Such a deal would have serious consequences for free speech not because of Musk’s political orientation, but because it would place enormous power in the hands of a private individual what appears to be a town square would, in fact, be one individual’s private property.Įnter Elon Musk, the world ’s richest man and a Twitter superstar. In the past, Musk has gotten into trouble over some of his tweets such as when he grandly claimed to take his company, Tesla, private, alarming stock market regulators. Unfortunately, for many people, hate speech means the speech they hate, which may indeed be awful, and not necessarily the speech that might spread hate.
Liberals have been in a dilemma, trying to balance free speech with Twitter’s no-holds-barred conversations, where insults are frequent, personal attacks common, doxing to be expected, and misogyny, homophobia, and racist comments routinely go undetected, although the company is trying to combat hatred with policies against racism, personal attacks, and hateful conduct. Twitter may have thought it was at that sweet spot, since the medium enrages those who want the platform to ban preachers of hate speech, as well as those who have suddenly discovered the virtues of free speech and complain loudly when standard-bearers – (most notably former US president Donald Trump) – are suspended from the medium. There is an old journalistic axiom, that if you are annoying the left and the right, you are doing something right.
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