Elon Musk says shopping for Twitter is about free speech. Does he know what which means?

Adjustments are coming to Twitter. And if we’re to consider Elon Musk, these adjustments will remodel the app within the title of preserving free speech on-line.

However what precisely does that appear like or imply in your account? Not even Musk is aware of but, and these adjustments gained’t be coming in a single day (Musk’s supply of $44 billion to purchase the corporate is anticipated to take a number of months to shut).

Even when we don’t know the main points, any potential change to Twitter — a platform utilized by almost 400 million individuals together with among the world’s most influential politicians, celebrities, and public figures — can have a serious influence. Already, many conservatives are hoping that Musk will reverse the corporate’s ban on former President Donald Trump (for now, Trump has said that he won’t return to Twitter if given the prospect, however that might change). On the similar time, some activists, civil rights leaders, and Twitter staff are apprehensive about whether or not Musk’s absolutist strategy to free speech will undo the progress Twitter has made previously a number of years to cut back the prevalence of harassment, hate speech, and misinformation.

“The concept of permitting extra speech feels like a really constructive factor,” stated Renee DiResta, a researcher on the Stanford Web Observatory. “The query is, how is [Musk] going to stability that with the popularity that content material moderation has at all times existed within the curiosity of neighborhood creation on-line?”

Musk has talked lots concerning the virtues of free speech, however he has no expertise managing that on a social media platform the place hundreds of millions of tweets are posted a day. The billionaire has supplied just a few clues, nonetheless, about what his total strategy to content material moderation on Twitter may appear like. In an interview on the TED conference earlier this month, Musk stated he plans to “err on the aspect” of leaving content material up — regardless of how controversial — and solely taking down content material that clearly violates the legislation, equivalent to an incitement to violence. This might be a stark departure from Twitter’s present content material moderation insurance policies, which, in recent times, have been aimed toward limiting hate speech, harassment, and different varieties of content material on the platform it deems dangerous.

Within the press launch this week about his acquisition of Twitter, Musk additionally instructed less-controversial adjustments to Twitter, together with “making the algorithms open supply to extend belief, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all people.” These are all areas that critics have referred to as on Twitter to enhance previously, and in some circumstances, the corporate is already working on enhancements. So we’ll must see whether or not Musk can execute and the way lengthy it should take. Lots of these anticipating him to take the helm need him to turbocharge function enhancements like authenticating all customers, and to dial again what they view as Twitter’s heavy-handedness in moderating individuals’s speech on-line.

In the meantime, Musk’s motivations for getting Twitter appear considerably difficult. Probably the most outstanding facets of this takeover saga is that Musk has publicly stated that, for him, it isn’t about creating wealth, it’s about selling free speech. This free speech slogan has earned Musk the help of many conservatives who really feel that Twitter and different social media firms unfairly discriminate in opposition to them. For Musk, it’s greater than that: This deal can also be a strategy to exert affect over a serious media platform that’s utilized by among the most vital politicians, celebrities, and leaders on the planet. Given Musk’s own public battle with the SEC over his tweets, proudly owning Twitter offers a priceless method for Musk to be the one to set the principles.

“If unsure, let the speech … let it exist. If it’s a grey space, I might say let the tweet exist,” stated Musk on the convention. “I do assume that we need to be simply very reluctant to delete issues.”

What Musk is speaking about displays the identical ideology on which social media firms like Twitter and Fb have been based: Let anybody say what they need on-line. However in follow, almost each main platform — and much more current free speech absolutist ones like Parler, Gettr, and Trump’s personal Fact Social — have put into place some rules against issues like hate speech, harassment, or inappropriate content material. That’s as a result of in the event that they don’t, these platforms are likely to devolve into cesspools of hateful, damaging, or spammy content material that isn’t good for customers or advertisers. For instance, when trolls flood somebody with focused harassment, they are often exercising their free speech, however their intimidation techniques are additionally doubtlessly discouraging that person from sharing their very own viewpoints.

“One of many issues that we’ve seen on each single social platform because the invention of the web is that some individuals’s free speech is deployed to attempt to stop different individuals’s participation and meeting,” stated DiResta.

In his TED interview, Musk did acknowledge some limitations to the concept of letting free speech stay up on a regular basis. He stated that, in some circumstances, Twitter may doubtlessly deprioritize content material to make it much less outstanding in individuals’s feeds.

“In a case the place there’s maybe numerous controversy, then you wouldn’t need to essentially promote that tweet,” stated Musk. “I’m not saying that I’ve all of the solutions right here.”

Twitter does have individuals in place to determine the solutions to those arduous questions. At the moment, Twitter’s moderation and security groups, which reportedly include hundreds of employees, assist make selections about when to downrank, label, or delete tweets that violate its insurance policies. It’s unclear what Musk plans to do with these groups, and a few on the firm are apprehensive he’ll in the reduction of.

There’s additionally a worry that Musk’s plan to “open up” Twitter’s algorithm may show troublesome. The concept is that in circumstances the place the corporate down-ranks sure tweets, Twitter ought to make it clear to customers what’s happening. As Musk put it in his TED interview, this is able to present customers that “there’s no behind-the-scenes manipulation, both algorithmically or manually.”

It’s an concept that, in idea, even a few of Musk’s critics on content material moderation agree with, however in follow, it wants much more fleshing out. For starters, Twitter has many algorithms, so which one is Musk referring to? Additionally, how would Twitter share its proprietary expertise with out giving out its secret sauce, thereby permitting its opponents to repeat its enterprise?

There’s nonetheless lots we don’t learn about how Musk would run Twitter. However what we do know is that his views on how a lot Twitter needs to be moderating content material are drastically completely different from his predecessors’ in operating the corporate. If dealt with properly, that might lead to a extra open, sturdy realm of dialog on one of many world’s most influential social networks. But when dealt with poorly, that might imply that issues like harassment, hate speech, and misinformation will solely worsen.