Will they or won't they? I’m not talking about the clichéd dance of a romcom duo that hangs in the balance, but rather the clash of tech-leviathans, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous cage fight (or lack thereof).
X né Twitter owner Musk has found himself in a digital duel with Meta CEO Zuckerberg over a Twitter doppelgänger dubbed Threads. The discord traces its roots back over two months to an internal meeting leak, where Meta's chief product officer called it a "sanely run” alternative.
In the most recent installment of the Silicon Valley saga, Musk declared the battle was in motion, pledging the proceeds to veterans. Following this, Musk shared a screenshot of texts between himself and Zuckerberg, showing the Meta chief in a state of exasperation amid Musk's unrelenting public theatrics.
“If you still want to do a real MMA fight, then you should train on your own and let me know when you're ready to compete,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I don't want to keep hyping something that will never happen, so you should either decide you're going to do this and do it soon, or we should move on.”
In typical Musk fashion, he responded that he hasn’t done much training except with popular tech podcaster Lex Fridman, but that he could totally dominate Zuckerberg in his backyard octagon on Monday in Palo Alto.
Musk later claimed he’d test Tesla’s full self-driving feature by inputting Zuckerberg’s address, saying he’d simply show up to his house and declare a duel whether he liked it or not. Oh, and of course, he’d live stream it all on X. Naturally, neither of them were even in town that day according to the Platformer newsletter, continuing the utter pointlessness of the whole charade.
As the sun rose on Tuesday, the anticipated spectacle remained but a mirage. Before this, Zuckerberg took to Threads, advising everyone to take Musk’s word with a pound of salt, a point only compounded by Musk’s histrionics on Monday.
Since Meta and Twitter are what I cover, I get asked quite frequently nowadays whether this fight will happen or not. My answer continues to be: I highly doubt it, though the audacity of their attempt would be a sight to behold. While Zuckerberg is clearly well trained, he seems to recognize that Musk's motivation lies more in leveraging the spectacle to fuel traffic and headlines rather than a genuine penchant for mixed martial arts.
Evident to even the most casual observers of this tech tango is the remarkable facelift it has given to Zuckerberg's public persona. It was not long ago when Zuckerberg was cast as Silicon Valley's villain following the Cambridge Analytica debacle, which revealed that Facebook was improperly obtaining the private data of millions of users. Zuck then poured billions of dollars into his version of the "metaverse,” only to be met with a chorus of disapproving comments about the underwhelming avatars that wandered without legs (and sent the firm’s market cap spiraling).
Now, Zuckerberg is standing up against one of the valley’s arguably most unlikeable entrepreneurs, Musk, who has not shied away from giving a stage to perilous conspiracy theories and regularly interacts with a far-right account predominantly sharing content propagating anti-Black racism and pseudoscientific notions related to race. Many online spectators are eagerly awaiting Musk getting his butt kicked, and Zuckerberg’s balanced enthusiasm to follow through appears to have earned him newfound support.
Again, I find it incredibly unlikely any of this will actually happen. Should the stars align and contrive this theatrical showdown, rest assured my editor and I will have front-row seats, popcorn at the ready.
Here’s what else is going on in tech today.
Kylie Robison
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