot makers. Every time they implement a new means of detecting fake accounts, bot makers find ways of countering them. Older bot-detection algorithms sought to purge internet platforms using machine learning and searching for unusual language patterns, but weren’t <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-finds-bot-detection-software-isnt-accurate-it-seems">particularly successful</a>. </p>
<p>Things have gotten worse with the rise of <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-finds-bot-detection-software-isnt-accurate-it-seems">generative AI</a>. It has literally changed the face of fake news, videos and images, reducing the ability to detect bots either through algorithms or even human moderators.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of a social media bot on a phone" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555319/original/file-20231023-19-uu7b0j.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">No ifs, no bots.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/digital-chatbot-assistant-conversation-provide-access-2232434469">Hodoimg</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Musk’s US$1/year proposal represents a different approach. The main problem is bot farms, where thousands of accounts are created and then run on different social media platforms via large servers. This makes it possible through economies of scale to create a bot account for a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/19/elon-musk-says-x-formerly-twitter-could-charge-a-monthly-fee-for-access">fraction of a penny</a>, according to Musk. By charging new X accounts, it will become much more expensive for bot farms to achieve the scale needed to be profitable. </p>
<p>Restricting the charge only to the browser version of X will hurt them the most: whereas the mobile app only allows a single account login at a time, bot accounts need multiple logins on different browser windows running on the same machine to be useful.</p>
<h2>A decent idea in theory …</h2>
<p>On the face of it, the proposal sounds a smart move. Having fewer bots may help X win back some of the advertisers who have <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/3/23/23651151/twitter-advertisers-elon-musk-brands-revenue-fleeing">quit the platform</a>. </p>
<p>It is also a new revenue stream. Musk said shortly after his takeover that X was signing up <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/11/27/musk-touts-all-time-high-twitter-signups-and-daily-active-users-on-as-he-promises-new-features/?sh=59c529c612d2">2 million new accounts</a> per week, which points to some potential, but let’s not get carried away. It is unclear how many genuine users will agree to pay the charge, but since browsers account for <a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/twitters-users-base-keeps-growing-particularly-on-mobile-devices/">approximately 20%</a> of the monthly total active base, we could assume a generous 10% of new subscribers. This would result in a paltry US$10.4 million (£8.6 million) increase in annual revenues, less than 0.25% of the company’s 2022 total. </p>
<p>This also has to be offset against potential users deciding to walk away. Particularly if the scheme becomes more aggressive in size and scope, it could become the undoing of the platform. Musk has already hinted at charging all X users a <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/twitter-x-pay-fee-use-elon-musk-b1107980.html">small monthly</a> fee. Supposing it were US$1 per month, it could prompt a steep drop not only in bots but in genuine users. </p>
<p>Let’s not forget <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-chaos-elon-musk-lash-out-blue-check-reversal-2023-4">the chaos</a> around Musk’s blue check mark subscription, for which lots of celebrities refused to pay and the platform partially backtracked to prevent an exodus. That system also didn’t stop malicious actors <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/27/consumers-complaining-x-targeted-scammers-verification-changes-twitter">from scamming</a> genuine X users. With X users already having felt the whiplash of Musk’s previous decisions, charging them for what has been free could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Screenshot of Elon Musk's blue check mark on Twitter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/555320/original/file-20231023-15-a4f3ss.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Let’s not play it again, Sam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/kaunas-lithuania-2023-march-27-close-2280621197">Rokas Tenys</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To emphasise, a platform’s value lies in its user base. The more users interact with each other, the more content they produce and vice versa. This induces other users to join the platform, which makes it attractive to advertisers who can reach a bigger, more engaged audience. This virtuous cycle is known as “<a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/network-effect.asp">network effects</a>”, and drives the success not only of social media but also services like telecoms, ride sharing, messaging, streaming and multiplayer online games.</p>
<h2>High risk, low return</h2>
<p>While bots are a very real issue, X’s “bot tax” is not the best way forward. This is akin to a government raising taxes on tax-paying citizens because it is incapable of getting tax avoiders to pay their share. </p>
<p>Unfortunately there’s no quick fix with bots. The best way forward is leveraging advanced technologies such as generative AI, sharing more transparent data with academic institutions to push research forward, and sharper human moderation. </p>
<p>X needs to remain in that arms race, while sticking to the broader reinvention strategy already outlined by Musk. This includes turning X into a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23808796/elon-musks-x-everything-app-vision">super-app</a>, akin to WeChat, Grab and others from Asia, offering new services such as telephony, remittances, deliveries, mini games and video channels. Giving users more things to do in one place is key to the platform’s future. But that requires more patience and cash, which both X and Musk might be running out of.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hamza Mudassir does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s a year since Elon Musk took charge of Twitter. His plan for charging new customers looks like another mis-step.Hamza Mudassir, Lecturer in Strategy, Cambridge Judge Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2117852023-10-04T12:33:32Z2023-10-04T12:33:32ZChina’s WeChat is all-encompassing but low-key − a Chinese media scholar explains the Taoist philosophy behind the everything app’s design<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550452/original/file-20230926-21-fsn084.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C8256%2C5499&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">WeChat aims to be everything to everyone but remain mostly in the background.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chinese-customer-uses-his-mobile-to-pay-via-a-qr-code-with-news-photo/1228585197">Kevin Frayer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elon Musk’s vision of <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1577428272056389633?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1577428272056389633%7Ctwgr%5E98798ba97e9df0d4da1bbfab8889c32d547b76a4%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zdnet.com%2Farticle%2Fwhat-is-elon-musks-x-the-everything-app%2F">Twitter, now rebranded as X, as an
“everything app”</a> is no secret. When <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dunkin-and-lego-rebrands-succeeded-but-x-missed-the-mark-210432">the X logo replaced Twitter’s blue bird</a>, the internet <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-x-twitter-everything-app-rcna96068">buzzed with heated discussions</a> about just what it would mean for X to be an everything app.</p>
<p>Musk promoted his super app project by referring to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jul/29/elon-musk-wechat-twitter-rebranding-everything-app-for-west">Chinese all-in-one app WeChat</a>. But for many American users unfamiliar with WeChat, a train of questions followed. What’s it like to use WeChat? How has WeChat become “everything” in China? Would it be possible to replicate the app’s success <a href="https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-aims-to-turn-twitter-into-an-everything-app-a-social-media-and-marketing-scholar-explains-what-that-is-and-why-its-not-so-easy-to-do-211023">in the U.S.</a>?</p>
<p>I’m <a href="https://ealc.wustl.edu/people/jianqing-chen">a Chinese digital media scholar</a>, and I’ve used WeChat since 2012. But, in contrast to Musk’s enthusiasm, I don’t think WeChat is something to write home about. I believe it’s ordinary rather than special, lacking distinctive features compared with the other popular apps I studied for my current book project about Chinese touchscreen media. </p>
