The (figurative) cage match between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is on
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Mark Zuckerberg doesn't tweet. So it was notable when he posted one on Wednesday night — his first in 11 years — not long after Threads, his new Twitter rival, launched.
His choice of meme — two Spidermen pointing at each other — offered plenty to interpret. It could be seen as a nod toward the debut of what is essentially a Twitter clone. It could be seen as him winking at the talk of a cage match between him and Elon Musk — while also acknowledging how Musk's work at Twitter has influenced his own thinking about how to run a tech company.
There is also a broader, simpler way to see the meme: Two titans of tech with plenty of similarities who now find themselves in the tech equivalent of hand-to-hand combat.
"We believe this ongoing beef between Zuckerberg and Musk is getting nastier with the Meta Threads launch," Dan Ives, a managing director and senior equity research analyst covering the technology sector at Wedbush Securities, a wealth management and financial services company, said in an email. "Zuckerberg sees blood in the water for Twitter and is now looking to gain market share out of the gates with the Threads launch."
It's a situation that has been brewing for about five years. Zuckerberg and Musk were once in very different businesses — social media versus cars and rockets — and they also occupied very different places in the public discourse.
Questions about Facebook's privacy practices and recommendation systems shifted Zuckerberg's image from that a boyish Harvard business prodigy to the face of growing concern about the unbridled growth of social media and what some called surveillance capitalism.
Musk, meanwhile, was still drawing Tony Stark-as-Iron Man comparisons. Tesla was blazing a path to a greener future, and SpaceX was reinvigorating dreams of putting humans on Mars or even beyond. Oh, and he called Facebook "lame."
That dynamic would begin to shift as their rivarly became more direct, with Musk's acquisition of Twitter proving to be a major turning point.
Growing scrutiny of Musk's business practices combined with his embrace of conservative politicians and politics soured Musk among some of his supporters — and helped him amass a still-growing base of fans on the right.
Musk and others on the right, meanwhile, have sought to paint Zuckerberg as a quiet leftist who swung the election for Joe Biden with hundreds of millions of dollars in donations. The Federal Election Commission unanimously dismissed a complaint about election administration grants from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, that found "no reason to believe" there was any wrongdoing.
More recently, Musk has openly embraced many of the modern and sometimes fringe causes of the online far right. Zuckerberg has stayed relatively apolitical.
"Zuck and Musk have kind of become proxies for a lot of civic, political, social issues," said Brooke Erin Duffy, an associate professor of communication at Cornell University who studies social media. "And I feel like the conversations that I've seen, it's been in some ways that Zuckerberg and Meta are the lesser of two evils."
Meta's Threads becomes most rapidly downloaded app in history
And though an actual cage match fight may not actually happen, what might have been more of a personal rivalry turned undoubtedly professional once Musk bought Twitter.
Twitter seems to agree. A lawyer for Musk sent a cease-and-desist letter to Zuckerberg dated Wednesday alleging that Meta "has engaged in the systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property" and that the company hired former Twitter employees to build Threads. A Facebook spokesperson denied that any Facebook engineers working on Threads previously worked at Twitter.
Business tends to breed rivalries, and tech has been no different. The well-documented relationship between Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates featured a series of ups and downs. Gates and Jobs did business together before becoming fierce critics of each other, though they would also occasionally intersperse a compliment or two.
Zuckerberg's recent comments on Lex Fridman's podcast were the closest either Zuckerberg or Musk have come to expressing anything resembling admiration, primarily around making Twitter "leaner." Both Twitter and Facebook have had multiple rounds of layoffs.
Zuckerberg might be more apt to offer kind words to Musk considering the dynamics between them. Musk's deal to buy Twitter and subsequent management have fueled questions about the future of the platform.
But the business stakes for both of them don't appear to be that high.
William Cohan, a journalist and former investment banker, recently wrote for the media outlet Puck that there's a way Musk loses control of Twitter altogether if the people who hold the company's debt put the company into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding.
But Cohan noted in a phone interview that even with Twitter's struggles, Musk's net worth has grown sharply in 2023. Tesla stock, which accounts for much of Musk's riches, is up 150% this year.
