Roundup: A new year won't halt Elon's fall

Welcome to our first roundup on Ghost! There isn’t much additional commentary this week because after completing the migration, I needed to get away from my screens for a bit.

I will say this though: Last weekend, the Wall Street Journal published a detailed report on Elon Musk’s drug use and the growing concern, particularly within his companies, that it’s having a negative effect on their prospects because of his poor decisions and declining public image. Musk has been on a serious decline since he took over Twitter, but this is a notable story to start the year: it shows board members and investors are sufficiently worried about his trajectory that they’re starting to speak more openly about it to the media, even if many did remain anonymous. It suggests many people close to Musk don’t expect his decline to stop in 2024 — and neither do I.

As I mentioned last week, I want to do a bit less on Musk’s personal drama this year, but he will obvious still come up. Now that the migration is complete, I have a story coming this week on his escalating attacks on labor rights that we must be paying attention to. Over the next few months, I also want to do some deeper dives on key tech companies — some associated with Musk, some not — and I should soon have out a reading list covering the next few months for paying supporters. I may also write a guide about switching to Ghost if there’s interest in it. Feel free to let me know.

On my end, I spoke to the Washington Post this week about Substack’s Nazi controversy and Nexo in Brazil about Apple Vision Pro. I was also on Francesca Fiorentini’s The Bitchuation Room to chat AI and The Insurgents to discuss Musk and some other tech issues. Finally, on my show Tech Won’t Save Us, I talked to Vincent Bevins about the mass protests of the 2010s, the role social media played in them, and why the horizontalist practices they tended to employ didn’t work.

Finally, just a quick head’s up that Collective Action In Tech released a guide to help with organizing in support of Palestinian liberation in the tech industry. It’s worth checking out!

Now for the recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed! To get the full roundup, just upgrade to a paid subscriber — and you’ll also be supporting the work that goes into making Disconnect.

Have a great week!

— Paris