<p>WeChat’s inconspicuousness on my phone screen is no accident. Although WeChat is an everything app in the sense of being a digital hub for over a billion users, the app’s design is intentionally grounded in a more nuanced and philosophical meaning of the word “everything” than you might expect.</p>
<h2>WeChat is an all-inclusive media ecosystem</h2>
<p>Launched in 2011, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01634437221128937">WeChat</a> has become an all-in-one app that offers services covering most aspects of everyday life, from instant messaging and mobile payments to photo- and video-sharing social networking. It has become a staple of daily activities for <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts/">1.3 billion Chinese mobile users</a>.</p>
<p>WeChat is also the app that China-bound travelers can download if they want to install only one app. WeChat can help you fill out customs declaration forms, call a taxi, pay for your hotel room and order food. Without WeChat, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/3037446/foreigners-life-beijing-without-access-alipay-or-wechat">a traveler in China would be like a fish out of water</a>, since everything in China now runs through smartphone screens and mobile payment platforms.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smart phone screen displaying a messaging app with Chinese text" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550456/original/file-20230926-17-zx53w2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A smartphone displays WeChat’s group-messaging function.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/environmental-protection-volunteer-zhou-yuqing-organizes-a-news-photo/1244511282">Ou Dongqu/Xinhua via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this sense, WeChat is indeed an everything app. Its “everythingness” refers to its near omnipresence and omnipotence in everyday life. The app creates an all-encompassing and ever-expanding media ecosystem that influences users’ daily activities. It forms a gigantic digital hub that, as German philosopher and media theorist <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/In+the+World+Interior+of+Capital%3A+Towards+a+Philosophical+Theory+of+Globalization-p-9780745647685">Peter Sloterdijk once described</a>, “has drawn inwards everything that was once on the outside.” </p>
<p>This “everythingness” leaves little room for rival companies to achieve similar dominance and turns every tap or swipe on a user’s smartphone into something a big tech company can profit from. This dream of an internet empire is perhaps what is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/technology/elon-musk-x-everything-app.html">so enticing for tech leaders like Musk</a>.</p>
<h2>A counterintuitive design philosophy</h2>
<p>Despite WeChat’s status as an everything app, it’s one of the least notable and attractive apps on my smartphone. WeChat rarely changes its logo to celebrate holidays or sends admin notifications to users. The app forms a relatively closed social space, since WeChat users can see only what their contacts post, unlike apps like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/fashion/china-social-media-weibo-wechat.html">Weibo</a> or <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/11/tiktok-instagram-video-feeds-ai-algorithm/672002/">TikTok</a>, where celebrities amass millions of followers. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="graphic of a small figure of a person against a large moon-like orb" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=959&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1205&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1205&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/550501/original/file-20230927-15-rfh3br.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1205&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WeChat’s splash screen is visually clean and has been unchanged for a decade.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen capture by Jianqing Chen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the lack of flashy, attention-grabbing features is actually one of WeChat’s intentional design philosophies, as WeChat’s founder and chief developer Allen Xiaolong Zhang made clear in his <a href="https://blog.wechat.com/2019/03/18/what-is-wechats-dream-wechat-founder-allen-zhang-explains/">annual public speeches in 2019 and 2020</a>. Zhang emphasized that one of WeChat’s design principles is to “get users out of the app as fast as possible,” meaning to reduce the amount of time users spend in WeChat.</p>
<p>This might seem paradoxical – if WeChat is trying to get its users to leave the app as fast as possible, how can it maintain its internet empire? Typically an app’s popularity is assessed based on how long users spend in the app, and users’ attention is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Nothing-Resisting-Attention/dp/1612197493">scarce resource</a> various digital platforms fight for. </p>
<p>But Zhang claims that in order to sustain users’ daily engagement with the app in the long run, it’s important to let them leave the app as fast as possible. A low demand for time and effort is key to bringing users back into the app without exhausting them.</p>
<h2>A Taoist message behind WeChat’s design</h2>
<p>The design of <a href="https://chozan.co/blog/wechat-mini-programs/">WeChat miniprograms</a> makes Zhang’s idea clear. Miniprograms are embedded into WeChat as third-party developed sub-applications, and they provide users with easy access to a large range of services – like hailing a taxi, ordering food, buying train tickets and playing games – without leaving WeChat. Users can simply search in the app or scan a QR code to open a miniprogram, skipping the cumbersome processes of installing and uninstalling new apps. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A screenshot of a smartphone homepage, with round circular apps and text in Chinese" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1298&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1298&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1298&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1632&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1632&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546042/original/file-20230903-23-ebj1at.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1632&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WeChat has a panel of miniprograms that users pull down from the top of the screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screen capture by Jianqing Chen</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Miniprograms are stored in a hidden panel at the top of the screen. They can be opened by swiping down the screen. These miniprograms appear to be ephemeral, diffusive and almost atmospheric. They give users the feeling that WeChat has disappeared or merged into the environment. </p>
<p>WeChat is what media scholars call “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo20069392.html">elemental</a>”: inconspicuous and nonintrusive, yet pervasive and as fundamental as the natural elements, just like air, water and clouds. </p>
<p>This environment of pervasiveness and unobtrusiveness resonates with the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy that understands nothing (wu 无, or “not-being”) as that which forms the basis of all things (wanwu 万物 or “ten thousand things”). As <a href="https://terebess.hu/english/tao/Addiss-Lombardo-Watson.pdf">Tao Te Ching states</a>, “Dao begets One (or nothingness), One begets Two (yin and yang), Two begets Three (Heaven, Earth and Man; or yin, yang and breath qi), Three begets all things.” For Taoist thinkers, not-being determines how all things within the cosmos come into being, evolve and disappear.</p>
<p>Although the depth of these sagely texts is unfathomable, the Taoist thoughts from the past help people appreciate the interplay of everything and nothing. This perspective adds another layer of meaning to “everything” and opens up alternative visions of what an everything app can be. </p>
