Elon Musk's Twitter stake purchase is bad for free speech?
Elon Musk just bought a $3 billion stake in Twitter Inc., because when you’re the world’s richest human you can toss billions around like poker chips. This may be just another piece of performance art from Musk, who has alternately endorsed and pooh-poohed Bitcoin to great effect. He’s also taken to Twitter to hype altcoins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, while simultaneously warning followers: “Don’t bet the farm on crypto!”
“True value is building products & providing services to your fellow human beings, not money in any form,” he cautioned, which may be easy advice to give when your net worth is $273 billion, your electric vehicle company is surging and you can shoot your own rockets into space.
So maybe we should take Musk’s Twitter investment as more of the same from the guy who has pondered the meaning of life while sipping whiskey and smoking weed during a podcast and once mysteriously claimed he had “funding secured” to take Tesla Inc. private. But I suspect there’s something more serious informing Musk’s decision to invest in Twitter, even if he revels in buffoonery: Maybe he wants to bring Twitter to heel.
Consider the poll he conducted (on Twitter, of course) 10 days ago. “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” it says. “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” More than two million users responded to that question, with 70.4% of them voting “no.”
A day later, Musk, who fashions himself a “free speech absolutist,” was on the social media platform again: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?” This time he didn’t bother with a poll, asking: “Is a new
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