“Elon Musk is joining Twitter’s board of directors a day after revealing that he’d become the social media platform’s largest shareholder with a 9% stake. The billionaire has criticized Twitter publicly about its commitment to free speech.” AP News
Here’s our previous coverage of former President Trump’s Twitter ban. The Flip Side
The right hopes that Musk will promote free speech at Twitter, and calls for the reinstatement of former President Trump’s account.
“Mr. Musk is familiar with controversy on Twitter, as his tweets have sometimes aroused the attention of Washington financial regulators over disclosure rules. But in an age when too many CEOs lack the courage to express open support for core American principles, it would be refreshing if Mr. Musk’s intention is to stake some of his own wealth in the cause of promoting political free speech…
“Mr. Musk would do an additional public service if he shows that Big Tech censorship has a free-market solution. Politicians on the left and right are demanding a bigger role for government in regulating speech on social media, whether with more bureaucratic controls or antitrust suits that break up the companies. Republicans in particular should know better than to empower bureaucrats, and maybe Mr. Musk can show them a better way.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Others argue, “While disruption in the company’s sorry state of affairs holds some promise, a battle of the billionaires is not the best way to secure free speech, even in the social-media industry. More innovation and less monopolism would be better, and more enforcement of anti-trust regulations would help with both. While Musk is entertaining and very innovative, he’s still going to be oriented to his own interests first, whatever they are … and they’re not necessarily going to coincide with ours all the way down the line.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
“Twitter and Facebook started out as ‘free-speech platforms.’ Before Musk, there were Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, men with even bigger stakes in their respective firms and committed to using technology to smash the old gatekeepers of public discourse… Social media, we were told, would empower activists and ‘citizen-journalists’ the world over, toppling autocratic regimes and holding accountable brick-and-mortar institutions in democratic societies…
“Somehow, we ended up with today’s platforms, with their periodic purges of wrong-thinkers (including a U.S. president), their obnoxious and ideologized ‘fact-checking’ mechanisms, and their abuse of the threat of misinformation to silence news-breakers and whistleblowers… One free-speech-defending owner here or there won’t alter this structural dynamic; media, including social media, will always reflect the social and political balance of forces… the surer path to online free speech runs through power politics, not stock-market positions.”
Sohrab Ahmari, American Conservative
“Twitter remains one of the most important outlets for political speech in the country, and suppression of the speech of candidates or incumbents directly affects electoral reach and thus outcomes. Trump, in particular, appears likely to run again, and denying a presidential candidate access to a core communications forum undermines the nature of American elections…
“Moreover, the speech Twitter continues to allow from state-sponsored actors and leaders in Iran and elsewhere is far worse than the tweets they cited as a justification for banning Trump. Musk should immediately push for a policy that re-platforms Trump and takes a blanket approach to not banning the speech of democratically elected officials.”
Rachel Bovard, The Federalist
The left worries that Musk will push Twitter to allow more hate speech, and is skeptical about the reinstatement of former President Trump’s account.
The left worries that Musk will push Twitter to allow more hate speech, and is skeptical about the reinstatement of former President Trump’s account.
“Musk fanboys have wondered whether their avatar would start a social media site of his own. The imagined attributes of this hypothetical invention: devotion above all to unimpeded expression, decentralization, a minimum of spam and propaganda. Sounds lovely! Also sounds impossible… Equally untenable is the idea many Musk-lovers embrace that a decentralized platform could ever be disinformation-free…
“[Jack Dorsey] also wanted to turn the platform into an open protocol, which basically would have meant that users could pick and choose the algorithms dictating what appeared in their feeds. If you didn’t like mainstream news, for instance, you could decide to stop seeing it — and elect to see so-called alternative news, or just a bunch of videos of cute animals… inviting individuals to separate themselves further into political silos, or to hurl themselves down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, is just what the country doesn’t need.”
Molly Roberts, Washington Post
“Twitter’s recent moderation policy changes actually support the ability of users to have an active and open conversation, according to the researchers I spoke to. They hope that Twitter doesn’t roll them back given Musk’s arrival…
“Allowing for more hate speech would be to Twitter’s detriment. ‘It would be normatively disastrous if they went back on some of their public statements trying to defend more marginalized or vulnerable voices,’ [the executive director of New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics] said. ‘They’ve made a lot of progress on removing hate speech, and we know from both qualitative and quantitative literature that doing so helps more folks engage in conversation publicly.’”
Aaron Mak, Slate
Regarding the former president’s account, “It would certainly be unusual for a single board member, who owns 9 percent of a company, to unilaterally change its policy on something as momentous as the Trump ban… [But] Musk is not one to let norms — or even, at times, legalities — stand in his way, as his unorthodox filings to buy a stake in Twitter once again showed. If he were so moved, he could try to force Trump back onto the company’s agenda via a blitz of tweets…
“But all of this assumes a level of passion for reinstating Trump that Musk has given no evidence he possesses. Though he has on several occasions shown support for the general idea that Twitter should promote free speech, he has said nothing of note on the Trump ban since [a] January 2021 tweet… if Trump and his supporters were banking on Musk to miraculously revive his Twitter account before then, they might have better luck fixing Truth Social.”
Will Oremus, Washington Post
“Before [Musk] revealed his stake he polled his followers: ‘Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?’ Actually, Twitter is a de facto private town square, and a very small one in terms of actual size and business power, which is exactly why Musk was able to buy a big chunk of it. Twitter stock was cheap, and an extremely active fanboy of it saw his opportunity and he took it.”
Kara Swisher, New York Times