Because Elon Musk is the wrong person to take over Twitter

By Michael Posner

The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk is a triple evil. He is the wrong person to exercise sole control over the wrong company at the wrong time.

Musk has said his plan to privatize Twitter is partly driven by a desire to reduce control of content that he says violates free speech. If the $ 44 billion sale goes through, the world’s richest man will control one of the most influential social platforms in an age of escalating political polarization in our society, exacerbated in part by the rapid spread of political misinformation on the internet. . Such a sweeping change should encourage officials to make efforts to promote transparency and accountability of social networking sites in the US, similar to what the European Union recently agreed to do.

Musk has a lot of experience as a technologist and businessman. It has transformed the automotive industry with Tesla, a pioneer in the development of electric vehicles. He created Space X, a pioneering effort to build commercial space aircraft. All this has made him the richest man in the world. Encouraged by his commercial success, he is not ashamed to express his views.

Over the years, Musk has often expressed frustration with the way he and his companies are treated by the media. Some of the criticism came in response to his efforts to crack down on trade unions in his factories and to reports that questioned the safety of Tesla vehicles.

Twitter is the wrong company for Musk to control. As a private company, Twitter will not be subject to the same disclosure requirements that apply to listed companies. It will also not need to have a board of directors elected by the shareholders to oversee the management. It’s another thing for the Mars family to run a large private company that sells chocolates and cat food. It’s a completely different thing for a company like Twitter, which is a major player in the public information space, to be accountable only to a single owner, especially when that owner is Elon Musk.

Musk called himself a “staunch supporter of freedom of speech” and said on Monday that “free speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital arena where issues of vital importance to the future of humanity are discussed”. He has been widely criticized on social networking sites such as Twitter, which he believes are removing excessive content as part of their efforts to curb what they see as hate speech, intimidation, misinformation about public health and various forms of political misinformation.

Musk does not seem to understand that content control is in the interest of social networking companies and in the interest of our society. If it takes over Twitter and abandons its content control policy, the site will quickly be flooded with pornography, spam, hate speech, conspiracy theories and other deliberately misleading information on a wide range of social and political issues. This new version of Twitter will drive away many of its more than 200 million daily users as well as advertisers who provide most of the company’s revenue.

Due to the volume and speed of online discussions, proper content management is costly and very difficult. But Musk’s perception that whatever goes on his new company’s website should stay there unless it breaks the law reflects a naive and unrealistic view of what companies like Twitter should do. If he follows this vision, things are likely to get worse.

Musk’s decision to enter an industry in which he has little experience could not have come at a worse time. The United States, like many other countries, is facing increasing political and social polarization. A recent report by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, which I lead, concluded that while social media did not create polarization in the United States, it exacerbated and exacerbated partisan hostility. While Musk’s intention to reveal more about how the company’s algorithms work is remarkable, his suggestion that allowing users to come up with ideas for improving the system would be an effective way to solve the site’s problems seems to be the best unrealistic case.

Last week, the European Union took an important step towards establishing a system of government oversight of social media that respects the principles of freedom of speech. Through the Digital Services Act, the EU outlined a number of new requirements that would enhance the transparency of algorithms, encourage companies to make internal risk assessments and clarify when they can be held accountable for the content their users post. These measures are moving in the right direction and provide a starting point for the development of government regulation in the US as well.

Although US officials have presented several legislative proposals, the landscape is replete with many conflicting and contradictory ideas. Maybe Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will be the catalyst for long-delayed oversight.