Elon Musk, Twitter & The Free Speech Problem
We all know that Elon Musk has an affinity for Twitter. Recently, he purchased enough shares to give him a 9.2% stake in the company. However, Elon wants more. On April 13th, he made an offer to buy 100% of the company, make it private and turn the platform into a free speech haven. Part of the SEC filing says:
I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.
However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.
Fundamentally Elon is right, a democracy cannot properly function when cracking down on certain speech. Those in power need to be consistently held accountable. Traditionally this is accomplished through free & frequent elections, while non-governing parties represent the devil’s advocate between those elections. Limiting free speech in public is an attack on democracy, however the principle differs when it comes to private spaces & companies, such as social media platforms.
At the end of the day, platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are primarily companies. While Facebook is a subsidiary of Meta, and YouTube falls under the Alphabet (Google) umbrella, all of these companies are publicly traded in one way or another. First and foremost their priority should be to grow & provide the highest returns possible for their shareholders.
Increasingly, companies are expected to play more of a role in politics. Recently Disney employees staged a walkout to protest the company’s inaction on Florida’s HB 1557 “Don’t Say Gay” law. Coincidentally, Disney’s share price rose when the company vowed to take action to repeal the law. In a content-heavy world, companies do whatever they can to attract users. Traditionally this happens through having quality products & content, but there is so much out there that users may judge other categories, such as the values that they most align with. To companies, virtue equals money. We see this during Black History and Pride months.
If Elon were to buy 100% of Twitter and take the company private, he wouldn’t have to answer to other shareholders since he would be the only one. Employee walkouts could be a concern, but Elon’s company, Tesla has a consistent track record when dealing with any employee dissent. In a recent interview, Elon said “This is not a way to sort of make money. My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important.” So what could an Elon Musk Free Speech Twitter look like?
Before we jump into that, I have some experience when it comes to creating a “Free Speech First” social media platform. In and around 2017, there was a backlash against a number of Alt-Right content creators being kicked off of social media platforms. A couple of people started their own platforms and the movement was deemed Alt-Tech. Around that time, when my political views were much more extreme (I was 19), I met someone in a Facebook group who was starting a YouTube and Soundcloud alternative. He called it PewTube.
While trying to break into technical jobs, it is often encouraged to have a couple of “side projects.” Having just a degree isn’t good enough in most cases, so what can you do to differentiate yourself from the thousands of people who have the same piece of paper as you? Since I was just starting my third year of my Computer Science degree, it seemed like a great thing to add to my resume. Plus on paper the idea of free speech sounds great. The problem with creating a platform that prioritizes free speech is upholding speech that you don’t necessarily agree with.
We built PewTube one feature at a time. When a feature or bug fix was complete, it was released to the production, or “live” environment as soon as possible. While most products are built around release schedules and agile sprints, we saw a need in the market and worked as quickly as we could to capitalize in that space. People could use the platform almost from when we started from scratch. The founder promoted the platform perhaps a little too soon on Twitter, marketing it towards those in the Alt-Right (back when a lot of the Alt-Right still had Twitter accounts). So what happened? Those on the far left attempted to take over the platform. I’ll just say that there was an uncomfortable amount of Communist Furry content uploaded to the platform. That content was quickly taken down. As the platform grew, so did the amount of Alt-Right content, which makes sense because it was representative of the user base.
A couple of months after the communist content was taken down, CNN released an article featuring PewTube and a handful of other Alt-Tech platforms. During the video attached to the article, a reporter looks through PewTube & quickly finds a video titled Ovens of Auschwitz, an anti-Semitic cover of Simon Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.” If Ovens of Auschwitz is alright on a platform, why isn’t Communist Furry content? The platform later shut down & the founder disappeared. It seems that people don’t want true free speech, they just want to be exposed to content that validates their views. Even recently, Donald Trump’s new Free Speech platform, Truth Social, started banning users who made fun of the company’s CEO.
Now back to Elon & Twitter. To understand where Elon stands on the use of Twitter, he has said that “Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So it’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law,” If the bounds of the law act as the line here, let’s take a look at a couple of examples that might make users of the platform a little uncomfortable. It is noteworthy that I am writing from Canada, so the law is a little different here. Going forward when I refer to the law, I am referring to the law in the United States.
