Elon musk

Starting a Threads account feels like adultery

As I hit the pillow, up popped a notification: ‘Threads’, Meta’s new offering, is available to download. My heart thumped – I’ve been excited about this launch since I first heard of it. As a frustrated influencer, and somebody who couldn’t care less what Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk are doing to each other, I don’t care about the politics. I just thought Threads could be just right for me. And social media is all about me, me, me, obviously.  It’s easy to take a photograph of myself. I do it a lot. But Twitter is a different kind of vanity – for people who aren’t necessarily obsessed with images. That’s

Why tech bros love fighting

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the maaaiiin event of the eeevening. In the red corner, fighting out of Boca Chica, Texas, Eeeeelon ‘the Execuuutioner’ MUUUSK! And his opponent, in the blue corner, fighting out of Palo Alto, California, Maaaark ‘The Madman’ ZUCKERBEEERG!  Sadly, we might never get the fight between Elon Musk of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Musk has said that he would be ‘up for a cage fight’ with Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg then responded simply: ‘Send me location.’ The internet erupted. UFC legend Georges St-Pierre offered to train Musk while UFC heavyweight champion Jon Jones announced that he would be ‘Team Zuck’. Bookmakers started taking bets.  It might seem a bit embarrassing for a

The end of the Silicon Valley dream

It is difficult, given what Silicon Valley has become, to convey exactly what it was like in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was a remarkable centre of technology, but also the embodiment of the spirit of capitalism at its very best, as epitomised by garage start-ups like Apple. Greed, of course, is always a human motivation, but the early Valley culture was created by entrepreneurial outsiders who genuinely wanted to make the world better. In the early days of the tech revolution, some watchers imagined an almost utopian, communitarian society on the horizon. In 1972, the California writer and zeitgeist diagnostician Stewart Brand predicted in Rolling Stone that when computers became widely

Elon Musk is right about BBC funding

The BBC has today been using its various news platforms to protest against being described as ‘government funded’ by Twitter. It has instructed Twitter to remove this insult ‘as soon as possible’ and its journalistic contacts have found a direct link to Elon Musk himself who, we are told, is a ‘fan’ of the BBC. So perhaps a quiet word with the right person in power can overcome this little hiccup. Radio Four even had a ‘debate’ which just featured one interviewee: Mary Hockaday, a former BBC executive. ‘As a BBC journalist, I care about accuracy,’ she said, ‘the simple fact is that to describe on Twitter the BBC as

What are the best alternatives to Twitter?

From the moment Elon Musk suggested buying Twitter, users began threatening to leave – and the Tesla kingpin’s erratic behaviour since he took over hasn’t exactly helped his case, with thousands of workers laid off and hundreds more resigning. The MIT Technology Review estimates that more than a million Twitter users have jumped ship since Musk took the reins. Today the social network is launching a revamped version of Twitter Blue, its paid-for verification system, after a previous attempt last month was marred by a flood of imposters and fake accounts. So for those who decide not to stick around to see how this one turns out, what alternatives are