Twitter’s problem is short form content. And Elon doesn’t get it.

Twitter and all social media platforms have always had one problem. We can theorize and place the blame on a lot of factors.

But the one thing I am sure about is that, unlike what Elon thinks, the problems aren’t really engineering problems.

It is political.

Political polarization existed long before social media. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook only helped amplify it on a global scale. To understand how social media platforms have made political polarization worse, you need to understand the problem with short-form content.

Twitter, from a tech standpoint, is a really simple platform. The problem started when executives started to incentivize short-form content (like reels, Whatsapp forwards, stories and short informational videos on Youtube), which has had the side effect of people being accustomed to incomplete information.

And once that was done, people started building their echo chambers where people follow, read and listen only to the information that they already agree with. That led people to get addicted to politicians and reporters who would happily promote half-truths to confirm existing biases and satisfy their audience, leading to more polarization.

I understand that news reporting and informational content have always been partisan. But platforms like Twitter have pushed partisan reporting too far because now people modify or project information to ensure that their audience can align with it. This is exactly what politicians have done for a century, but random people on Twitter gaining traction for doing the same? That’s new.

When people used to read newspapers and encyclopedias or any long-form content, they were forced to read the information that would sometimes challenge people’s internal biases. Social media cut down our newspaper time, making us prioritize short-form content and information only from the people whom we already agree with, which in turn leads to the same political polarization that I mentioned above.

So enemy #1 is political polarization, enemy #2 is our addiction to short-form content and corporations who’ve chosen to exploit it.

Enemy number #3 is Artificial Intelligence(AI) algorithms that push content that you are more likely to read and press the like button for. And AI algorithms are also responsible for targeted advertising which helps politicians and political party IT wings to push and promote polarizing content and fake news.

Elon Musk is an engineer. A great one to be honest. The engineer in him cannot understand the ‘enemies’ that he has to tackle.

So unlike what Elon believes, pushing AI tools to remove bots or moderate content isn’t going to work. Firstly, modern AI is built on user-generated data. Any AI that you build with user-generated data is going to hold the biases that people like me, you and Elon already internalize.

Secondly, people need to come out of their echo chambers to give time to read long-form content and content that they fundamentally disagree with. When people start prioritizing long-form content, these social media platforms won’t be able to push ads the way they do now.

Elon Musk won’t admit it, but he has leveraged a lot to buy Twitter at a very very overvalued valuation and to pay all the money back, he needs to make profits with Twitter. When people start prioritizing long-form content, Elon is going to lose advertiser revenue and everything will go downhill. Elon has already warned that Twitter could go bankrupt and if it does, it is solely on Elon.

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, he made it sound like the solution to free speech is straight forward and it is the Tech and Media elites that are purposefully blocking efforts in order to maintain their status quo. But now that he owns Twitter, as he keeps implementing and rolling back his policies, it is evident that Elon had no clue about the true problems of Twitter.

Trevor Noah made an excellent comparison. He called Musk’s comments as being similar to the way we watch sports. When we watch sports, we keep shouting at the TV about how the players should play. But the hard thing about sports is being on the field and players don’t get the same bird’s eye view that managers or coaches or us audiences do.

Elon Musk didn’t care too much about understanding the underlying sociological and political problems like polarization that were amplified by social media platforms, especially Twitter. He continues to project that rhetoric like free speech and “citizen journalism” can solve the problem with social media.

Social media requires fixing. AI algorithms are responsible for amplifying many problems that we as a society face. To tackle this, we need to actively find political solutions to tackle polarization. That’s the real challenge. Billionaires like Elon Musk can’t solve the underlying problems without giving time to understand them first.