The saga of Elon Musk’s attempt to take over Twitter began appropriately on Twitter. In late March, Musk tweeted: “Given that Twitter serves as a de facto public town square, failure to uphold the principles of free speech fundamentally undermines democracy. What must be done?’
We already know Musk’s answer. Shortly after his tweet, an SEC filing revealed that he had quietly become Twitter’s largest shareholder. And on Wednesday, he sent a letter to Twitter’s chairman stating his intention to buy the company for about $43 billion and take it private. His goal, he wrote, is to help Twitter realize “its potential to be a platform for free speech around the world.”
Musk has been vague about what free speech means to him, but his actions appeared to be about loosening Twitter’s content moderation policies. In a live interview at this year’s TED conference on Thursday, he virtually confirmed those suspicions. Asked if Twitter, owned by Musk, would ban any content, he said: “I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country in which it operates. There are some restrictions on free speech in the US, and of course Twitter will have to abide by them.”
If this is indeed Musk’s plan, that’s terrible news. The First Amendment allows for all kinds of horrible speech that most people don’t want to see on their social feeds. Allowing any legal speech would mean opening up Twitter to overt racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, advocacy of violence, and worse. If this it is not indeed his intent, his comments are still terrible news: It means he spent almost zero time thinking seriously about free speech before trying to buy Twitter in the name of free speech.
Musk, however, is on firmer ground when he calls Twitter a de facto public square. Not everyone thinks so. At least on my channel, this claim drew quite a bit of mockery. Some people have pointed out that Twitter is a private company, not a government, so it can do whatever it wants. Others argue that Twitter can’t be a public square because most people don’t even use it. Twitter is much smaller than other social platforms. It only has about 200 million daily active users worldwide and about 37 million in the US. Compare that to around 2 billion active users for Facebook and YouTube, and more than a billion for TikTok. Nor does Twitter have the quasi-governmental market power of the biggest tech giants. Meta’s current market capitalization is around $575 billion, down sharply from last year when it cleared $1 trillion, but still out of reach for even the world’s richest man. TikTok’s parent company is valued at $250 billion. Next to those numbers, Twitter looks like small potatoes.
Yet Musk is on to something. The importance of a platform for democracy does not depend only on its size or even on its popularity. Twitter may not be the biggest social network, but at least in the US it is the most politically significant. (This is probably less true internationally. The US remains Twitter’s biggest market.) Its relatively small user base is disproportionately made up of political and cultural influencers. This is where journalists, politicians, academics and other “elites” spend a lot of time. This is where they get news and process their ideas. After all, this is where Musk—the world’s richest man—chooses to express himself. If you want to sway public opinion, don’t post on Facebook. You’re tweeting.
