In the end, money happens. After a tumultuous and tumultuous courtship period, Twitter announced on Monday that it had hit a A $44 billion deal The mysterious billionaire Elon Musk to buy the famous microblogging company.
“I hope even my worst critic remains on Twitter, because that’s what freedom of speech is,” chirp Musk also pledged to add “new features, open-source algorithms to increase trust, defeat spam bots, and authenticate all humans.”
With Twitter moving toward private ownership, here are seven outside opinions on how the billionaire is stewarding the speech rights and safety concerns of the service’s millions of users.
David Kaye, director of the International Justice Clinic and co-director of the Center for Fair Elections and Freedom of Expression at the University of California, Irvine School of Law
“I would be happy to see Elon Musk do two things. First, he should stress the transparency part of his critique, and open Twitter to more disclosure about how he makes and enforces the rules. Second, he should disregard his parochial elementary school version of free speech – where he is the only speaker is all that matters – for the benefit of someone who understands the unique public role that Twitter plays not only for prominent speakers but for the marginalized. And for audiences. Should think of Twitter not as a public domain but as a public broadcaster and promote Twitter’s contribution to the public interest Strengthen its commitment to human rights standards, as Tweet He loves humanity. If he is the owner, he has to take himself out of his management role – let others make decisions based on human rights standards, which are the only decisions that make sense for a global platform, or else he will soon find that every decision made will be reinforced in the sense that he is the ultimate arbiter of online speech. And that, in the long run, would be bad for him, bad for Twitter, and bad for public debate.”
Eugene Voloch is Professor of First Amendment Law at the University of California
“I think Twitter should generally see its role as that of the phone company or email system: providing ways for people to talk to others (especially when they are actively looking for such conversations) without controlling what people say. We don’t want a phone company to cut lines The phone a political group uses to reach the public, even if the phone company thinks the group is spreading lies or bad ideas — similarly, I think, to Twitter and @RealDonaldTrump, or Twitter and Babylon Bee called a transgender admiral “Man of the Year” after time The Admiral “Woman of the Year”.
Danny Spitsberg, Principal Investigator at Turning Basin Labs, Contributor to goodtwitter.cluborganizer with #BuyTwitter
We’ve seen right-wing reactionaries say that [Twitter co-founder and former Chief Executive] Jack Dorsey has been watching the truth and needs to be held accountable. You also had Valerie Plame, Who wanted to buy TwitterUnleashing Trump and avoiding nuclear war for the sake of democracy. But neither of these examples was accountability or democracy – which has higher authority to serve your agenda, if interests coincide for a moment. What you think you want from a strong man is not going to happen. You are missing that middle class of deliberative ability. There are a lot of experiments that we can do now. Borrow from some time-tested models that are simple, but have not entered people’s imaginations – like some kind of board or jury. If you are trying to build true trust and security on a platform, one of the industry standards is to assume that everyone is being stalked. So the logical approach is to heavily overload input from people who are typical targets of harassment and hate speech. Let them evolve New code of conduct, terms or service. “
Robbie Soaves, Senior Editor at reason
Elon Musk’s best bet is to shift content regulation to individual users. Many on the right are frustrated with Twitter’s inconsistently enforced rules, regardless of whether they are enforced through algorithms or by the company’s human employees; on the other hand, Many progressives fear that lax moderation will lead to more misinformation or harassment. A less polarizing way forward is to give users more means to control their own feeds. If you have a low tolerance for discomfort, you should be able to turn on a setting that protects you It’s one of the worst that can appear on the platform. If you prefer the Wild West, there should be a place for you too.”
Ellen L. Weintraub, Commissioner of the US Federal Election Commission
“One of Twitter’s challenges in supporting democracy is to avoid spreading misinformation like wildfire. And content moderation isn’t the only way to slow misinformation. Forest fires not only require a spark to ignite, but also wind to fan the flames. On Twitter, algorithms are the wind.” Musk says he wants to unlock Twitter’s algorithms. But the effects of the algorithms don’t depend on whether you can find their source code on Github. It’s how they’re tuned in. Currently, social media companies’ algorithms exploit basic human coercion to respond to material That provokes outrage, as I wrote In the Georgetown Law Technology Review in 2020. These algorithms are commercial practice; It is not a question of freedom of expression. Better if Musk does a good job of bringing Twitter back to its roots with a chronologically driven timeline that includes content only from Twitter users one of them follows. Adding a little friction to the mixture would also be fine. It can reduce virality and increase thinking without burdening speech. This will allow Musk to bring Twitter closer to the “digital city arena where matters vital to the future of humanity are discussed” without accelerating the damage to the world’s democracies.Via Twitter)
Derek Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP
“Mr. Musk: Freedom of speech is great, hate speech is unacceptable. No place for disinformation, misinformation and hate speech on Twitter. Don’t allow 45 [former President Trump] to return to the platform. Don’t allow Twitter to become a petri dish of hate speech or lies that undermine our democracy. Protecting our democracy is of paramount importance, especially with the midterm elections approaching. Mr. Musk: Lives are at stake, and so is American democracy.” (via statement)
Brianna Wu, CEO of Rebellion PAC, former Congressional candidate and software engineer
“Three times the budget Trust and Safety TeamLet the professionals who understand how to tackle Twitter’s congenital issues with harassment do their job.”