Elon Musk has finally taken Twitter.

Seizing the memes of production. Monday, an open letter signed by an unknown number of Twitter employees “leaked” to TIME. With Elon’s Friday legal deadline for the Twitter deal fast approaching, his might-be future employees had a list of demands: 1) you shall respect us, 2) you shall fire no one, and 3) you shall let us work from home. Cartoonishly divorced from reality in the familiar, entertaining, almost comforting manner America has come to expect from the most privileged employees in human history, the letter was also an interesting tell. Why were these employees nervous? The months-long clusterfuck Twitter deal couldn’t possibly be happening.

Could it?

The rumors started swirling Tuesday night, and on Wednesday a freshly-swole Elon entered Twitter HQ carrying, for some reason, a giant sink. Thursday morning, he shared his thoughts on Twitter’s importance, along with his desires for the platform, in a statement addressed to the company’s advertisers. And by Thursday evening, Vijaya Gadde — the legal head and chief censor credited with the deplatforming of President Trump — was fired. It was further reported CEO Parag Agrawal had left the building, and would not be returning. It’s done. Elon Musk, the billionaire shitposting god of tech, has taken Twitter private.

The reaction has been colorful.

Leading up to the final hour, the Information declared Elon’s management style a “threat to global democracy.” The sentiment has since been echoed throughout the pro-censorship press. Elsewhere, we are told Twitter will now become a breeding ground for fascism (the New Republic). Elon buying Twitter is a threat to national security (Business Insider). Elon, a “geopolitical chaos agent” (the New York Times) is just in general a threat to national security (the Washington Post).

Media histrionics center almost entirely on the concept of “free speech,” the sacred American value Elon likes, and large swaths of the American political left now equate with Adolf Hitler. Arguments against “free speech absolutism,” our new term for what is literally just free speech, couch themselves inside a feigned concern over “misinformation,” a term defined by censors to exclude all opinions and questions unpopular with the authoritarian left, and “hate speech,” a term with no coherent definition at all. But the thing the pro-censorship press is really mad about — the only thing this has ever been about — is Elon’s promise to end political censorship, with especially his promise to release the company’s political prisoners from digital jail. And there, in the black bowels of internet purgatory, there is no figure more terrifying to the panicked imaginings of Brooklyn-based vegans than Donald Trump.

The belief, I think, is really this: Americans, if left to freely read the former president’s tweets, will like them, vote the man back into office because of them, and usher in a period of actual fascism. Given stakes this high, the concentrated information war of the last several months should come as no surprise. But it has been an information war, and in an information war you can’t trust anything beyond desired outcomes. In this case, the pro-censorship press doesn’t want Elon to liberate the platform. Therefore, almost everything these people have predicted about Twitter has been apocalyptic — for the company, for the country, for the world. It is all, of course, complete bullshit.

I’ve found one interesting approach to figuring out what Elon intends to do is to simply read the things he’s said concerning what he intends to do. Most recently, in his letter to the advertisers:

The key bit:

“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”

When pressed, this is a position Elon has stated for many years. But also? Elon believes the platform can’t be a “free-for-all hellscape.” Specifically, as stated plainly for many months now, illegal content will not be allowed. Elon has further suggested Twitter’s hate speech policy will remain basically intact.

Now what about the managerial nuts and bolts? At this point, it’s pretty clear a lot of Twitter employees — perhaps even a majority — are about to be fired.

The number “75%” has been brandied about, an artifact from joking texts released in litigation. But Elon has already said the culling won’t be that high. Twitter management (the very top of which appears to be the first cut), much like management teams throughout the industry, was already planning a gnarly round of layoffs before Elon took over. Their target, and likely the first target now, are the company’s underperformers. The prospect of such a gutting has naturally come as a shock to many at the company.