<p>Perhaps WeChat’s interpretation of the word “everything” – as simultaneously pervasive and inconspicuous – is the secret to its success over the past 10 years. I believe many tech leaders could benefit from a more sophisticated understanding of “everything” when envisioning the everything app, and not just equate “everything” simply with big and comprehensive.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211785/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jianqing Chen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The design philosophy of the everything app WeChat may seem paradoxical, being simultaneously pervasive and inconspicuous. But this idea of “everythingness” goes back to ancient Taoist philosophy.Jianqing Chen, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and of Film and Media Studies, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2141152023-09-21T20:47:04Z2023-09-21T20:47:04ZMedia mogul Rupert Murdoch resigns − extending Joe Biden’s ongoing good luck streak with the media<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549644/original/file-20230921-25-3annrt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden speaks during a press conference at the White House in January 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-speaks-during-a-news-conference-in-the-news-photo/1237839403?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States of America on Jan. 20, 2021.</p>
<p>Imagine if someone could go back in time and inform him and his communications team that a few pivotal changes in the media would occur during his first three years in office.</p>
<p>There’s the latest news that Rubert Murdoch, 92, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/murdoch-fox-quit-emeritus-30286a4a3107b7bde612adbfc7891958">stepped down</a> as the chairperson of Fox Corp. and News Corp. on Sept. 21, 2023. Since the 1980s, Murdoch, who will be replaced by his son Lachlan, has been the most <a href="https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-press-barons-how-much-power-do-newspapers-still-have-213283">powerful right-wing media executive</a> in the U.S.</p>
<p>While it’s not clear whether Fox will be any tamer under Lachlan, Murdoch’s departure is likely good news for Biden, who <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/03/media/reliable-sources-biden-murdoch-fox-news/index.html">reportedly despises the media baron.</a></p>
<p>Adding to Biden’s good-luck list is that Elon Musk, an eccentric – and erratic – billionaire, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/technology/elon-musk-twitter-deal-complete.html">purchased Twitter</a>, now rebranded as X, in October 2022, prompting <a href="https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/twitter-in-numbers/">millions of American users to drop</a> the social media platform, which has become a hotbed of right-wing activity and commentary. </p>
<p>X’s power as an <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk-twitter-celebrities-quit-1234634670/">influential social</a>, political and <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/15/23683554/twitter-dying-elon-musk-x-company">cultural force</a> has since continued to decline. Former President Donald Trump <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3743666-trump-says-he-has-no-interest-in-returning-to-twitter-after-reinstatement/">even originally spurned an invitation</a> to return to X, after Twitter <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/08/954760928/twitter-bans-president-trump-citing-risk-of-further-incitement-of-violence">suspended his account</a> in 2021 for the risk it posed to incite violence. (Trump has since posted one time on X, on Aug. 24, 2023.) </p>
<p>These and other incidents mark an astonishing and even historic run of good luck for Biden, who, like all politicians, remains somewhat reliant on the media to both get his word out and craft a positive public image.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YxTJsxoAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar of media history</a>, I think it’s fair to say no American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has enjoyed such a run of good media luck. </p>
<p>Ultimately, this luck – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/politics/biden-public-appearances-media.html#:%7E:text=Biden%20averaged%2010%20news%20conferences">coupled with his avoidance of press conferences</a> – might help Biden evade the intense scrutiny that all presidents face.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rupert Murdoch wears a dark shit and walks in a street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549643/original/file-20230921-26-2fmdld.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, pictured in July 2023, announced his resignation on Sept. 21.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rupert-murdoch-at-his-annual-party-at-spencer-house-st-news-photo/1258950833?adppopup=true">Victoria Jones/PA Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Other conservative voices in decline</h2>
<p>A few other major media shifts have transpired during Biden’s presidency.</p>
<p>Fox News <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/04/25/tucker-carlson-don-lemon-new-era-cable-news">lost approximately 1 million nightly prime-time viewers</a>, or about a third of its audience, between 2020 and early 2023. CNN and MSNBC <a href="https://apnews.com/article/cnn-ratings-chris-licht-584ea2b45819d2cc416006d7bd8b77e8#:%7E:text=will%20be%20rewarded.-,Cable%20news%20ratings%20are%20down%20across%20the%20board%20compared%20to,according%20to%20the%20Nielsen%20company.">ratings tanked,</a> too, reflecting an <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/15/23833516/nielsen-tv-cable-50-percent-decline-viewership-bum-bums#:%7E:text=The%20analytics%20firm%20showed%20that,watch%20time%20in%20American%20homes.">overall decline of the cable TV news universe.</a></p>
<p>It’s also noteworthy that conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/rush-limbaugh-died-lung-cancer-after-denying-smoking-s-risk-ncna1258395">died on Feb. 17, 2021,</a> leaving a massive void in right-wing talk radio. Many loyal Limbaugh listeners <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/audio-and-podcasting/">then deserted AM talk radio</a> as a main way they get <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/18/22940913/its-been-a-year-since-rush-limbaugh-died-whats-changed-clay-travis-buck-sexton-megyn-kelly-joe-rogan">their news</a>. </p>
<p>More recently, Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, the host of America’s most popular right-wing cable TV news program in May 2023, after Carlson’s <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/tucker-carlson-white-men-text-message#:%7E:text=For%20instance%2C%20the%20higher%2Dups,to%20give%20him%20the%20ax.">racist text messages</a> were made public as part of the lawsuit against Fox by <a href="https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-trump-2020-0ac71f75acfacc52ea80b3e747fb0afe">Dominion Voting Systems</a>. Fox <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/08/17/fox-news-ratings-rebound-jesse-watters-carlson/">did regain some viewers</a> after Carlson left.</p>
<p>And, finally, in September 2023, Project Veritas, a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158505780/project-veritas-james-okeefe-forced-out-financial-malfeasance">right-wing political group</a> known for hiding cameras to embarrass journalists and nonprofits the group considered to be politically liberal, reportedly <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/news/new-project-veritas-suspends-all-operations-amid-devastating-layoffs-and-fundraising-struggles/">ended all of its investigations</a> and <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/news/new-project-veritas-suspends-all-operations-amid-devastating-layoffs-and-fundraising-struggles/">fired almost all</a> its remaining employees. </p>
<p>Given Biden’s low approval levels – only 40.6% of Americans said they <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/">approved of Biden</a> in September 2023 polls – I cannot say with certainty that this chain of setbacks for conservative media platforms has helped Biden maintain, or drawn in, more voters and their support. </p>
<p>But this remains an astonishing and even historic run of good luck for a Democratic president when it comes to the media – bringing to mind Roosevelt, who benefited from a similar turn of events.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Franklin Delano Roosevelt sits at a table with microphones labeled 'CBS' and 'NBC' in a black and white photo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/549647/original/file-20230921-27-7zaz3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addresses the nation during a fireside chat two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-politician-who-served-as-the-32nd-president-of-the-news-photo/1222445846?adppopup=true">Icon and Image/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>FDR’s stroke of good luck</h2>
<p>It’s important to note that, in some ways, Roosevelt manufactured his luck.</p>
<p>Roosevelt hosted regular, <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/presidential-documents-archive-guidebook/fireside-chats-f-roosevelt">popular fireside chats</a> on the radio in the 1930s and ’40s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-fireside-chat-provided-a-model-for-calming-the-nation-that-president-trump-failed-to-follow-133473">as a way to connect with voters</a> and <a href="https://reason.com/2017/04/05/roosevelts-war-against-the-pre/">counter the newspapers</a> that opposed him. </p>
