Losing Control of Twitter

NBC News reporter Ben Collins says the quiet part out loud about Elon Musk’s bid.

Daniel Oberhaus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ben Collins, a reporter at NBC News who has claimed the “dystopia beat,” recently said something true and profound. It was an accident and probably won’t happen again.

Collins does not so much cover dystopia as he does run cover for dystopia as a regime stenographer. His job is not to expose the machinations of our very real anti-utopia but to divert attention away from them. That is why his admission that the powers that be use Twitter to steer electoral outcomes and control narratives came as a surprise.

Collins was reacting to news that the world’s richest African American, Elon Musk, may acquire Twitter after all at the originally agreed-on price of $44 billion. That vision of the future sent a chill down Collins’ spine. He tweeted:

For those of you asking: Yes, I do think this site can and will change pretty dramatically if Musk gets full control over it.

No, there is no immediate replacement.

If it gets done early enough, based on the people he’s aligned with, yes, it could actually affect midterms.

But if a change in ownership could “actually affect midterms,” then that must mean Twitter already can and does affect elections. At present, it just happens in a way Collins finds agreeable.