Elon Musk, Twitter & Free Speech

Since Elon Musk officially took over Twitter on October 27th, a lot has been said about the future of the platform and the wider implications this will have on society.

The legacy media has been especially critical, claiming that Musk’s “free speech absolutist” attitude will give way for the rise of misinformation.

What I find ironic in this statement is that the same media that is protected by the first amendment, freedom of speech and the press, is literally advocating for less freedom of speech when it comes from sources they cannot control.

The establishment media has been very comfortable for a long time controlling the narrative and lately, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, has been cracking down on differing points of view, comfortably claiming that they are doing this in the name of stopping misinformation.

Not only has the legacy media been complacent in the slow erosion of the fundamental principle of liberal democracies- freedom of speech and thought, but they have been doing so in collusion with the government.

Twitter in the past has been criticized for heavily censoring or shadow-banning certain figures on the political right, simply because they don’t agree with their takes. What is more, there were no clear guidelines on what those safety policies were and it all seemed like it was done at the whim of the Twitter employees.

I believe that Musk taking over Twitter will be a good thing for many reasons:

You do not battle out bad ideas by censoring them

Censorship has never worked in the past. No side in the history of humankind that has ever resorted to censorship had the winning argument. When big social media companies or governments resort to censorship, it usually means they are scared of something, they are trying to hide or suppress something.

Instead, the best way to deal with any kind of misinformation or controversial opinion is to let people speak and then let other people refute them. Facts, data and ideas speak louder than manipulation or censoring.

Exposure to different ideas is healthy