<p>The media supported the <a href="https://www.fdrlibrary.org/polio">White House’s attempts to hide Roosevelt’s paralysis</a>, the result of <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/disabilityhistorypresidents.htm">contracting polio</a> in his 20s. And, at the request of the White House, some media outlets <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01439688200260131">censored people on the radio</a> who were critical of Roosevelt’s policies. </p>
<p>In much the same way, Joe Biden’s media team has skillfully exploited the media. </p>
<p>Biden, for example, has kept a relatively low public profile – in the last century, only Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon have <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/presidential-news-conferences">convened fewer average annual press conferences</a> than the current president at this point in their tenure.</p>
<h2>Luck may not last forever</h2>
<p>The decline of conservative media over the past few years does not constitute a perfect trajectory for Biden – that would require, for instance, the emergence of a new liberal media figure with the influence of a Limbaugh or Carlson. </p>
<p>But Biden has benefited from right-wing media tumult. </p>
<p>It’s not yet clear what Rupert Murdoch’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/sep/21/rupert-murdoch-fox-news-lawsuits-donald-trump">departure will mean for Fox News</a>, especially since his son Lachlan Murdoch was already well established at Fox Corp. as a top executive and staunch conservative.</p>
<p>There’s no guarantee that Biden’s media luck will hold. </p>
<p>One potentially <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-gun-charge-investigation-e5c8ded90ea8c22d2e2e7cb09804b747">compromising factor</a> is that Biden’s son Hunter is <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/09/19/hunter-biden-gun-charges-plea-hearing">facing felony gun possession charges</a> and is expected to plead not guilty on Sept. 26, 2023. </p>
<p>But much of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/us/politics/hunter-biden-legal-troubles-timeline.html">media has avoided</a> the most <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12520091/Joe-Biden-KNEW-Hunter-having-drug-fueled-meltdown-time-bought-gun-heard-voicemail-tearfully-pleading-help.html">scandalous details or images</a> portraying Hunter Biden’s alleged illegal activities – or failed to clearly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/briefing/the-hunter-biden-case.html">explain why they have avoided such reporting</a>.</p>
<p>This offers yet another example of Joe Biden’s outsized luck.</p>
<h2>A belated fall</h2>
<p>It is useful to remember that President Warren G. Harding was the president previous to Roosevelt who enjoyed good fortune with the media.<br>
Harding, the only professional journalist to be elected president, enjoyed enormous popularity within the newspaper industry. </p>
<p>Reporters, for example, hid his <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/warren-harding-child-sex-sandal-121404/">widely rumored</a> – <a href="https://millercenter.org/president/harding/family-life">and eventually proven</a> – extramarital affairs. </p>
<p>But after Harding <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/strange-death-warren-harding">died unexpectedly</a> in 1923, the truth about his administration’s corruption and his personal dealings, <a href="https://www.history.com/news/warren-harding-scandals">including details about hush payments</a> to cover up a secret, unacknowledged child, dribbled out. </p>
<p>This happened first through quiet leaks, then in a flood prompted by a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-president-warren-g-hardings-sudden-death-sparked-rumors-of-murder-and-suicide-180982626/">congressional investigation</a> in the late 1920s regarding a top Harding administration official and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cabinet-member-guilty-in-teapot-dome-scandal">a bribery scandal</a>. </p>
<p>Harding’s reputation never recovered. </p>
<p>In Harding’s case, the so-called “<a href="https://dicktofel.substack.com/about">first draft of history</a>” provided by the newspapers proved embarrassingly inaccurate.</p>
<p>In other words: The president’s luck didn’t hold out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While President Joe Biden has low approval ratings, few other American presidents − with the exception of FDR and Warren Harding − have experienced such a run of good media luck.Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2125782023-09-20T15:34:26Z2023-09-20T15:34:26ZIn future, we’ll see fewer generic AI chatbots like ChatGPT and more specialised ones that are tailored to our needs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545797/original/file-20230831-8847-rpc8oh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C9%2C6080%2C4191&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chat-bot-robot-online-chatting-communication-1147488248">Alexander Supertramp / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>AI technology is developing rapidly. ChatGPT has become the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2023/02/02/chatgpt-is-the-fastest-growing-ap-in-the-history-of-web-applications/">fastest-growing online service</a> in history. Google and Microsoft are integrating generative AI into their products. And world leaders are excitedly embracing AI as a tool for economic growth. </p>
<p>As we move beyond ChatGPT and Bard, we’re likely to see AI chatbots become less generic and more specialised. AIs are limited by the data it’s exposed to in order to make them better at what they do – in this case mimicking human speech and providing users with useful answers. </p>
<p>Training often casts the net wide, with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/5/23784257/google-ai-bard-privacy-policy-train-web-scraping">AI systems absorbing thousands of books and web pages</a>. But a more select, focused set of training data could make AI chatbots even more useful for people working in particular industries or living in certain areas. </p>
<h2>The value of data</h2>
<p>An important factor in this evolution will be the growing costs of amassing training data for advanced large language models (LLMs), the type of AI that powers ChatGPT. Companies know data is valuable: Meta and Google make billions from selling adverts targeted with user data. But the value of data is now <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/20c27dc2-5cb6-4aa0-a6c7-71342b661a6b">changing</a>. Meta and Google sell data “insights”; they invest in analytics to transform many data points into predictions about users.</p>
<p>Data is valuable to OpenAI – the developer of ChatGPT – in a subtly different way. Imagine a tweet: “The cat sat on the mat.” This tweet is not valuable for targeted advertisers. It says little about a user or their interests. Maybe, at a push, it could suggest interest in cat food and Dr Suess.</p>
<p>But for OpenAI, which is building LLMs to produce human-like language, this tweet is valuable as an example of how human language works. A single tweet cannot teach an AI to construct sentences, but billions of tweets, blogposts, Wikipedia entries, and so on, certainly can. For instance, the advanced LLM GPT-4 was probably built using data scraped from X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, Wikipedia and beyond.</p>
<p>The AI revolution is changing the business model for data-rich organisations. Companies like Meta and Google have been <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/20c27dc2-5cb6-4aa0-a6c7-71342b661a6b">investing in AI research and development</a> for several years as they try to exploit their data resources. </p>
<p>Organisations <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-data-api-prices-out-nearly-everyone">like X</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/reddit-eyeing-ipo-charge-millions-in-fees-for-third-party-api-access.html">Reddit</a> have begun to charge third parties for API access, the system used to scrape data from these websites. Data scraping costs companies like X money, as they <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/1/23781198/twitter-daily-reading-limit-elon-musk-verified-paywall">must spend more on computing power</a> to fulfil data queries.</p>
<p>Moving forward, as organisations like OpenAI look to build more powerful versions of its GPT LLM, they will face greater costs for getting hold of data. One solution to this problem might be synthetic data.</p>
<h2>Going synthetic</h2>
<p>Synthetic data is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/053ee253-820e-453a-a1d5-0f24985258de">created from scratch by AI systems</a> to train more advanced AI systems – so that they improve. They are designed to perform the same task as real training data but are generated by AI. </p>
