Government by Twitter Poll
Democracy dies in noise.
Elon Musk wants to end day-light savings time. I agree. No point in rehashing all the reasons for and against: as a concept, DST is a bad idea in the 21st century. Agreed.1
Musk even went so far as to endorse a poll on his personal social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Why would anyone find fault with this? As a simple exercise of finding what the majority of people who connect with you either directly or through a few degrees of separation think on a particular topic, Twitter polls can be fun. However, they should not be a way to set governmental policy.
Only the most enfeebled or corrupt mind would argue that polls within any social media platform can be used to portray the general opinions of U.S. Citizens (ie. “The People”).2 Yet, these polls can put a patina of democratic respectability on autocratic and even tyrannical decisions.
So, is Musk’s plan to convince Trump to govern by Twitter poll?
Your poll meets their approval.
(ie. They knows the results will agree with what they want to do or they just plant it themselves).Musk or Trump sky-dives into the comments with an, “interesting…”
100ks of Twitter users vote.
They proclaim “the People Have Spoken!”.
This is a win-win for Musk. First it solidifies him as “co-president” since he is legally unable to actual be President3 or be in line to be president. More importantly, as it becomes clear that policy is being set by the results of these polls, you will see people swarm back to Twitter in order to feel as if they have some voice in our democracy since voting at the polls seems to do no good. Twitter will become the “Village Square” again and Musk will reap the literal profits.
How far could this go? My darkest fears sound like mad ravings right now, but less so every day. As MAGA replaces the U.S.’s imperfect but salvageable democracy with an ersatz-democracy of meaningless polls, people may actually feel as if they have more voice in government not realizing they are nothing more than the rubber stamp for technocrats.
I should note that I agree with Musk on many priorities — getting off carbon fuels and becoming a multi-planet species come to mind. Yet how we do those things is as important as doing them. The trajectory we set now will have a huge influence on whether we as a species languish or flourish in the future. I have no confidence in how Musk is trying to make these things happen that will lead to humanity flourishing.
I won’t argue this point because if it’s not obvious to you, no amount of explaining will help.
Currently.
One obvious problem is that people who tend to disagree with Musk and Trump are more likely to have (1) left Twitter/X, or at least (2) not follow Musk on Twitter/X, and therefore their opinions do not get counted.