Elon Musk wants to fund "indipendent media" in Europe?
Elon Musk is apparently in talks with an Italian social media page that mostly posts clips of fights on the street. Yeah, that's citizen journalism, right?

If you're Italian, you probably know "Welcome to Favelas", a long standing social media page that has been sharing videos of "urban decay" for years: pickpockets, small criminals and so on.
It seems that Musk may be interested in helping them out as "independent media". Let's talk about what this media actually does and why this is interesting to Musk.
The page published a post saying they met some representatives for Musk who met some European independent media, with "Welcome to Favelas" among them for Italy.

So...what is Welcome to Favelas?
The name is a reference to Brazilian favelas, and since its beginning regularly posts videos of urban scenes: the idea is that these situations are in such a decay that you may think you're in a favela.
For Italians that are in their late 20s, the page is an absolute classic, and the content was instinctively thrilling: random street brawls, arguments and shouting in public, pickpockets, unusual characters that you could meet on the street or on the bus, and so on.
It's quintessential early social media viral content: the kind of stuff that was enabled by phones with decent video capabilities becoming the norm, platforms enabling people to rapidly share beyond your close friends, and content that has a clear shock immediate shock value that gives you a gut reaction.
This combination of factors led the page to great fame, but as time progressed and social media got more regulated and moderated, to great issues: over the years they've been banned 14 times on Facebook and twice on Instagram, as they declared on their Telegram channel (which is now their main outlet to 530.000 accounts) praising Meta's new policies.
They do admit that the first bans were warranted due to what they were posting, but they argue that they've been unfairly hit hard without possibility of recourse (which is definitely a real issue for social media that can arbitrarily ban you with little explanation).

Welcome To Favelas has nowadays stayed kinda true to its origins, but has narrowed its focus:
in the early days the Facebook page and groups related to the page had all sorts of content, apparently even including followers linking big collections of intimate videos that included non consensual porn. As reported by Il Fatto Quotidiano, its admins had a laissez faire approach to what was being shared in their groups, allowing highly problematic stuff being shared.
What you'll find on their Telegram channel now is short video clips of these street-fights-adjacent content (watermarked, naturally) with a very short caption describing the scene, and the less-extreme ones get posted to Instagram as well.
As far as I can see, this is it. Meaning there is no in depth reporting, checking nor follow up to the videos that get posted. It's just opening a window to small moments of urban decay, without any sort of analysis.
Apparently, Musk thinks this is the "independent media" he wants to support?
Well, yeah. This is absolutely in line with what Musk has been saying about what he thinks "citizen journalism" is, and what he pushes on Twitter. Interestingly, Welcome to Favelas has recently started posting on Twitter, saying they were trying to see whether "it's as free as they promised".
Now, don't get me wrong, traditional media and traditional journalism have massive issues: the impact of social media and what happens on it has been seriously underestimated in the past years.
So yes, you can use social media for journalism, and we should, because the people are there: take the work of Sophia Smith Galer and how she used TikTok to reach millions of people with her journalism:

Taylor Lorenz is another super interesting example of real journalism being done on social media and new platforms, and it's especially relevant since she's been covering online spaces for legacy media for years prior to making the leap. (Check out her usermag.co publication :) )
But Welcome to Favelas...I feel that is nothing: sharing clips of people fighting on the street is not journalism.
But it helps push a certain right-wing agenda: showing streets and cities in disarray helps the idea that we need stronger authorities, that immigrants bring violence, and that we supposedly need more control and more surveillance.
Remember the "attenzione pickpocket" Italian woman that went viral around the world? And how we found out she was in a far-right Italian party? Was it so surprising? Not really:

Can't wait to see how this partnership progresses.