<p>It’s a new idea, but it faces many problems. Good synthetic data needs to be <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2020/real-promise-synthetic-data-1016">different enough from the original data</a> it’s based on in order to tell the model something new, while similar enough to tell it something accurate. This can be difficult to achieve. Where synthetic data is <a href="https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-real-deal-about-synthetic-data/">just convincing copies</a> of real-world data, the resulting AI models may struggle with creativity, entrenching existing biases.</p>
<p>Another problem is the <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/28/ai-content-flood-model-collapse">“Hapsburg AI” problem</a>. This suggests that training AI on synthetic data will cause a decline in the effectiveness of these systems – hence the analogy using the infamous inbreeding of the Hapsburg royal family. <a href="https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Eis410/Papers/dementia_arxiv.pdf">Some studies</a> suggest this is already happening with systems like ChatGPT.</p>
<p>One reason ChatGPT is so good is because it uses <a href="https://openai.com/research/learning-from-human-preferences">reinforcement learning with human feedback</a> (RLHF), where people rate its outputs in terms of accuracy. If synthetic data generated by an AI has inaccuracies, AI models trained on this data will themselves be inaccurate. So the demand for human feedback to correct these inaccuracies is likely to increase. </p>
<p>However, while most people would be able to say whether a sentence is grammatically accurate, fewer would be able to comment on its factual accuracy – especially when the output is technical or specialised. Inaccurate outputs on specialist topics are less likely to be caught by RLHF. If synthetic data means there are more inaccuracies to catch, the quality of general-purpose LLMs may stall or decline even as these models “learn” more.</p>
<h2>Little language models</h2>
<p>These problems help explain some emerging trends in AI. Google engineers have revealed that there is little preventing third parties from <a href="https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither">recreating LLMs</a> like GPT-3 or Google’s LaMDA AI. Many organisations could build their own internal AI systems, using their own specialised data, for their own objectives. These will probably be more valuable for these organisations than ChatGPT in the long run.</p>
<p>Recently, the Japanese government noted that developing a <a href="https://www.taira-m.jp/ldp%E2%80%99s%20ai%20whitepaper_etrans_2304.pdf">Japan-centric version of ChatGPT</a> is potentially worthwhile to their AI strategy, as ChatGPT is not sufficiently representative of Japan. The software company <a href="https://www.sap.com/uk/products/artificial-intelligence/generative-ai.html">SAP has recently launched its AI “roadmap”</a> to offer AI development capabilities to professional organisations. This will make it easier for companies to build their own, bespoke versions of ChatGPT.</p>
<p>Consultancies such as <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-blog/meet-lilli-our-generative-ai-tool">McKinsey</a> and <a href="https://kpmg.com/au/en/home/media/press-releases/2023/03/kpmg-unveils-cutting-edge-private-chatgpt-software-march-2023.html">KPMG</a> are exploring the training of AI models for “specific purposes”. Guides on how to <a href="https://bdtechtalks.com/2023/06/01/create-privategpt-local-llm/">create private, personal versions of ChatGPT</a> can be readily found online. Open source systems, such as <a href="https://gpt4all.io/index.html">GPT4All</a>, already exist.</p>
<p>As development challenges – coupled with potential regulatory hurdles – mount for generic LLMs, it is possible that the future of AI will be many specific little – rather than large – language models. Little language models might struggle if they are trained on less data than systems such as GPT-4. </p>
<p>But they might also have an advantage in terms of RLHF, as little language models are likely to be developed for specific purposes. Employees who have expert knowledge of their organisation and its objectives may provide much more valuable feedback to such AI systems, compared with generic feedback for a generic AI system. This may overcome the disadvantages of less data.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Mills does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Training AI systems with more focused data sets can target them to a specific use.Stuart Mills, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131282023-09-12T12:27:15Z2023-09-12T12:27:15ZAntisemitism on Elon Musk’s X is surging and dredging up many ancient, defamatory themes of blaming Jews<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547548/original/file-20230911-22-zstdy0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=367%2C22%2C3460%2C2346&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Elon Musk has both sparked and permitted antisemitism on X, the social media platform he now owns.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chief-executive-officer-of-spacex-and-tesla-and-owner-of-news-photo/1499013102">Chesnot/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since buying Twitter, rebranded as X, billionaire Elon Musk, who calls himself a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/10/opinion/musk-free-speech.html">free speech absolutist</a>,” has welcomed hatemongers to the platform, including one who recently coined the <a href="https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1700091804677280041?s=20">trending hashtag #BanTheADL</a>. </p>
<p>The ADL, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, was founded in 1913 during <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-leo-frank-case-tells-us-about-the-dangers-of-fake-news-75830">the trial of Leo Frank</a>, a Jewish factory manager wrongly convicted of murdering one of his young workers. After Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment, <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/leo-frank-case/">Frank was lynched</a>. Since then, the ADL has aimed to fight antisemitism and secure “justice not only for <a href="https://www.adl.org/who-we-are/history">Jews but for all people</a>.”</p>
<p>Musk attacked the ADL on Sept. 4, 2023, saying that “Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698755938541330907">primarily due to pressure</a> on advertisers by @ADL.”</p>
<p><iframe id="ya6mD" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ya6mD/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>As #BanTheADL trended on X, users tweeted that it is “<a href="https://twitter.com/KeithWoodsYT/status/1699595933678223817?s=20">anti-Christian</a>.” One said, “<a href="https://twitter.com/rj1299599/status/1700336247926083694?s=20">When you say #BanTheADL</a>, what you really mean is #BanTheJews from power and organizing against white western civilization.”</p>
<p>The tweets may be new; <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EPN4PGAAAAAJ&hl=en">as a scholar of Jewish history</a>, I know the ideas they contain are not. </p>
<h2>Religious antisemitism</h2>
<p>The belief that Jews are “anti-Christian” comes from the Gospels, where Jews are blamed for <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-from-the-early-church-to-1400">the crucifixion of Jesus</a>. As Christianity became the dominant faith in the Roman Empire in the late fourth century, Jews, condemned by the church for their treachery, <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/research/about-the-mandel-center/initiatives/ethics-religion-holocaust/articles-and-resources/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries">faced discrimination</a>. Beginning with restrictive legislation, it led eventually to locked ghetto walls and brutal attacks.</p>
<p>Immigrants to America carried ideas about Jewish enmity along with their rucksacks. In 1654, New Amsterdam Gov. <a href="https://www.pbs.org/jewishamericans/jewish_life/">Peter Stuyvesant tried to expel 23 Jews</a> fleeing persecution who had just landed in the colony. He called them a “deceitful race – such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.” </p>
<p>In October 2022, when white supremacists hung banners over Highway 405 in Los Angeles, some <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/banner-kanye-right-los-angeles-freeway-antisemtic-group-rcna53653">news sites blurred one</a>. That particular banner pointed to the Gospel of John, where Jesus tells the Jews, “<a href="https://www.biblindex.org/en/bible/new-revised-standard-version-including-apocrypha/jn-8:44">You are from your father the devil</a>.” </p>