Meta has had its own ups and downs, and while Threads is a hit, it's still a small part of its broad array of businesses. Its shares are up about 134% this year, and the company is worth about $748 billion.
So what are the stakes? Maybe it's more about legacy. Though Zuckerberg's public persona hasn't changed considerably in recent years, Musk's has. And so without Zuckerberg doing much, some people suddenly find themselves rooting for him.
"Here's the ultimate irony: Elon Musk has made Mark Zuckerberg into a quasi-sympathetic figure," Cohan said.
Cage or not, the fight is on.
Tags
Who is online
515 visitors
With any luck neither one will emerge alive.
One is a person who has long since used his parent's money to do the only important thing he will do and is just an annoying asshole at this point. The other is a guy who created something that has done an immense amount of damage to our country and humanity as a whole.
The only win is that no one walks out of that cage.
Threads isn't available in Europe. It collects an indecent amount of user data. Even medical data, as absurd as that is. So the EU Commission has blocked its introduction until it spies less on users.
A good thing I imagine.
I think so.
Twitter under Musk will be the marketplace of ideas and Instagram Threads will be the final refuge for the left.
In the meantime the SCOTUS fights for the 1st Amendment.
Whenever I read one of your predictions, I know a restful night's sleep is on the calendar.
I'm thinking of organizing them into "Quatraines."
I'm putting them in "Latrines".
Lol! Twitter has NEVER been that and will NEVER be that. Any space where any random dipshit can throw out whatever stupid thought passes through their head is not a "marketplace of ideas", its just somewhere for people to say shit and be heard, and then trolled. This site is exactly that as well. I just come here for entertainment, never for any real or serious discussion because I know it really isn't going to be found. Sure there are a few users, but for the most part its just a slap fight that amuses me for a little while.
The good, the bad and the ugly all get to have a say.
You know what else gets a say?
The truth (courtesy of the New York Post)
Yawn, okay Vic. Enjoy your "marketplace of ideas" or whatever the fuck you are calling social media now.
In context, Vic is correct.
Since Musk took over twitter, leftists have had a MAJOR meltdown that their echo chamber had changed to where free speech and exchange of ideas are actually allowed now.
Everyone knows Zuckerburg is a far leftist and this Threads thing will be the new censor happy echo chamber the left so demands.
Ta ta.
A "Cage Match"?
It has be recently revealed that Fuckerberg received his Meta belt during the pandemic
Dana White has date in mind for Elon Musk vs. Mark Zuckerberg, confident commissions will sanction fight
Dana White seems quite serious about booking a fight between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and it appears the UFC president already has a date in mind for the billionaire bash.
A challenge issued on social media between Musk, the owner of Twitter, and Meta CEO Zuckerberg, eventually exploded into a full-blown spectacle, with the social media titans reportedly both actually interested in throwing down.
Zuckerberg has become a Brazilian jiu-jitsu enthusiast, training under Dave Camarillo and entering grappling competitions. Musk, meanwhile, recently spent time working out with UFC legend Georges St-Pierre, as well as St-Pierre’s longtime grappling coach, John Danaher.
White previously said he spoke to Musk and Zuckerberg about booking the fight, and the promotion went so far as to sell t-shirts hyping the matchup in the UFC store .
While he wasn’t ready to reveal a date just yet, White definitely has a timeline in mind for the Musk vs. Zuckerberg clash.
“100 percent [they want to fight in the UFC],” White told TSN on Thursday. “I do [have a date in mind], I’ll announce it when we’re ready. It won’t be UFC 300.”
UFC 300, which is expected to take place in Las Vegas in early 2024, will serve as one of the marquee cards for the organization next year.
As far as any potential hurdles to clear, including Musk having a significant size advantage over Zuckerberg, White doesn’t seem all that concerned. The same goes for sanctioning the fight. Despite Musk, 51, and Zuckerberg, 39, having no prior combat sports experience, White knows that money talks – and that matchup would earn astronomical profits, benefitting the city and state where it happens.
“Whoever says no, every other state and country will say yes,” White said with confidence. “A billion dollars in revenue, this fight.”