Is Twitter under Elon Musk a trojan horse for tyranny?

Elon's praise of WeChat is concerning since he went out of his way to buy Twitter under the guise of enabling free speech on the platform. Is it a bait and switch?

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When it comes to choosing our overlords, what variety is best? Do we want China/North Korea style dictators who lock us in a tight framework that punishes deviance from the state-mandated behaviors? Or do we want a seemingly benevolent leader who espouses the protection of rights in public, but quietly curtails them in private, leading to a system that gaslights you into thinking you’re free?

I personally choose neither, though I believe Elon Musk has some explaining to do when it comes to why he wants to outright emulate WeChat, a jack-of-all-trades social media app that also acts as a mobile payment processor. WeChat serves as an important content filter to stifle free speech and prevent ideas and facts deemed ‘problematic’ by the Chinese Communist Party.

We must question Musk’s intent behind his words in the video below just so we can dismiss the idea that his plan is to usher in a social credit system here in the United States via using Twitter as a trojan horse to upend the bill of rights entirely by turning Twitter into the ‘WeChat of the west’ and working in concert with the government in an unholy fascist marriage to police all thought in exchange for the ability to transact in society. Perhaps that’s hyperbolic, but in the world we live in with the strides toward overt tyranny that we’ve taken, it fits.

A proverbial ‘window to the world’ for Chinese citizens, WeChat is beholden to all the 1984-style restrictions imposed by the Great Firewall - a moniker given to the censorship program facilitated through a variety of regulations, applications, and services in China to make sure the average Chinese citizen is blissfully unaware of any information the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t want them to have. Like knowledge of the Tiananmen Square massacre, for instance.

WeChat also seems to represent a portion of the dream Musk had when it came to his time working on PayPal, a revival of an older plan, if you will. It’s not far-fetched to believe he is very much holding on to that original goal he had with PayPal by revolutionizing financial transactions.

For those who are unaware of Musk’s history in the payment processing sector, he was one of the founding members of PayPal. That pedigree in and of itself shouldn’t seem too alarming since a lot of the spookier aspects of PayPal we see now occurred long after he had left the company, such as levying a $2,500 fine against users for engaging in wrongthink. Still, it’s something to think about. Especially given his previously-displayed admiration for how WeChat operates.

Simply put, we must ask questions, examine facts, and remain vigilant at all times. The price for liberty is eternal vigilance, and at any given moment there are malevolent entities out there scheming up new ways to incrementally tighten the leash on us all.

As Americans, we should instinctively reject anything that resembles China’s systems because of how those systems seem to worm their way into every aspect of one’s life in order to control it. One of these things is China’s continued testing of a Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC.

And for future reference, any time you see ‘CBDC’ you should immediately be suspicious, because that is the harbinger of a cashless society. I shouldn’t have to say why that is so dangerous, but I will.

The danger I see from CBDCs is that it places absolute power and control over all buying and selling directly under government authority. That essentially places no restrictions whatsoever on how much control government can exert over your life. Think you’re going to sell that old bicycle to a friend? Not without Uncle Sam’s blessing you’re not. And you better damn well believe that the IRS is going to take the government’s share of the proceeds.

Imagine a world where you’re just living your life, when you realize you need to buy groceries. You go to the store and get the things you need, as you normally would. You go to pay for your groceries, as you normally would. But the night before, you had a few too many drinks and you posted something on Twitter that was deemed ‘inflammatory rhetoric' against the government’. Your payment for your groceries is declined and you’re on a timeout from being able to buy food until you delete your inflammatory tweet. You cannot simply reach for whatever cash you have on hand to remedy the situation in the short term because physical cash no longer exists. Your ability to buy and sell is tied to Twitter and the CBDC that it uses to transact.

I know, I know — this is very chicken little of me. Still, the video above of Elon Musk praising WeChat and basically admitting that his plan is to copy WeChat and turn Twitter into the WeChat of the west has given me pause. It makes me question Musk’s commitment to a world where ideas can be openly discussed and dissected, no matter whose idea it was. You can’t do that in a society with an app that will dock you for speaking your mind.

The number one goal we should have as a society going forward is increasing decentralization of everything. Without a guiding hand, controlling public sentiment will be impossible, and that’s a good thing. Will that breed conflict? Sure. Free-thinking individuals tend to disagree a lot more often than they agree. But I don’t believe building a hivemind collective in the image esteemed by the world’s richest man is the way forward.

And yes, I have trust issues. Trusting people is the surest way for them to let you down.

Solutions to our problems come from encouraging thought, not stifling it.