<p>And a few days after Musk blamed the ADL for ad revenue losses, a user of X posted a video of ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt and wrote, “<a href="https://twitter.com/BasedTorba/status/1700193521288765693?s=20">Watch his demonic face</a> recoil when he says the word Christian.” </p>
<h2>Jews and money</h2>
<p>The antisemites attacking the ADL dredged up old stereotypes falsely depicting the Jews as a people interested only in money, malevolently employing their wealth to undermine the political order.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/GoyimNewsNet/status/1700522066363969620?s=20">A maliciously false tweet on Sept. 9, 2023, proved</a> that #BanTheADL was not just about attacking one Jewish organization, which no one could accuse of being “the richest group in the world.” It expanded beyond the ADL and targeted all Jews: “The richest group in the world, who owns 99% of the media, controls the monetary system and started every war on Earth – is portrayed as the *victims* … under assault by ‘antisemitism.’” </p>
<p>Since Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver in 33 C.E. – depicted in <a href="https://www.bible.com/bible/1/MAT.26.14-15.KJV">Matthew 26:14-15</a> – Christians have cast Jews as venally corrupted by money. Judas, the Greek version of Judah, refers to the tribe of ancient Israelites who became known as Jews. Shakespeare propelled that idea forward with the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/a-jewish-reading-of-the-merchant-of-venice">wicked moneylender Shylock</a> in his 16th-century play “The Merchant of Venice.”</p>
<p><a href="https://antisemitism.adl.org/greed/">Shylock’s name has come to signify Jewish greed and villainy</a>, a charge that spills over to other wealthy Jews. Mississippi Gov. Alexander Gallatin McNutt raged in 1841 about the power of the British Baron Rothschild, a member of the international Jewish banking family: “The blood of Judas and of Shylock <a href="https://www.vqronline.org/essay/those-southern-repudiated-bonds">flows in his veins</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A cartoonish image of slyly smiling Jewish bankers, passing dead soldiers while holding their money bags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/547602/original/file-20230911-22847-mgmn6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slyly smiling Jewish bankers, passing through a red sea of dead soldiers while holding their money bags, depicted in this section of ‘The Way Of The Red Sea Is A Way Of Blood,’ a 1944 Italian poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn544978">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Katz Family</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Money buys power</h2>
<p>After Musk’s targeting of the ADL, contemporary antisemites jumped to targeting the Hungarian Holocaust survivor and billionaire philanthropist George Soros, with a <a href="https://twitter.com/bambkb/status/1699770247081865247?s=20">Sept. 7, 2023, post on X quoting</a> Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban saying that Soros “has an ARMY at his service, MONEY, #NGO’s, Universities, research institutions and he OWNS half the bureaucrats in BRUSSELS!!”</p>
<p>Conspiracy theories about Jewish leaders using their money to acquire political power predated the notorious forgery, “<a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a>.” First published in an obscure newspaper in Russia in 1903, it was brought to America by a Russian émigré determined to restore the Romanov monarchy. It described an imagined meeting of Jewish elders who reported on their progress in fomenting revolutions to destroy western Christian civilization and seize control of the world. </p>
<p>In the early 1920s, this version of antisemitism – claiming a world Jewish conspiracy – found a home in America thanks to the publication of “<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-international-jew-quot">The International Jew – The World’s Foremost Problem</a>.” A compilation of the articles that ran for 91 weeks in the newspaper <a href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2013218776/">Dearborn Independent</a>, “The International Jew,” <a href="https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/the-international-jew-the-worlds-foremost-problem">financed and published by Henry Ford</a>, charged that Jews exercised outsize influence in America, that they controlled the world’s finances and that they were the “power behind many a throne.”</p>
<p>The Protocols’ antisemitic fantasies of Jewish leaders plotting to destroy Christianity and control the world also <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">inspired Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf</a>,” written in 1924 while he was in jail for trying to overthrow Germany’s government. There, referring to World War I, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/06/race.usa">Hitler said if</a> “during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas … the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/300153/original/file-20191104-88399-3o10lb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=718&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dearborn Independent front page, May 22, 1920.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2013218776/1920-05-22/ed-1/seq-1/">Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Victim blaming: Jews cause antisemitism</h2>
<p>Elon Musk has tweeted that ADL’s aggression against antisemites posting on X makes them the “<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698615533170557116?s=20">biggest generators of anti-Semitism</a> on this platform.” </p>
<p>Blaming Jewish behavior for triggering antisemitism also has deep roots. The second-century <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Melito-of-Sardis">Greek Bishop Father Melito of Sardis</a> made it clear that the Jews had not only killed Jesus, they had stubbornly <a href="https://ehrmanblog.org/melito-and-arly-christian-anti-judaism/">failed to recognize that he was God</a>. Over the centuries, his words would be used to justify violence against the Jews. </p>
<p>During the Civil War, when Union Gen. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/17/this-day-in-politics-december-17-1063364">Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews</a> from his military district, called the Department of the Tennessee, which stretched from the southern tip of Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, he charged that <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ulysses-s-grant-and-general-orders-no-11.htm">the punishment fit their crime</a>: “The Jews, as a class, [were] violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department.”</p>
<p>In 1890, the editors of the New York Jewish newspaper the American Hebrew were so distressed by the prevalence of antisemitism that they asked more than 50 American leaders about <a href="https://singermanja2.exhibits.library.upenn.edu/items/browse?tags=PREJUDICE+AGAINST+THE+JEW">antisemistism</a>, collected in a volume entitled, “<a href="https://singermanja2.exhibits.library.upenn.edu/items/show/29635">Prejudice against the Jews</a>: Its Nature, Its Causes and Remedies. A Consensus of Opinion by non-Jews.” Rev. Morgan Dix, minister of Episcopal Trinity Church, made it clear in his response that, if only Jews would stop being so obstinate and convert to Christianity, antisemitic persecution would end. </p>
<p>In 1938, on the eve of the Holocaust, when Germany’s Jews were being targeted with antisemitic regulations but had not yet experienced the horror of the death camps, 65% of Americans told the polling firm Gallup that these victims were either <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/musk-antisemitism-anti-defamation-league-twitter/675235/">“partly” or “entirely”</a> responsible for the persecution they faced.</p>
<p>The hashtag #BanTheADL recycles variations on old antisemitic themes. X’s users write nothing new. What is new is the bigger megaphone X gives them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pamela S. Nadell receives funding from National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award to write a book on the
history of American antisemitism.</span></em></p>Antisemitism on X recycles ancient tropes falsely blaming Jewish people for a wide range of social and political ills, and for their own victimization.Pamela S. Nadell, Professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women's & Gender History and Director of the Jewish Studies Program, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2122902023-08-29T16:48:03Z2023-08-29T16:48:03ZX users will need protection after the ‘block’ feature is removed – here’s why businesses are better than people at moderating negative comments<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544766/original/file-20230825-26-4n04v1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C0%2C6966%2C4616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/man-hand-holding-phone-social-networking-2336316901">Evolf / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1692558414105186796?t=EdyRxGsju67txX8rd9bEIg&s=19">recent post</a>, the owner of X, (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, announced his plans for the social media platform to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/19/blocking-feature-to-be-removed-from-former-twitter-platform-x-says-musk">remove its blocking feature</a>, except for in direct messages. </p>
