The game is now played through social media, which has proven to be the most powerful tool of influence.
Elon Musk reigns supreme, extending his tentacles everywhere – sometimes directly (as with his call to replace the British Prime Minister) and other times indirectly, subtly and invisibly. The goal: profit, the intoxication of power, or both.
The outcome remains unknown. The only certainty is that Francis Fukuyama and those who believed the end of the Cold War marked “the end of history” have been proven wrong.
History is being written again and again, with new protagonists and new means. As for the pawns – all of us – no matter how much we’ve evolved as a species, we’ll always fall into the trap of seeking idols to follow.
Is there a way to resist, a way to escape? In her piece for Athens Voice, Soti Triantafyllou calls on us to leave Elon Musk’s X platform and boycott Musk, his products, and his ideology.
“We’re living through an age of villains, which social media helped create: the volcano of opinions, manipulation, brainwashing, and the triumph of the most outrageous have favoured the concentration of power in the hands of unsuitable individuals and supercharged plutocracy. Whether or not we understand the mechanisms by which social media erodes democracy, perhaps we can agree on something simple: Musk used X to amplify far-right posts, suppress counterarguments, and establish himself as a leading figure in American and international politics”.
She also sees the case of X and Musk as an opportunity to revive the discussion about social media and its power to violate privacy, spread misinformation, intensify polarisation and hatred, and undermine democratic processes.
“While publicly expressing poorly crafted conspiracy theories falls under freedom of speech, amplifying them deafeningly and convincing billions of people with a giant digital megaphone isn’t freedom of speech – it’s manipulation,” she argues.
Taking a different view in Protagon, Antonis Panoutsos compares today with the era he grew up in, when even books, songs and films were censored.
Reflecting on Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to remove the filters that controlled Facebook posts (following Musk’s example), he argues that we don’t need political correctness gurus to teach us how to speak, what to like, or what to believe.
