Tech

Elon Musk is right about Twitter


Story about Elon Musk’s attempt to take over Twitter began, appropriately, on Twitter. In late March, Musk tweeted, “Given that Twitter serves as a de facto public town square, failure to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What to do? ”

We now know Musk’s answer. Not long after his tweet, a filing from the SEC revealed he had quietly become Twitter’s largest shareholder. And on Wednesday, he sent a letter to Twitter’s chairman of the board declaring his intention to buy the company for about $43 billion and keep it private. His goal, he wrote, is to help Twitter realize its “potential as a platform for free speech globally.”

Musk is vague about what free speech means to him, but his move appears to be to loosen Twitter’s content moderation policies. In a face-to-face interview at this year’s TED conference on Thursday, he essentially confirmed those suspicions. When asked if Musk-owned Twitter would ban any content, he replied: “I think it’s clear that Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country in which it operates. . There are some restrictions on freedom of speech in the US, and of course Twitter will have to abide by those. “

If this is indeed Musk’s plan, that’s terrible news. The First Amendment allows for all sorts of gruesome speech that most people don’t want to see in their social feeds. Allowing any legal speech would open Twitter to openly racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, pro-violence and worse. in case Not really his intentions, his comments are still terrible news: It means he took almost no time to seriously think about free speech before contemplating the acquisition Twitter in the name of free speech.

However, Musk takes a firmer stance when he calls Twitter a de facto public place. Not everyone thinks so. On my feed, at least, that statement generated a bit of mockery. Some have pointed out that Twitter is a private company, not a government, and so it can do what it wants. Others argue that Twitter can’t be a public place because most of the public doesn’t even use it. Twitter is much smaller than other social platforms. It has only about 200 million daily active users worldwide and about 37 million won United States. Compare that to about 2 billion active users on Facebook and YouTube and over a billion for TikTok. Twitter also doesn’t have the sort of market power near the governments of the biggest tech giants. Meta’s current market capitalization is around $575 billion – a sharp drop from last year, when it hit $1 trillion, but still out of reach for the world’s richest person. TikTok’s parent company has valuable at $250 billion. Aside from those numbers, Twitter looks like little potatoes.

And Musk is up to something. The importance of a platform to a democracy is not entirely a function of its size or even popularity. Twitter may not be the biggest social network, but, at least in the US, it has the most political significance. (This is perhaps less true internationally. The United States remains Twitter’s largest market.) Its relatively small user base includes political and cultural influencers. That’s where journalists, politicians, academics and other “elite” spend a lot of time. That’s where they get the news and seminars they need. After all, that’s where Musk – the richest man in the world – chooses to present himself. If you want to influence public opinion, don’t post on Facebook. You tweet.



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