<p>Users are concerned that this change in the platform’s content moderation will lead to a rise in hostile and abusive content, leaving those on the platform unable to protect themselves from its consequences.</p>
<p>It is not only social media users who rely on X’s blocking feature to control the content they see and interact with. Companies and brands with official social media accounts also depend on built-in moderation features. This ensures their fans and followers engage in positive and civil interactions. </p>
<p>Businesses <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0007681317301362">need to be able to encourage constructive discussions</a> on their social media accounts. This helps them build relationships with customers, increase word-of-mouth referrals and improve sales. Hostile online content directed at a company is not helpful to these business goals.</p>
<p>With the “block” feature significantly limited, companies and individual users seeking to control the spread of hostile online content will be forced to resort to other self-moderation. While individual users are sometimes used by companies to help moderate content, <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJM-03-2022-0227/full/html">our recent research</a> shows that official company accounts are much better placed to de-escalate hostile content.</p>
<h2>The importance of blocking</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJM-03-2022-0227/full/html">Research</a> shows that, when social media users are exposed to offensive or abusive content online, it can lead to an array of negative consequences. They may experience mental distress and anxiety similar to that resulting from <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/01/13/the-state-of-online-harassment/">harassment that happens in person</a>. </p>
<p>According to the same work, when presented with hostile or offensive content on social media, users are also likely to experience negative emotions and refrain from interacting with others. For businesses, this can lead to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563215300935">negative attitudes towards the company</a>, that could also spread, and loss of trust in the brand.</p>
<p>Mute, report and block are built in features on most social media platforms. These enable users to restrict content they are exposed to, as well as who can interact with their profile. These features allow users to enjoy the benefits of social media such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0267257X.2017.1302975">following trends, staying informed and interacting with others</a>. They also allow users to avoid being targeted by offensive or unwanted content.</p>
<p>Mute and report are two features that can still be used to moderate hostile content. But these only partly address the issue, since they do not stop harassers from interacting with social media users or stalking their profiles. Blocking is arguably the most effective platform moderation feature. It gives users full control over who and what content they interact with on social media.</p>
<p>Blocking is not only a desirable moderation feature; it is a responsible business practice requirement. To prevent abusive and offensive content, both the App Store and Google Play Store policies state that the “<a href="https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/">ability to block abusive users from the service</a>” and providing “<a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/9876937?hl=en-GB">an in-app system for blocking UGC (user generated content) and users</a>” are necessary conditions for all of the applications they list.</p>
<p>In the UK, the current version of the <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3137">Online Safety Bill</a> will require social media platforms to offer adults appropriate tools to stop offensive or abusive content from reaching them. This is typically enabled by the blocking feature.</p>
<h2>Content moderation going forward</h2>
<p>Reporting and hiding hostile content could be viable moderation options for X going forward. It is, however, unlikely that these will be sufficient on their own. Removing the “block” feature could mean both companies and individual users have to take on increased responsibilities for content moderation.</p>
<p><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1016/j.intmar.2020.05.002?journalCode=jnma">Some research</a> has already demonstrated that official business accounts employ diverse moderation communications – beyond just censorship – in the presence of hostile content. And this can be suitable for improving business followers’ attitudes and its image. </p>
<p>Another way forward would be to rely on individual social media users for moderation, particularly prominent accounts that distinguish their status from others through digital badges such as the “<a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts">blue check</a>” on X and “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/gpa/blog/top-fan-badge">top fan</a>” on Facebook. </p>
<p>This is because <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2022.06.001">research</a> shows that digital badge accounts actively and positively participate in discussions and user-generated content on social media. As a result, these accounts could act as informal and occasional moderators.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJM-03-2022-0227/full/html">Our research</a> looked at whether official business accounts or prominent individual accounts were best at moderating hostile content on social media. In our first experiment, we presented participants with two scenarios. In one, an official business account moderated hostile content. In another, a digital badge user account intervened in a hostile interaction.</p>
<p>We found that companies are rated as the more credible moderators. They were best suited to de-escalate hostile content without the need to hide or remove it, or block the accounts involved.</p>
<p>On social media, it is common for moderation interventions to receive reactions and responses from observing users who support or disagree. The presence of reactions likely influences how the moderator is perceived. To this end, in our second experiment, we studied the appropriateness of the moderator depending on whether the account received positive or negative reactions from other users who had observed the interaction. </p>
<p>Participants were given four scenarios: two in which the moderation intervention by the official business account received positive or negative emojis and two where a digital badge user account moderated the hostile interaction and this received either positive or negative emojis. </p>
<p>Our findings again confirmed that company accounts were seen as most appropriate for hostile content moderation by other social media users. This is the case even when the moderation receives negative reactions from the business account followers. Digital badge user accounts, in contrast, are only seen as credible when their moderation receives positive reactions from those following the company’s social media account.</p>
<p>Whether or not the “block” feature on X is removed, moderating offensive and abusive content should not be left to businesses and individual accounts alone. </p>
<p>Content moderation should be a collective effort between platforms, businesses and individual users. Social media companies have the responsibility to equip their users with design features and tools that allow them to enjoy their platforms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denitsa Dineva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some users fear an uptick in hostile content following the removal of the feature.Denitsa Dineva, Lecturer in Marketing and Strategy, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2118972023-08-22T03:00:42Z2023-08-22T03:00:42ZBeginning of the end: how Elon Musk’s removal of the block function on X could trigger its hellish demise<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543871/original/file-20230822-10860-gezxj8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C9%2C1020%2C1013&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock AI</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Saturday, X (<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-rebrand-x-name-change-elon-musk-what-it-means">formerly Twitter</a>) chairman Elon Musk tweeted he would be removing the microblogging platform’s block function. It would remain intact for direct messages, but would otherwise become obsolete.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1692558414105186796"}"></div></p>
