This article is reprinted from Mercator.

Elon Musk has gone from being a classic Valley guy and space nerd to being a hot topic as he seeks to rationalize and streamline what may be the biggest and most expensive bureaucracy in history, the US civil service.

But before that, he bought Twitter (and probably overpaid for it). But he wanted it for a long-term reason: with the help of independent journalists, he dumped the censorship files out the boardroom window. That was how many of us first discovered the extent to which the White House was telling Silicon Valley what it could and couldn’t publish. Further developments soon followed in other social media. Even Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg joined the “We’re sorry” parade.

But the story behind this story is twofold: Social media have become much more important, relative to traditional news media — print, radio, and TV. And we are only beginning to grasp the profound implications of that.

And second, government is quite serious about its efforts to get control of social media, probably relying on two assumptions: that they are not explicitly protected by the principles that protect “freedom of the press” and that they are widely perceived as sources of hate and disinformation.

Let’s look at all these assumptions and at Musk’s proposal for a new approach to media — and why it may be inevitable.

Social media have become much more important

Last September, prominent Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz commented on an uproar between mainstream media figures and the organizers of the US Democratic Party convention in August. Two hundred internet-based “content creators” got VIP treatment at the Convention, compared to legacy media and the latter were not happy campers about it:

The way creators are being mocked and belittled by so-called “established” journalists and observers online is nothing short of disgraceful. The entitlement, the arrogance, and the gatekeeping is appalling. While the viciousness of these attacks is upsetting, the backlash is not surprising. This is the same kind of protectionist behavior that has been happening in the media world for decades, as many invested in institutional power structures lash out amidst their dwindling influence. (I wrote about this last year for WaPo and extensively in my book). From the first blogger to receive White House press credentials in 2005, to fashion influencers being seated front row at Dolce & Gabbana in 2009, to this recent convention, creators have been infiltrating and upending traditional media structures for nearly 25 years.

The reality is that the influencers were simply more, well, influential. The Democrats could not afford to ignore that fact. Tellingly, Lorenz herself has since left the Post and started her own Substack, User Mag.

Then shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a similar uproar unfolded, this time at the White House. New Republican staff upended the traditional seating order and privileges enjoyed by big legacy media in favour of a more open system where smaller media, bloggers and influencers get to ask questions too.

In short, the powers that be on both sides of the political divide recognized that the legacy media were no longer anything like the exclusive source of trusted information they once were.

But first government tried getting control

Government efforts to control social media are a big story, playing out in Brazil and France, for example. But let’s stick with the United States for now. In a recent interview at the New York Times, Silicon Valley pioneer Marc Andreessen told Ross Douthat that the Valley had begun to switch from almost universal support for the Democrats to sympathy for the Republicans in recent years because of government efforts to control the Valley’s prize social media: “Mark Zuckerberg just talked about this on ‘Rogan.’ Direct phone calls from senior members of the administration. Screaming executives ordering them to do things. Just full-on ‘[Expletive] you. We own you. We control you. You’re going to do what we want or we’re going to destroy you.’”

Alienating natural Democrats like Musk, Zuckerberg, Andreessen and others did not prove to be a winning strategy for the Democrats. But that certainly won’t stop other governments from trying it.

Another tactic has been to paint social media in particular as a hive of misinformation and disinformation relative to legacy media, one that needs much more government control. But that will be a tough sell in these times. For example, it is now generally known that legacy media helped the White House cover up President Joe Biden’s growing cognitive issues until finally a disastrous public debate performance prevented any further concealment. The truth is, the legacy media have largely earned the public’s growing loss of trust.

So what is Elon Musk’s proposal?

It’s quite simple, really. “Don’t hate the media, become the media.”

His point is that the internet and new technology have crashed the cost of being a news provider, provided you have something to report that seems like news to others.

Many people can now build in their own spare rooms an audience that used to require printing presses or big TV studios. I first noticed this trend years ago when old-fashioned bloggers began to cover aspects of stories that legacy media were ignoring for various reasons. The bloggers gained thousands of followers thereby. At one time no such option existed. If you knew something that seemed significant but legacy media chose not to platform it, it would be known only within your own circle. If you wondered about it but weren’t in the right circle, you were out of luck.

This change will bring many other changes, good and bad, and many commentators will be exploring them for a long time. But whenever I heard folk who have a platform — be it a blog, a Facebook page, an X account, a podcast — complain about “the media,” I gently remind them: If you have an audience, like it or not, you are the media now.