Elon Musk became the world’s richest man Tuesday, immediately following civil unrest from pro-Trump mobs at the US Capitol on Monday. To blame for the chaos, claims Musk, is Facebook.
On Wednesday, the Tesla CEO and billionaire entrepreneur tweeted a meme suggesting that Facebook lead to the shameful events which took place at the US Capitol on Tuesday (via TechCrunch).
The caption of the meme “this is called the domino effect,” containing a photo depicting Facebook’s beginnings as a website to rate women on campus as a small domino, leading to increasingly larger dominos, and ultimately ending with a Mark Leibovich tweet saying “The Capitol seems to be under the control of a man in a viking hat.”
While the meme was quite the roasting on Facebook, especially in light of its spread of misinformation, the tweet also comes after a series of misinformed claims from Musk, himself, about COVID-19, political events in Bolivia, gender controversies, and more.
Use Signal
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Still, who can disagree with Musk on his point? Many social media researchers have made similarly pointed remarks about Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, especially in regards to the app’s effectiveness as a tool for dividing people, with direct correlations to dampened mental health.
This is called the domino effect pic.twitter.com/qpbEW54RvM
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2021
Musk also recommended that people should switch to Signal from Facebook and affiliated apps like Instagram and Whatsapp. Signal features encrypted messaging by default, and also offers added settings for increased security, like the “disappearing messages” feature – which was recently added to Instagram/Facebook Messenger too.
In any case, social media is here to stay, and while Facebook has been both a victim to and proponent of misinformation campaigns, these effects are unfortunately difficult to navigate on any social platform – as we can see from both Musk’s own Twitter account, and the use of Twitter by Donald Trump to incite Tuesday’s events.
