Elon Musk Photo: YouTube screenshot
The world's richest man has bought the world's biggest megaphone. What's he going to do with it?
Tech expert Mark Pesce tells Kathryn Ryan what we know so far.
By "free speech", I simply mean that which matches the law.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
Elon Musk says he wants to make Twitter a "free speech" platform and he's likely to employ executives who share his attitudes and are willing to do what he wants, Pesce says.
"You have to expect the signals that he's sending now are being received by potential candidates for those roles who will be able to parrot those statements back to him in order to get those jobs."
Although Musk's personal definition of free speech isn't quite clear, it seems to be related to the notion generally used in American politics, he says.
Musk's purchase of Twitter – for US $44 billion – will take about six months to be complete, Pesce says.
After which he will presumably get rid of the existing CEO Parag Agrawal and chief moderator Vijaya Gadde who many users are calling to be fired.
"Everyone is seeing that single person [Gadde] not as the person who is trying to protect Twitter and Twitter users but as the person who is the roadblock to unfettered speech."
What will happen when an organisation that's become a "de facto public square" enters private hands?
It's unclear what Musk will do with the processes Twitter has developed over 16 years to create a safe space, Pesce says, but if he allows the platform to become "a free-for-all of pile ons", advertisers will split.
Musk has already shown himself to be a "highly unstable" Twitter user with a "dimmer view of worker rights" than many of his fellow Twitter users.
His employees at both Tesla and SpaceX have claimed discrimination and harassment and it's likely he'll put his own industrial interests first, Pesce says.
"There is a very mixed story around the kinds of behaviour that [Musk] seems to be willing to tolerate and the kinds that he won't.
"What's the line, 'at the heart of every great fortune lies a great crime'? People carry that in their souls."
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022
With Musk in charge, Twitter now has the same governance problem as Facebook, he says.
"Essentially Facebook is a complete reflection of the shareholder who controls the voting shares - Mark Zuckerberg. So everything that happens at Facebook is really due to his say so because he has final authority there. We're going to see the same thing happen at Twitter."
One "shaft of light" in Musk's Twitter takeover is his promise to make Twitter's algorithm publicly available.
This could be a first step towards regulating social media algorithms and making them more responsible for their effects, Pesce says.
