Donald Trump and Elon Musk have three things in common: Each is so compelling that friends and foes alike cannot look away; some foes cannot contain their strong visceral reactions; and each man uses the first two effects to his advantage. Watch these show up in Musk’s Twitter playbook.

Musk’s celebrity status is well known. He has 113.6 million Twitter followers at the time of publication. The Teal Mango ranks him as the third best-known person in the world. Forbes lists him as the richest person in the world.

Critics reacted swiftly and aggressively to his purchase of Twitter. One anti-Musker predicted that there will be “a rush of left leaning people to other platforms,” once the right come “crawling back.” New York Times editorial board member Greg Bensinger wrote that “Twitter under Elon Musk will be a scary place.” CBS’s Norah O’Donnell said Musk might “make Twitter a haven for disinformation and hate speech” and claimed that Musk has used Twitter to bully critics and reporters. Some tweeters encouraged people to sabotage Twitter. Perhaps these Musk critics are following through, as Twitter users are reporting significant increases in hateful and racist comments despite there being no changes in Twitter’s content moderation policies.

The European Union also reacted. When Musk tweeted on October 27th that “the bird is freed,” EU Commissioner Thierry Breton responded the next day, “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.” Perhaps the commissioner wasn’t serious, as his tweet is a non sequitur: Musk’s freed-bird tweet coincided with his clearing of Twitter’s executive suites. He didn’t assert that government rules will be broken.

Musk’s critics appear to be afraid that his Twitter will allow others to have freedom of speech. Actually, the critics should embrace such freedom, as it is necessary for fighting the very abuses the critics claim to abhor, identifying truth, and developing strong minds and a robust society. A recent study adds to the reasons for freeing speech. It found that exposure to misinformation prompts internet users to conduct their own investigations, which, if true, should make them less vulnerable to fallacies. And at least one of the study’s examples of misinformation highlighted just how hard actual misinformation is to identify. One claimed piece of misinformation—“COVID-19 death rates are inflated”—is not only open to multiple interpretations but is also a topic on which researchers have found wide disparities across countries and over time.

How might Musk use such attention and controversies in his Twitter playbook? One use will be for marketing. Musk famously spent little on marketing when launching Tesla’s cars because word of mouth and media attention did the work for him. Trump’s campaign leveraging media attention in 2016 to beat Hillary Clinton while spending far fewer campaign dollars than she did echoes this strategy.

Musk will also create multiple channels and financial arrangements. This internal platform diversity will have several consequences, including generating new opportunities for content creators and diverse communities, both for people with common interests and those who can tolerate an exploration of conflicting views.

Also, watch out for black swan events. Musk ties his business interests to his beliefs in the importance of the internet, sustainable energy, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and human genetics. Look for Twitter capabilities to show up in his broadband, automotive, and energy businesses—not as social media, but as a machine-to-machine and machine-to-person communications platform that creates and uses data for improved efficiencies and user experiences.

Look for him to transform some elements of the power sector. Tesla is already approved to be a retail electricity provider in Texas. A Twitter channel dedicated to drawing data from SpaceX satellites, Twitter users, and Teslas could use artificial intelligence to improve energy use across homes, automobiles, and more.

If even only a few of my predictions are right, Musk’s Twitter will change social media forever. Books analyzing the development of Tesla, SpaceX, and PayPal reveal a person that makes big bets, uses his many mistakes to find the right answers, admires innovation, seeks to dominate industries, and doesn’t like being told “no.” These strategies applied to re-creating Twitter will take the “social” out of social media to create spaces for innovation, shared work, and machine work.

What could go wrong? Politicians are keenly aware of the power of the legacy platforms and might act to protect them.

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