 Who's been more effective at driving hope and change? A political icon with a methodically crafted public persona or an unfettered polymath wildcard entrepreneur? Barack Obama and Elon Musk both have lofty ideals, zealous fans, ferocious critics, and a cautious optimism about the future. I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before. As long as we push hard and are not complacent, the future's going to be great. Musk says he strongly supported Obama for president before the Democratic Party was hijacked by extremists. And Obama helped make Musk's SpaceX possible by opening up the final frontier to private companies. Let's allow the private sector to get in. We may be able to achieve a point in time where those of you who are just dying to go into space, you know, you can buy a ticket. They're the politician and businessman with the most followers on Twitter. Although Musk will soon own the company. But the contrast and how effective they've been at realizing their visions underscores why entrepreneurs, not politicians, are more effective agents of social change. And Musk's Twitter takeover could be just the wildcard American political discourse needs right now. Obama's public persona is carefully staged managed, while Musk is a publicist's worst nightmare. Out of the blue, he tweeted, quote, and considering taking Tesla private at 420, funding secured. The SEC disputed that claim and charged him with securities fraud. I want to be clear. I do not respect the SEC. I do not respect them. Obama was a political outsider who used the new tool of social media to overtake and eventually become the establishment. I might never have been elected president if it hadn't been for websites like, and I'm dating myself, my space, meet up, and Facebook. For Obama, state action is how you change the world for the better. Musk starts companies. Obama mostly failed to limit greenhouse gas emissions through subsidies and regulation. Musk created America's first successful electric car company. Obama backed a failed high-speed rail project. Musk created a company that promises to build underground hyper loops in America's densest cities. Obama expanded online surveillance allegedly to make it safer. Musk developed satellite internet technology that could one day help citizens access information censored by authoritarian rulers. There's a lot to criticize about Musk. There's no honor in slandering a critic as a pedo or toying with shareholders on Twitter. He's exaggerated both the promise of battery technology and advancements in self-driving cars. His companies have received billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and other government handouts, which have certainly been a factor in their success. It's also true that Musk's boldest plans haven't come to fruition and may never. Although investor optimism has made Tesla the world's highest valued auto manufacturer, its total share of the U.S. auto market is merely 2.4 percent. And that's with the benefit of tax breaks, credits, and other subsidies. But much of the anger Musk attracts has nothing to do with the help he's received from taxpayers. It's rooted in the belief that under capitalism, billionaires have too much power, and that Obama's approach leads to a fairer world. And then there's Musk's latest wildcard move. It's the best illustration of the effectiveness of the entrepreneur versus the politician, both looking to reform how social media platforms present information to the public. Elon Musk struck a deal to buy Twitter at a price of roughly 44 billion bucks. Obviously, this is a victory for free speech. If you get invited to something where there are no rules, where there is total freedom for everybody, do you actually want to go to that party? And that's a question for Twitter users. A few days before Musk reached a deal to purchase Twitter, Obama gave a talk at Stanford about the future of online speech. The way I'm going to evaluate any proposal touching on social media and the internet is whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy, inclusive democracy. And I also think decisions like this shouldn't be left solely to private interests. Regulation has to be part of the answer. Obama, like most of the Democratic Party establishment, wants to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so that social media platforms can be held liable for content posted by users. He favors regulation that would allow the federal government to inspect and approve the algorithms that social media platforms are employing as a way to combat misinformation. Biden's Department of Homeland Security just launched a Disinformation Governance Board to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country. Musk, by contrast, has stated he wants to make the algorithms more transparent to users and for moderators to focus exclusively on removing fake accounts and bots and illegal material while entrusting users to sort back fiction. I think it's very important that it be an inclusive arena for free speech. It's not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken Democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country's public square with enough raw sewage. You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough, conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe. When Obama talks about threats to democracy, we all know he's referring chiefly to the man who incited a mob to contest an election. We just saw a sitting president deny the clear results of an election and help incite a violent insurrection at the nation's Capitol. If Musk lets Trump back on, could that help him retake the White House? It's a scary prospect for a lot of people. If extremists run rampant, could they foment the kinds of violent revolutions that social media has spurred on in other countries? And is Musk really committed to the free speech values he currently professes, in fact, welcoming his worst enemies onto the platform? Twitter will be his property, so he'll be able to do what he likes, but he'll also have to bear the consequences if users abandon the platform. And Facebook's collapse in active daily users is a reminder that social media platforms can't count on user loyalty. And that's the main difference. If you don't like what Elon Musk does at Twitter, leave. Obama is pushing for more government control of information across all platforms, which is what's actually dangerous. There's no shortage of false information online, as the COVID-19 pandemic has made all too clear. The question is, who decides what's prohibited as false? Government officials shouldn't be the arbiters of truth. We've seen how fallible they can be, claiming that vaccinated people cannot spread COVID-19, or that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Musk mandates, climate change policy, and gender identity are all examples of contested political questions that social media platforms have often treated as factual ones. Rushing to declare political disputes, settled science, and suppressing skeptics isn't protecting liberal democracy. It's undermining it. I'd prefer a totally decentralized social media landscape where neither government regulators nor large corporations nor a single billionaire decide what information gets shared. Maybe we'll get there. But today, the choice is Obama versus Musk, technocratic control versus markets, which are both fallible. But in the case of Twitter, only one side put $44 billion on the line. Love Elon Musk or hate him, but recognize the value of the wild card. It changes the game. The trajectory of social media was towards more control and heavier moderation. Now the deck has been reshuffled.