Milo Yiannopoulos (I don’t want to keep writing Yiannopoulos), is a former editor at Breitbart News and right wing provocateur. Milo was really interesting in that he was a flamboyantly gay person & loved Donald Trump so much that he called him Daddy. Everything about Milo as a character was carefully built to make people uncomfortable and to get the most reaction, which he succeeded in. For example, his tour of universities before the 2016 Presidential Election was named The Dangerous F****t Tour. However, by the time of the tour, Milo had already been kicked off of Twitter.
Remember the 2016 Ghostbusters movie & all of the hate it got from the right for the Ghostbusters being all female? I never watched the movie, but to be fair I also didn’t watch the one that came out last year. Between the 2016 Ghostbusters & Oceans 8, the idea of taking a concept and making the core cast all female can be questionable, but it doesn’t mean that there should be a backlash against that content. Brands don’t owe you anything, so most reasonable people would choose to not watch the movie, but Milo decided to put a bunch of energy into complaining about it & attacking the cast on Twitter, in particular African-American actor Leslie Jones. In fact, at one point, Milo compared Jones to an ape. This is what got him kicked off of Twitter.
While it is not illegal to compare an African-American to an ape, it is flat-out racist & is generally not accepted in society. I cannot articulate how much I disagree with the morality of the comparison. But on an Elon Musk Free Speech Twitter, it would be allowed. Going back to the idea that platforms are beholden to their advertisers to make money, it makes sense that Milo would be banned from the platform, but it isn’t about the money for Elon. He views Twitter as the town square & in the eyes of the law (in the United States), free speech must be protected no matter what abhorrent shape it takes.
In a world where people tend to gravitate towards and believe news that aligns with their views, how do you fight misinformation? Does misinformation belong in the metaphorical town square? We saw how the narrative that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged would eventually lead to violence in the real world, culminating in a riot at the American Capitol Building. How do you deal with conspiracy theories? It’s all fun and games when talking about flat-earthers, but what about conspiracies like QAnon?
This past November, members of QAnon Dallas gathered for the resurrection of former President John F Kennedy. While there were only about 30 followers there, how much larger would it be if it was allowed on Twitter? Q: Into the Storm is a documentary that dives into the QAnon conspiracy theory & websites like 4chan. The documentary reveals that the followers of Q are encouraged to do their own research & contribute to the overall narrative. While a lot of that research is on non-mainstream websites, what happens if it were to become more easily accessible on sites such as Twitter?
What about mainstream news sources? In 2020, Fox News won a defamation lawsuit by arguing that no ‘reasonable viewer’ actually takes host Tucker Carlson seriously. Perhaps no one should take Tucker Carlson seriously, but what happens when his show is the top cable news show in the country? This is how misinformation spreads & people become increasingly polarized politically. Perhaps this explains the increase of anti-LGBTQ legislation introduced. According to the Human Rights Campaign by May 2021, the year had already become the worst year for the number of LGBTQ laws enacted. By the end of March this year, around 240 anti-LGBTQ bills had been filed, compared to 41 in all of 2018. As a member of the community, it is quite disturbing to know that there is so much effort into trying to take away rights for people like me. Does this have a place in the public town square? According to the law, it does. Is this a desirable platform?
Here are some final thoughts. Elon Musk has every right to buy Twitter (if they allow him to). If he takes over the company, he has every right to take it private & change its terms of service to make the platform a free speech haven. From a business standpoint, it is a much more viable strategy than creating your own platform, as Alt-Tech platforms don’t have a tendency to stick around.
Upholding free speech looks good on paper, but is much more difficult when it comes to upholding the views of those you disagree with. For example, can Elon’s ego handle content making fun of him? There is a lot of speech that is allowed within the law, but how much of it is acceptable within mainstream society? I’m skeptical that the line will always be the law. Additionally, the political ramifications can be large. But at the end of the day, basis of free speech is that all ideas should be challenged. Ideas and beliefs that can’t hold up to scrutiny should not logically be held.
There is also a whole argument of decentralization here, which also happens to be the core idea of web3, blockchain technology, and cryptocurrency. Elon seems to be a fan of these things (Dogecoin to the moon 🚀). If Elon wants to build a society on Mars, its not farfetched to start revisiting how it can be structured here on Earth. Perhaps this is the beginning of a play that starts to bring web3 & technology associated with it into the mainstream…
