NBC 'Dystopia Beat' Reporter (No, Really) Loses His Mind Over Elon Musk Buying Twitter

On Tuesday, we learned that tech entrepreneur Elon Musk intends to proceed with the purchase of Twitter. The deal had been mired in complex legal maneuverings, but it appears that Musk now believes he’ll be getting his money’s worth from the arrangement. Before the ink was dry on Musk’s Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, an NBC reporter, who is apparently assigned to the “dystopia beat”—we don’t know if that line in his bio is tongue-in-cheek, but we suspect not—went full Chicken Little upon learning there will soon be a new boss at Twitter.

Ben Collins, who fashions himself on Twitter as a “Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews,” claims the Twitter deal, if it goes through in the next few weeks (which is doubtful), “could actually affect midterms.” Because, you know, Musk is aligned with a lot of icky conservatives that NBC doesn’t like.

The fretting reporter warned that with Musk in charge, “there are no real guardrails anymore. Rulemaking can be capricious,” and—oh no!—the left doesn’t have time to get a ~~replacement platform~~ safe space queued up!

I know what you’re thinking. I’m right there with you, dear readers:

That's adorable, @oneunderscore__. Twitter's rules have been capricious since March 21, 2006. https://t.co/knucLAkmm8

— Paula Bolyard (@pbolyard) October 4, 2022

The fearmongering dystopia reporter added, “[Musk] can elevate any idea or person he wants through recommendations and UX (user experience) choices and there will be no oversight on this as a private company.” Translation: Twitter will no longer be run by people who hate free speech and have nothing but contempt for anyone to the right of Chairman Mao.

He goes on to highlight some text messages to Musk “from a redacted recipient and sender” about letting the “boss himself” back on Twitter and making someone like Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters “a VP of enforcement”—the key words here being “redacted recipient and sender.”

Dystopian Ben then lays out a terrifying scenario in which [redacted] monsters under the bed unleash an “‘uncoordinated pressure campaign’ that will lead to deplatforming of political enemies.”

What?!?!? That’s preposterous! We’ve never seen anything like that before on Twitter! Just ask PJ Media contributor Matt Margolis, who was singled out and has been blacklisted by Twitter for months. Anytime anyone shares an article with his name in the URL, a warning message alerts the user that the content is “spammy or unsafe” and “could lead to real-world harm.”

(Best we can tell, someone in the Twitter Ministry of Truth got salty because Matt refuses to call Joe Biden’s transgender surgeon general a woman.)

Does Ben know that this blacklisting of conservative voices has been going on for years? I suspect he does, but he thinks it’s okay when his side does it.

He goes on to warn that authoritarian governments will have a “field day” under Twitter’s new management:

Pizzagate, huh? That conspiracy theory doesn’t fly with Ben, but I’d wager that he was all in on the Russia collusion fabrication and cheered like a mother at her 5-year-old’s soccer game when Twitter blocked the New York Post’s tweets about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“In the longterm,” Ben laments, “Musk’s plans for this website are a suicide bomb. Very few people want to use a moderation-free app saturated with lies by design. We know this from the dozens of Twitter clones who’ve tried and failed.”

If Musk has claimed that there will be absolutely no moderation on Twitter once he moves into the executive office, I haven’t heard it. Ben’s just sore that the gig is up—there will soon be a new sheriff in town, and Musk has suggested that the platform will have some semblance of balance in the future. Maybe Matt Margolis will even get removed from the blacklist! Or maybe Musk will burn the whole thing down. His tweet from Tuesday afternoon, shortly after news of the impending sale was announced, has many of us scratching our heads, wondering what the “everything” app will be. Stay tuned.