And wants it to be more of a free speech platform. How will that go?

Musk claims to be committed to free speech. That’s the biggest single social media change in a decade. As the smoke clears, many top U. S. media pros have expressed what can only be described as “grave concern” about this:

I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022

Responses range from staid “Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, and an investor in Tesla and Twitter, believes that Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter will ultimately benefit the company and its users, amid concerns about how the world’s richest man will oversee the social media site.” (Newsweek)

through

“I think it’s naive of Musk to kind of go in and think that he can just wave a wand and turn Twitter into the platform that he wants it to be because the curation of these platforms is incredibly, incredibly complicated.” National Public Radio and, more bleakly, just having a really hard time dealing with it.

Industry-driven worries include “Bezos is far from the only person with questions, comments, and criticisms over Elon Musk buying Twitter (Twitter employees are likely near the front of the line). However, unlike most, he owns the Washington Post and has a net worth ($177.5 billion) vaguely within Elon’s range ($264.6 billion).” (The Verge)

and a request to pray for Elon Musk.

Let’s see how all that plays out: Musk consented to an interview with the now-banned Babylon Bee, a Christian-based satire site.

The Bee produced a brilliant YouTube vid, capturing what so many people feel is wrong with Twitter:

Surprisingly, perhaps, The Hill, a U. S. Congress social mag, comes to the defense of The Babylon Bee:

Restoring trust in media requires drawing a clear, good-faith distinction between the standards that should apply to expression and media content. Expression is the easier of the two: It should be free, full stop. It’s why we have a First Amendment — and the reason that it is listed first among our enumerated Bill of Rights. This means putting an end to the suspensions, shadow-banning, and other forms of speech suppression — molding content in a manner more appropriate to a publisher — by Twitter and other social media companies. Moderation of genuinely objectionable content should not be controversial; banning The New York Post and The Babylon Bee for material out of favor with progressives most certainly is — or should be. These platforms maintain they are not publishers as described in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act; they can prove it by resisting calls for “content moderation” which seek to suppress expression by conflating curation with the actual moderation of content.

Richard J. Shinder, “Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase brings free speech into sharp focus” at The Hill (April; 26, 2022)

Stay tuned.

You may also wish to read:

Michael Crichton would call Twitterheads “Scoundrels” Robert J. Marks: Why “Scientific Consensus” is an Oxymoron. Twitter should abandon consensus science policies, allow iron to sharpen iron and quit being one of Crichton’s scoundrels.