It is above all a duel of style. On the left, Mark Zuckerberg, with a reputation for being cold, calculating and in bad taste. On the right, Elon Musk, provocative and sarcastic. The former cultivates false airs of Roman emperors and trains in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The second takes advantage of a community totally devoted to his cause and admits having met Emmanuel Macron the day after a drunkenness.
The two are supposed to fight in an octagon, a way of decreeing who is the true king of Silicon Valley. But at a time when Musk is considering a move to Texas and Zuckerberg has largely lost his luster, the fight would mostly be the culmination of a quiet but tense rivalry of nearly 10 years.
as the story goes Wall Street Journal, resentment begins with jealousy. In the early 2010s, Zuckerberg had the fortune, Musk the role of the visionary. Except that they each envy the other’s status. And at the time, they weren’t competitors yet: It was long before Musk took over Twitter.
“Your understanding of the subject is very limited”
The first real problem came in 2016, when SpaceX was unable to get a Facebook satellite into orbit. The rocket explodes on the launch pad. “I am deeply disappointed to learn that SpaceX’s failed launch destroyed our satellite that would have provided connectivity to so many entrepreneurs and everyone else across the continent,” Zuckerberg said. With Musk, the comment goes wrong.
The following year, it is around artificial intelligence that the two men, this time, will scold each other without naming each other. As Musk warns of the risks posed by AI, Zuckerberg snaps back at him, scathingly, during a Facebook Live. “People who imagine disaster scenarios don’t understand them. It is very negative and irresponsible, ”he cuts.
In 2018, in the midst of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a netizen challenged Elon Musk to remove SpaceX’s Facebook page. “I didn’t even know there was one. We will,” he replies. He will also do it for Tesla. “I don’t like Facebook. It scares me. I’m sorry,” he said.
But inevitably, everything accelerated in recent months when Musk became a social media manager. Struggling to attract advertisers, he saw Zuckerberg arrive in his rearview mirror, determined to build a rival platform to Twitter. “Copycat” he wrote only last May, before the story of the fight ended up bringing resentment to the eyes of the general public.
Source: BFM TV