<p>This is the latest in a series of controversial and often confusing moves from Musk since he took ownership of the platform in October 2022. Why does Musk want to block the block function? And what might the consequences be for users, and indeed the future of the platform?</p>
<h2>Why block the ‘block’?</h2>
<p>Simply, the block function on X prevents one user from interacting with another. With the click of a button, the blocker can deny another user the ability to read their tweets or reshare their content. </p>
<p>Musk’s dislike of this feature isn’t new. In June he <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/09/elon-musk-says-twitter-is-going-to-get-rid-of-the-block-feature-enabling-greater-harassment/">remarked</a> that “blocking public posts makes no sense”. He has also <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/18/23837494/elon-musk-twitter-x-remove-blocking">condemned</a> campaigns among users to block subscribers paying for a <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-blue">Twitter Blue</a> subscription (which grants them perks such as a blue tick beside their name and the ability to edit posts).</p>
<p>Musk’s latest pronouncement might be related to his self-styled “<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/elon-musk-free-speech-twitter-will-treat-cisgender-slur">free speech absolutist</a>” persona. Last year, after he announced the deal to purchase X (then Twitter), Musk <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/30/elon-musk-why-44bn-vision-for-twitter-could-fall-apart">remarked</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Accordingly, Musk then <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/11/25/elon-musk-is-restoring-banned-twitter-accounts-heres-why-the-most-controversial-users-were-suspended-and-whos-already-back/?sh=24994f6e385b">restored</a> accounts that had been banned for what previous site moderators classified as dangerous content. These high-profile reinstatements included rapper Kanye West (removed <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/23400851/kanye-west-antisemitism-hitler-praise">for anti-Semitism</a>), congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (removed for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/02/technologym/marjorie-taylor-greene-twitter.html">spreading COVID misinformation</a>) and right-wing personality Dominick McGee (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/27/twitter-csam-dom-lucre-elon-musk/">who posted</a> child abuse material).</p>
<p>In June of this year, Musk <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/musk-twitter-will-respect-eu-content-moderation-rulebook/">publicly said</a> “distasteful” content – including tweets celebrating a migrant boat accident in the Mediterranean Sea in which lives were lost – could remain online as long as they weren’t illegal.</p>
<p>Of course, “blocking” someone on social media isn’t the same as removing their account or deleting content. Blocking is not censorship as this is commonly understood in a social media context; it does not involve, say, <a href="https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/9608/2697">removing</a> users or their content from a platform, or even <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2021.1928259">shadow-banning</a> (whereby a platform reduces the visibility of certain posts among a large number of users). </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1693158236646445105"}"></div></p>
<p>That said, blocking <em>does</em> threaten the pugilistic model of free speech Musk endorses. He has <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1618826074724634625?lang=en">called</a> X the “player versus player” (a kind of duelling mode in online video games) of social media. The likelihood of skirmishes is reduced when “players” can block one another. </p>
<h2>What would the consequences be?</h2>
<p>Perhaps blocking the “block” function would allow lively and heated (but not harmful) debate to flourish on X. Or perhaps not. As Adi Robertson writes in an article for <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/18/23837494/elon-musk-twitter-x-remove-blocking">The Verge</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Blocking provides some very tangible benefits, helping users (especially high-profile ones) do anything from avoiding harassment to simply cleaning up spam in their replies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It can also prevent exposure to hate speech, which <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/technology/twitter-hate-speech.html">has risen</a> since Musk took ownership. <a href="https://counterhate.com/research/twitter-fails-to-act-on-twitter-blue-accounts-tweeting-hate/">According to</a> the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, X “fails to act on 99% of hate posted by Twitter Blue subscribers”. Musk has disputed the findings and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/twitter-accuses-anti-hate-speech-group-over-tens-of-millions-of-dollars-in-lost-advertising">filed a lawsuit</a> against the group (an action that sits uneasily alongside his free-speech absolutism). </p>
<p>The inability to block hate speech could help normalise it and create a hostile environment for people in groups that are often targeted, such as women, LGBTQ+ people, Indigenous people and migrants.</p>
<p>X has long been labelled a “<a href="https://slate.com/technology/2023/08/elon-musk-blocks-x-twitter-explained.html">hellsite</a>” on account of the toxicity that appears on the platform. In a post-block era, it might become even more hellish.</p>
<h2>What happens beyond the block?</h2>
<p>Musk has <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/18/23837494/elon-musk-twitter-x-remove-blocking">suggested</a> “a stronger form of mute” could replace the block function. The mute function currently allows users to avoid seeing the activities of certain other users – but the muted person can still interact with the muter (such as by commenting on their posts) in a way that a blocked person can’t.</p>
<p>What would “a stronger form of mute” look like? Musk hasn’t said. His plans to remove the block and implement this function seem particularly unclear when you consider he has already fired so many of the company’s workers, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/18/23837494/elon-musk-twitter-x-remove-blocking">including technical staff</a>.</p>
<p>Further, both the Apple Store and Google Play have <a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/x-twitter-remove-user-block-apple-google-app-store-ban-1235700310/">guidelines</a> stipulating that platforms hosting user-generated content must allow the blocking of other users. Removing this capacity might lead to the app stores dropping X, which could spell economic death for the platform. </p>
<p>Worded differently, Musk might succeed in “blocking” X from its users permanently. Or he may argue a stronger form of mute fulfils the same requirements as the block function. Either way, the signs point to a strong likelihood of X becoming a particularly nightmarish town square. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-elon-musks-first-week-as-twitter-owner-has-users-flocking-elsewhere-193857">Why Elon Musk’s first week as Twitter owner has users flocking elsewhere</a>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=115&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=115&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=115&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498128/original/file-20221129-22-imtnz0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>The Conversation is commissioning articles by academics across the world who are researching how society is being shaped by our digital interactions with each other. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/social-media-and-society-125586">Read more here</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jay Daniel Thompson receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a collaborative study entitled 'Addressing online hostility in Australian Digital Cultures' (DP230100870). Dr. Thompson is also the recipient of a 2023 Herbert & Valmae Freilich Project ECR Small Grant for a project entitled ‘Digital citizenship and ethical journalistic representations of online hostility directed at women and girls’.</span></em></p>The move could jeopardise users’ safety and might even get the platform banned from the Google and Apple app stores.Jay Daniel Thompson, Lecturer and Program Manager, Professional Communication program, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.