Musk and the Polarization Narrative

Elon Musk put out this cartoon in a tweet about a year back

His political affiliation so far has been termed Centre-right while he claims himself as ‘politically moderate. The above drawing is his commentary on the idea that people’s political perspective is being pushed to the extremities in the far recent times.

Interestingly, a similar idea was discussed in the 2020 Netflix Documentary - The Social Dilemma, which argues that the various content curation algorithms of Social media platforms has created a situation where a user views/consumes content that are suitable to his/her perspective only and is blocked from understanding counter arguments. The documentary further presses that this has led to an inability amongst people to find common ground even for causes that are mutually beneficial in nature.

While all of the above is with respect to the US, One could also see a similar political (or ideological) climate being created in India. Are political extremities inhibiting us from coming together and working for common good ?

To supplement this theory, there has actually been instances in India where the polarized political camps where able to shed their differences at times to work for the common good of India. One such was the “recessed deterrence” Nuclear policy adopted by former PM P. V. Narasimha Rao with mutual agreement from Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was the then opposition leader.

It is a big question mark to whether today’s parties would put the interests of the Nation at first and deal issues with maturity.

Coming back to Twitter. For the past few week, users have been seeing tweets on their timeline from accounts they don’t even follow. While a majority of users are complaining about this, quite a few have mentioned that it is actually interesting to read a different perspective and thought processes on their timeline than the one they are usually accustomed to.

By relation with previous, tweet it makes one wonder whether this is Elon’s way of exposing us to alternate perspectives and counter arguments so that the polarization between left and right is reduced ?

Is it a bug or a feature ?