[Feature] Musk vs Zuckerberg: cage fight of the century?

When you think of tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, one of the last things that you will think of will be a cage fight.

But this week, twitter has been full of commentary after Elon Musk tweeted that he would be ‘up for a cage fight’ with Zuckerberg, and Zuckerberg replied with a screenshot of the post with the caption ‘send me location’.

The fight is, apparently, very much on the cards.

And lest we believe that it's just going to be two old men duking it out and therefore nothing much to see, Mark Zuckerberg has posted publicly about his expertise in jiujitsu, claiming that he began practising it during the pandemic and winning a tournament earlier this year in California.

Musk, for his part, has stated on the Joe Rogan Podcast that he has trained in multiple forms of martial arts, including judo, karate, and taekwondo.

This may not necessarily be entertaining on the level of Zaire’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ match, but it is also not going to be just another boring match, if for no other reason that the participants are Meta and Tesla’s founders.

A feud with few like it

Aside from the upcoming boxing match, the two CEOs are also soon-to-be rivals in the tech and social media space.

While Musk is primarily known for starting Tesla and developing a successful Electric Vehicle brand and company, he is also the owner of Twitter- which he purchased late last year.

His acquisition of the company was filled with controversy, beginning with Musk’s criticism of how the company was run, and then proceeding with Musk purchasing large amounts of twitter stock, earning him an invitation by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey to join the company’s board of directors. This invitation was eventually turned down by Musk, who then offered to buy Twitter outright, an offer that was eventually accepted.

Following the acquisition, criticism of Musk’s leadership of Twitter began to surface, including his orders for immediate layoffs, firing of executives by email, and allegations that Musk’s loosening of moderation guidelines were increasing the amount of hate speech on the platform.

Yet, Zuckerberg at least on the surface seemed to agree with Musk’s measures- Meta has also seen a series of layoffs that Zuckerberg claims will make the company more efficient, and on a podcast earlier this month, praised Musk’s own measures to make Twitter leaner and more efficient.

But Musk has not returned the favour. He has stated his distrust of the messaging platform Whatsapp, which is owned by Meta, and criticised what he considers Zuckerberg’s partisanship.

Recently, they have also disagreed over whether developments in Artificial Intelligence technology should warrant some concern.

Musk has made his concerns public, suggesting that AI is ‘potentially more dangerous than nukes’, a comment that Zuckerberg dismissed as alarmist.

And now, Meta is also developing its own social media platform that is intended to compete with Twitter, known as P92.

Earlier this month, Meta briefed its staff on these plans, which would allow for users to follow accounts that they already follow on Instagram, which is another social media platform owned by Meta.

Although no exact date for this new social media platform was given, there is some speculation that it could be released by the end of the month.

According to Meta Chief Project Officer Chris Cox, there is demand for the platform ‘from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run’, and that some celebrities have already committed to using the platform, while others, like the Dalai Lama, are in discussions with the company.

The release of such a social media platform would, indeed, make the two tech CEOs rivals in the social media space, and given the resources of Meta and Tesla, the war of word-based social media platforms is not likely going to be a quick one to end.

Musk and Zuckerberg may be in the ring together duking it out, but evidently, physical strength is not the only thing that they are competing in- it’s also going to be quite literally a manifestation of their ideologies competing outside the ring as well.