Freedom of expression, according to Elon Musk | Twitter

Elon Musk offered to pay $54.20 for each Twitter share. /Getty Images

Photo: Chesnot

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On April 25, 2022, the board of directors of Twitter y Elon Musknow the richest man in the world, according to Forbes magazine, reached a sale agreement in which Musk will pay US$44,000 million for the company ($54.20 per share), becoming the sole owner of one of the social media in the world, probably the most relevant when it comes to political discussion.

In what seems like a long time, but has actually been only a few months, Musk He went from criticizing certain content moderation practices of the platform (as a user of the network itself) to buying it.

The first step in this movement was to acquire around 9% of the shares of Twitter, which for a few weeks made him their main shareholder. At that moment Musk He used his profile on the social network and, through surveys of his followers, asked what changes the platform should make and had the board of directors offer him a position. First Musk accepted it, but later, knowing that with this he could not have more than 15% of the shares, he declined and made it clear to us that his plans went beyond owning just a percentage of the platform.

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Finally, and given the possibility that the board of directors of Twitter adopt measures to avoid a hostile purchase of shares by Muskhe made an offer that the board unanimously decided to accept.

Once the decision is known, Musk He sold part of his shares in Tesla, the electric car company of which he is the owner and director, and thus secured some funds that allow him to cover the transaction. The rest of the money was initially to be obtained through bank loans in his name.

However, in the last week other investors have come to their support. Among the most controversial were the Saudi prince Al Waleed bin Talal al Saud, the sovereign investment fund of Qatar and the cryptocurrency market Binance.

For Twitterthis business results in the privatization of the company -which in this context means that its shares will no longer be publicly traded on the stock exchange-.

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Musk it justifies its move in defense of freedom of expression, without explaining much about how and why its few partners in the purchase include funds from people and rulers of countries where this right is not precisely respected. In addition, another of the partners that allowed this transaction to be real, is one of the most important players in the cryptocurrency market: Binance, of whom we can remember his adventures last year when he not only openly promoted bitcoin, but also urged his followers to buy a currency called dogecoin, which was originally created as a joke.

Binance’s presence among investors could put this operation under the microscope of the US foreign investment regulatory authority.

Many things are speculated, from the influence that China could gain over the social network, due to Tesla’s dependence on inputs produced in that country, until everything is simply about making the company more productive to sell it again in three years.

Why buy Twitter?

publicly, Musk has expressed that all this, supposedly, does it with the main purpose of making content moderation policies more lax and transparent.

Among the proposals of Musk everything from interesting and doable topics to fizzy ideas are included.

For example, when it says that the source code of the algorithms that moderate and select the content of what is seen in the application must be made public, it is talking about elements of transparency about which the company already has a history of complaints and Projects.

Also read: What is Elon Musk’s plan for Twitter?

However, other proposals such as controlling the bots (programs that publish content automatically) that dirty debates by flooding the social network with messages for or against an idea or person and make Twitter a “politically neutral” platform are much more difficult to materialize and it is difficult to understand how it will do so.

Content moderation is a very broad topic that goes through public interest laws -such as those related to child abuse content-, those of intellectual property or those that the social network welcomes to resolve moral dilemmas such as defining what is sexually inappropriate.

This debate has the focus on the political discussion and the actions it took Twitter in the past on broader issues of disinformation. It is a reaction to having Donald Trump’s account removed, to the hunt for accounts promoting the Qanon conspiracy theory after the takeover of the US Capitol by Trump supporters in January last year or to Twitter’s attempts to keep information anti-vaccines or that glorifies violence outside of its platform.

The proposal of a Twitter “politically neutral” Musk It has been very well received by a part of the American right that has a high perception of censorship in post-Trump social networks, which has led them to create their own social networks, where they can express more extreme positions and where conspiracy theories circulate. more farfetched. Even Trump, when asked about his possible return to Twitter once he is in the hands of Musk, said that he was not interested and that he better stay in the “Truth”, alluding to his new social network called Truth (truth, in English) .

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The idea of ​​having little moderation and control of bots It has already been tested, all you have to do is go through forums like 4chan or 8kun to see what it usually ends up with. Both platforms are known for their volume of content that is pornographic, allusive to Nazism or that promotes conspiracy theories that are taking the world into a kind of modern obscurantism with reptilians on board.

Although freedom of expression is fundamental in the construction of democracy, as the same Musk has said, it is important to understand that amplifying certain messages can lead to undesirable situations, where fanaticism ends in aggression and acts of discrimination in the virtual plane and, as this is also real life, not infrequently violence goes to the plane physical. Precisely, as happened in the capture of the Capitol in the United States.

In a Twitter which is already chaotic, where debates such as the legalization of abortion or the Black Life Matters movement generate an unhealthy level of aggressiveness, where attacks between people or between people and bots are constant, Musk’s proposal lands in complete uncertainty.

If everything materializes, we will see how far the limits of freedom of expression go according to Muskwhich in the best style of cyberpunk literature and, in a contradictory way, will have total control over how the more than 300 million people who use the platform every month at this time consume and produce content, especially because they use it to hold debates current politicians.

* Researcher Fundación Karisma.

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