In my discussion on the Social Consensus, published here recently, I suggested that any government should:
provide for freedom of speech unless it promotes harm towards or hatred of another person.
Now Elon Musk has bought Twitter for $44 billion, saying that economics does not come into his consideration for doing so, but free speech does.
He has famously crossed that platform before now.
It is also thought that he will allow Trump and his followers back.
In other words, the right to promote harm towards others and hatred of another person might be permitted again, because that is what Trump did.
Where do regulators stand on this? And should they?
I think they should. I think Musk has proven himself unable to accept the responsibility of running a public interest entity, as evidenced by his approach to good governance at Tesla, where announcements that do not respect market rules have been a problem. In that case why should he be allowed to control a platform like Twitter?
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Trump let back on Twitter – what’s the deal? Does Musk have political ambitions, if so he’d have to amend the Constitution to allow those born outside of America to become President.
So we’re going from the frying pan to the fire?
Time will tell.
I’ve been suspicious of Musk since the story below.
Hate to think what he might turn Twitter into.
“Elon Musk wins defamation case over ‘pedo guy’ tweet about caver”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50695593
“This verdict sends a signal, and one signal only – that you can make any accusation you want to, as vile as it may be and as untrue as it may be, and somebody can get away with it,” he said.
Musk comes across as a nasty piece of work if you ask me. Especially if he doesn’t get his way.
Clearly the richest man in the world controlling the most influential social media in the world is playing with fire regarding the interests of the majority of people on this planet. He will only serve the interests of the wealthy and powerful, despite his declaration of being a “freedom of speech absolutist” – some hope!
Do you think Twitter should be run by the State?
No
But I do think something so influential does need to be regulated and protected from potential abuse, and from acting as an abuser
Do you have problem with that?
Oh – what a surprise remark!!? Never expected that.
Do you not believe in regulation?
Or are you one of these people who believes in the oxymoron of ‘self regulation’?
The sort of stuff that caused the credit crunch in 2008 and all of the God knows how many bubbles before it?
Herol, I used to love you as a boxer, but you really have gone down in my estimation now that you’ve taken up trolling economics blogs!
Musk is that idiot who even had to involve himself in the cave rescue in Thailand in 2018 and called one of the rescue divers a ‘pedo’ just because little Elon didn’t get to build submarine, rescue the kids and get all the credit. Ah, bless.
He sells electric cars that look like petrol cars – wow – how inventive!!! They don’t very modern to me.
That’s the sort of person who has just bought Twitter (or about to) – a platform that was going to be of some use to this blog.
Well, I’m going to call it as I see it.
We have just seen the first really big public move by Unaccountable Wealth to control the bourgeoning counter narrative to the orthodoxy of ‘no new ideas’. This is a really dark time that could not come at worse time. I would love to see Musk’s email inbox and see who he has been talking to. Some names come to mind………………
This is Wealth saying ‘Talk to the hand because the face is not listening’. This is about control. This is about power and it’s a power grab. This about Musk and other HNWI’s controlling debate and information that ‘guides’ markets and policy.
I don’t like this at all and it should not be allowed to happen. However, it looks like the Twitter crew have got sick of all the hassle social media causes anyway and that have had enough and will get out no doubt as millionaires for life as they’ve realised – and so many in the ‘industry’ have already – (see the documentaries ‘Screened Out’ or ‘The Social Dilemma’ or ‘The Great Hack’ ) that they have created a monster ripe for exploitation by vested interests.
So much for ‘responsible capitalism’. So much for ‘communities’ and all that Silicon Valley Randian bullshit about freedom and individualism and ‘spontaneity’.
The markets have done what they are set up to do: to enable the transfer of resources to unaccountable monopolists.
In the future that is coming, only the rich will be individuals reaching their potential and rest of us can go to hell and click our lives away as if in some dystopian sci-fi movie from the 1970s.
Bad news.
Musk is an idiot-savant.Technically brilliant but socially and politically naive, almost childish. And that’s putting it mildly.
To begin with, no no one should forget this notorious “pedo guy” episode of Musk’s from 2018:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/18/elon-musk-apologizes-to-british-cave-diver-followingbaseless-pedo-gu.html
Then there’s this: Tesla employee’s firing and Elon Musk tweet on union were illegal, labor board rules.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/25/business/musk-labor-board.html
More recently, this tweet provided a sound case against Musk owning (any) media:
‘Musk, who loves to post nonsense on Twitter, embraced the weeks-long Canadian trucker anti vaccination protest with his usual clumsy belligerence.
He tweeted an image of Adolf Hitler that said, “Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau. I had a budget.”
With the dumbest part of that being that Hitler was never all that concerned about budgets.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/elon-musk-s-hitler-tweet-highlights-right-wing-faux-populism-ncna1289377
And last but not least, there’s this which, if anything, is a really bad indicator:
“Right-Wingers Are Absolutely Eating Up the Idea of Elon Musk Taking Over Twitter.
Conservatives have rejoiced in Musk’s $43 billion offer to buy Twitter.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/elon-musk-taking-over-twitter
Oh, oh!
Oh dear.
4 hours ago – Axios:
“How Elon Musk won Twitter”
https://www.axios.com/elon-musk-twitter-sale-board-f9dc81ec-da2f-4d48-880e-dec7ce7a3332.html
yep.
Oh well. After the banned RWNJs get back on to Twitter and find that it does nothing to raise their prospects they’ll just have to find some other focus for their whingeing and self pity.
And if Musk makes a big enough mess out of Twitter (he was never a media wiz) it may end becoming another My Space,
The EU has given him due notice that unless regulation is continued they will close it down
Excellent.
Glad to hear it.
It won’t be long now before some Republican demands that the US withdraw from the European Union.
🙂
Is Musk owning Twitter a problem? I don’t know, is Murdoch owning a lot of the conventional media a problem?
It seems to me there are three issues here. First, is it right that one platform (whether or not owned by a single person) should create its own effective monopoly? Your own preferred choice of Twitter for disseminating your ideas suggests there isn’t a practical alternative. Second, is it right that an internet platform for views should not be subject to the same constraints as other media (papers, whether or not online, and TV) when it comes to things like personal vindictiveness, discriminatory language, and wider hate speech? And third, is it right that an internet medium that operates more like a utility than a website should lack even the minimal levels of governance that go with a publicly quoted company?
I don’t know about the specifics of Twitter which I don’t use, but I think those questions are pertinent.
They are
thankfully the EU is raising these issues
A few years ago some kids were trapped in a cave in Thailand.
Elon Musk announced some bizarre rescue plan involving mini submarines while some pragmatic divers got the kids out.
Musk had a tantrum and called one of the divers a pedo on twitter.
It’s hard to quantify just how dangerous being called a pedo by one of the world’s most powerful and trusted figures could be. The diver could have been murdered. Even worse the pathetic plutocratic libel legal system decided that it wasn’t libel presumably because Musk’s lawyers cost more than the other guy’s.
Musk is one of the worst people to be entrusted with the world’s free speech, a narcissistic man child with no respect for consequences or boundaries.
Musk is an influencer and manipulator of both public opinion and financial markets. You just need to look and crypto to see how he made billions by manipulating the market. He now has twitter, can you imagine the damage he could do to world markets and governments.