Unfortunately for the poet of this beautiful viral tweet above, the notion the employee of a company should be able to attack her boss in public after making jokey tweets about how little she works is exactly the kind of privilege that proves a purge necessary. With no shortage of people already at the company excited to work with Elon, the departure of political zealots and lazy malcontents would not even matter were Elon incapable of recruiting. But when it comes to recruiting, Elon is uniquely well-positioned. Among technologists, this is a man perceived as the very best the industry has to offer. In the months to come, he’ll attract a flood of smart, new people. They will bring ideas, and they will bring enthusiasm.

Out of the gate, my sense is Elon will alter mandates on content moderation, dramatically rolling back political censorship, and reinstating Trump. He will maintain most rules concerning the nebulously ambiguous “hate speech,” and he will obviously maintain the prohibition on illegal content, which is where I expect the trust and safety team to henceforth be primarily focused. I expect special treatment for the “misinformation experts” to vanish. I’m hoping for trending topics and curated Twitter moments to vanish. I expect “fact checking” partnerships, which have only ever amplified state propagandists, to vanish.

If we’re lucky — and I really think we may be — we’ll finally learn the truth about shadow-banning, and the far more important culture surrounding the amplification of favored politics and sources. In terms of product development, there will be endless experimentation, but it will most likely be focused on messaging and payments (good coverage from the NYT on this). Then, Elon will definitely go after the bots.

This will be a full-time job. As Elon currently has several full-time jobs, I imagine he’ll appoint a new chief to help him run the company, if not assume the role of CEO itself. That man will probably not be Jason Calacanis. But who knows! Elon has a well-documented sense of whimsy.

Twitter’s future is bright. But Elon’s future? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried for the guy.

With the One Party’s decentralized censorship apparatus so publicly challenged, authoritarians in the press will go to war. Everything Elon does will be considered Nazi-adjacent, and everything awful that’s said on the platform will be amplified by the press, and credited to its new management. Nothing at the company has actually changed, and this is already happening.

Here, a popular pro-censorship trans activist credits the sort of language that is presently not allowed on Twitter, and that Elon has indicated he will not allow on Twitter, to Elon’s leadership. This was retweeted by Ben Collins, NBC’s chief “misinformation expert.” Ironic? Not really. None of this is about truth, or safety. This is only, and has only ever been, about power.

The targeting of Elon will be profound. Aggrieved ex-employees will provide a source for stories, any number of them fabricated, that will capture our imagination for months to come. Distant relatives will be found and weaponized, with every detail of the man’s life rooted out and turned against him. Then, his companies will be targeted — not Twitter, but the companies that made him who he is today.

The targeting will come at first in suggestive tones from op-ed columnists, and slowly coalesce into a kind of meme in Washington. Expect NASA to be interrogated on its work with SpaceX. Expect a push from Democrats specifically to advance the interests of older auto manufactures at the expense of Tesla. Expect congressional hearings. Elon’s enemies will be called to testify before Congress as “experts.” Every business interest he holds will be attacked, every ounce of good will he has garnered over the course of his career will be challenged.

The problem is Elon wants to be liked. The man has spent his entire life attempting to radically improve the world, with efforts to mitigate ex-risk on our single planet by advancing humanity to the status of multi-planetary. With efforts to mainstream solar and electric vehicles, and combat global warming. With efforts to stem AI risk. With efforts to reimagine critical public infrastructure. With efforts to guarantee global internet access despite the furor such gestures evoke from authoritarian governments abroad. And now with efforts to guarantee a freedom of political speech at home.

This is a man who unfortunately — for his own well-being — clearly wants to be seen as a good person. This insecurity is therefore precisely the tender spot targeted, and Elon has already indicated the relentless hatred sowed by the press has affected him.

Still, he did it.

The authoritarian culture that was born after Trump’s election and metastasized after Covid has captured almost every major institution in the country, and every major technology company. But there is now at least one space that exists beyond the influence of the One Party. The rebels have stormed the radio tower. Authoritarianism is still ascendant, but here’s a glimmer of hope for weirdos and skeptics.

Oh, and one more thing. All of the worst people on the internet are absolutely miserable today. It’s petty as hell, but you really love to see it.

Thank you, Elon.

-SOLANA