“Freedom of Speech Absolutist” Elon Musk Acquires Twitter – Are Trolls and Fake News Now Starting to Rule the Conversation?

Freedom of Speech Absolutist Elon Musk Acquires Twitter Are

Musk plans to reduce control over Twitter, but unveils the algorithm it uses.

The richest man in the world, managing more than $ 270 billion in assets Elon Musk has taken over the community and microblogging service Twitter for $ 44 billion.

While Twitter isn’t one of the world’s largest social media platforms, it has become perhaps the most important platform for political debate. Twitter is believed to have played an important role, for example, in the chain of the Arab revolution that began in 2011 and in the attack on the House of Congress last year in Washington.

Twitter users, freedom of speech activists, as well as defenders of social norms are waiting for Musk’s future policies.

Musk himself is an avid Twitter user and has about 83 million followers. He has been criticized several times for his tweets. Among other things, he has insulted a man involved in a rescue operation in Thailand as a predophile, disseminated false information about the corona epidemic and criticized transgender people.

Musk, who calls himself a “freedom of speech absolutist,” has said he plans to raise freedom of speech on Twitter as far as possible under local law. Post moderation will be reduced.

At the same time, he would allow post-editing and post-blocking of bots leaving the masses of tweets. An algorithm that manages the order of priority of tweets would be made public and the decision-making power of advertisers would be reduced.

Conservatives happy, left disappointed

Twitter has sought to incite hate speech and false news. Some of the most perceived accounts have been closed. The best known of these is the former President of the United States Donald Trumpin account. Trump has reported (you are switching to another service)isn’t coming back to Twitter, but is focusing on its own new some platform, Truth Social.

Receipts containing incorrect information are marked as unreliable.

The political right and conservatives in particular have been in the teeth of Twitter moderators as a wealth of false news, conspiracy theories and outright hate speech have been removed. This way of speaking is now feared to increase if moderation is reduced or eliminated.

Musk himself has said he is very reluctant to exclude people from Twitter because of bad behavior.

– Musk says he will turn Twitter into some platform with no moderation. There have been several, and they do not work. Trolls take power, become too blatant, and drive people away, says analyst at consulting firm Enderle Group, interviewed by news agency AFP Rob Enderle.

Responsibility for advertisers?

Experts believe that more responsibility for the quality of Twitter is shifting to advertisers.

– Responsibility now rests on the shoulders of Twitter’s main advertisers. They need to make it clear that if Twitter turns into a scourge of anger, extremism and disinformation, they will leave, says Media Matters for America, director of media quality monitoring. Angelo Carusone To AFP.

Musk’s idea of ​​opening the algorithm doesn’t raise enthusiasm in the eyes of an expert. An open algorithm can only make disseminators of information more efficient, says Assistant Professor of Business Law at the University of Syracuse Kyle Garret-Wagner To AFP.

– It is a misleading comfort to think that “everything is okay if we know how everything works”.

Employees skeptical

Elon Musk’s activities as corporate director have been closely monitored. He is led by high-tech companies Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company.

Musk’s companies have also been considering how much time he has to run all the mega-attempts.

Analyst at OANDA Brokerage Edward Moya has found the Musk Twitter deal to be good news for Twitter shareholders, Reuters reports. However, he continued his email as follows:

– Tesla’s shareholders cannot be happy, as he now has to divert more and more of his interest in the electric car industry. [markkina]winning the competition.

He was the only dark-skinned leader on Twitter Leslie Milley summarizes Musk’s suspicions:

– Twitter plans to allow the child-man to take over the entire platform. I’m not sure if Elon knows what he’s getting. He is probably currently saying that owning Twitter is a very different matter than wanting Twitter.

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