Elon Blows Apart Liberal Myth On Ferguson
Posted: 11-25-2022 03:28 PM
Elon Musk, Twitter's new owner & a self-described "free speech absolutist," is trying to signal things will be different under his ownership.
Internal communications that Musk has been gradually revealing to a select few journalists show the company's former executives arbitrarily applied the platform's vague rules and surreptitiously suppressed content from disfavored accounts.
Yet the most disturbing aspect of the 'Twitter Files' is how a cozy relationship with federal officials gave government agents an unseemly and arguably unconstitutional role in decisions, allowing them to indirectly censor speech they deemed dangerous.
Musk faces a daunting challenge as he attempts to implement lighter moderation policies without abandoning all content restrictions, lest Twitter become a "free-for-all hellscape" that alienates users and advertisers.
One part of that mission should be relatively straightforward. Musk could make it clear that neither government bureaucrats nor elected officials have any business dictating what Twitter's rules should be or how they should be enforced.
Because government has the power to make life difficult for social media companies through castigation, regulation, litigation, and legislation, its "requests" always carry an implicit threat. It is therefore not surprising that Twitter and other major platforms have been eager to fall in line.
Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald laments that "dictating to social media companies what they can and can't platform, how they must censor, the role Democratic politicians play in all this, is just assumed as normal." Musk is well-positioned to challenge that assumption.
The First Amendment, which bars Congress from "abridging the freedom of speech," is pretty clear on that point. Instead of getting bogged down in a debate about whether Twitter has, in fact, been overrun by bigots on his watch, Musk should take a clear stand & tell Adam Schiff to mind his own business.
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