Twitter’s board of directors has announced that it will accept the takeover offer from Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. This surprising capitulation, is it beneficial for users?
Musk is offering $54.20 per share, giving the company $44 billion in total price — one of the highest prices ever paid for a business acquisition.
Morgan Stanley and other financial institutions they will lend $25.5 billion to Musk, who will contribute about $20 billion of his own. About the bonus amount that he expects to receive from his company Tesla for having met the objectives of the last quarter.
Musk has assured that his intentions as owner of Twitter are “unlocking its extraordinary potential to become the platform for freedom of expression around the world.” He so specifies in the letter that he has sent to the current president of the company.
This belief in the potential of a social network to become a model of unlimited freedom of expression is based on a idealistic approach to the social networks that have existed for a long time.
In reality, for Twitter to have a single owner, whose own tweets have been false, sexist, interestedand probably defamatoryposes a risk to the future of the platform.
Will there be a radical change?
Musk’s move may be perceived negatively because it gives him unprecedented power and influence over Twitter. He himself has already pointed to some changes that he would like to make to the platform, such as:
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Restructure the actual management teamas he claims not to trust them.
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add a edit button to the tweets.
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Limit current moderation control over tweet content: use temporary bans instead of outright bans.
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Explore a transition to a paid model like Spotify’s, where users can pay to avoid ads more intrusive.
Previously, just after becoming Twitter’s largest single shareholder in early April, Musk had affirmed: “I don’t care about the economic part at all.”
Although the bankers who are going to lend him the $25.5 billion to make the purchase are likely to be concerned. Musk will feel that pressure if he doesn’t make Twitter profitable. Although he says his priority is freedom of expression, advertisers on the platform, for example, may not want to see their products advertised alongside an angry extremist tweet.
In recent years, Twitter has launched a range of measures for the content governance and moderation. For example, in 2020 it expanded its definition of what constitutes a “damage”to guide their treatment of content on Covid-19 that contradicted authoritative recommendations.
Twitter ensures that all changes made to date in its approach to content moderation “They are at the service of public conversation” and focus on the misinformation and misleading information. He also states that he responds to the experiences of abuse either incivility that users face.
But this implementation of measures to moderate content can also be interpreted as an effort to maintain its reputation, after much negative publicity.
The idea of the ‘public square’
In any case, and whatever the real reasons for these attempts to moderate content, Musk has publicly taken issue with these platform tools.
It has even gone so far as to label the platform as “a de facto public square”. A naive statement, to say the least. The Microsoft communications expert already warned Tarleton Gillespie: To think that social networks can function as true open spaces is a fantasy, since they must control the content at the same time that they claim not to.
Gillespie even suggests that platforms should be required to moderate, to protect users from their dialectical enemies, and remove offensive, toxic or illegal content. It would be the only way to present your best face to new users, advertisers, partners and the general public. The hard, arguesis having the necessary critical capacity to know “exactly when, how and why to intervene”.
Platforms like Twitter cannot stand as public squares, especially since only a small part of the public uses them.
In addition, public squares are regulated implied and explicitly through the behaviors that regulate our social interactions in public, and are backed by the possibility of resorting to an authority to restore order if disorder arises. In the case of a private business like Twitter, the final decision rests with one person: Musk.
But even if Musk were to implement his particular ideal of a public square, it would possibly be a personal and free version of this concept.
Giving users more leeway in what they can say could create further polarization and further harden discourse on the platform. This in turn will probably discourage advertisers. Certainly a problem in Twitter’s current economic model (90% of their income comes from advertising).
Freedom of expression: for everyone?
twitter is enough smaller than other social networks. However, research shows that it has a disproportionate influence as tweets are especially fast and viral, and are reproduced in traditional media.
The tweets that stand out for each user are the result of an algorithm that seeks to maximize exposure and clicks, and are not intended to enrich the user’s life with interesting or respectful points of view.
Musk has also suggested that he will open up access to the algorithms used by Twitter. An improvement in transparency. But once Twitter is a private company, how much transparency it wants to maintain will depend solely on what it decides.
Ironically, Musk has accused the CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), Mark Zuckerberg, of having too much control over the public debate.
And yet Musk himself has tried in the past suppress the points of view of those who have been critical of him.
There is little evidence on which to believe that he really intends to create a free and inclusive space on Twitter, and even less to think that the changes he makes are in the common interest.
John HawkinsSenior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra Y Michael James WalshAssociate Professor in Social Sciences, University of Canberra
This article was originally published on The Conversation. read the original.