Twitter deal to elevate Elon Musk to new media mogul status

Elon Musk has made it clear that his primary goal in buying Twitter is to support unfettered expression and reduce user bans or takedowns of individual tweets. “It’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,” he said at a TED conference this month. 

Though his own record of tolerating speech that is critical of his interests is mixed, Musk added: “A good sign as to whether there is free speech is: Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like? If that is the case, then we have free speech.”

Musk has said he prefers to stay out of politics, but there are good reasons to suspect a Musk-owned Twitter would reactivate former US President Donald Trump’s account, say experts. Beyond saying at TED that he wants to be “very cautious with permanent bans,” Musk applauded the former president two years ago when Trump supported Tesla’s plans to reopen a California car factory during the Covid-19 lockdown. And in a few recent tweets, Musk appears to embrace the right-wing perspective on various cultural flashpoints. (“The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable,” Musk tweeted last week.)  

That’s why Musk’s bid feels like much more than just an economic takeover of Twitter. It’s also a political takeover, akin to Rupert Murdoch’s 1976 deal for the New York Post and 2007 purchase of the Wall Street Journal. The world’s richest person, who has said he “doesn’t care about the economics” of buying of Twitter, is aiming to acquire a different kind of power: control one of the world’s largest megaphones and the ability to impose his libertarian ideology on questions of moderation and misinformation.

And just as Murdoch is accused of using his media outlets to defend his business interests (see: The New York Post’s coverage of Google), Musk, too, will have not only ethical reasons but strong financial motives to allow some of these previously banished voices back onto the platform. 

The pressure will be even more significant outside the US. In 2020, Twitter said it would start labelling as “state-affiliated media” accounts belonging to some Chinese government officials and state-linked media outlets, in addition to ensuring that tweets from those profiles aren’t amplified. Suppressing government statements arguably contaminates the free-speech stew, but Tesla also has important business goals in China and needs the support of President Xi Jinping.

It all brings to mind Jeff Bezos’s purchase of the Washington Post in 2013, when Amazon.com’s founder promised not to meddle in editorial decisions of the newsroom. Musk is promising the opposite here — he’s going to get involved. So whatever he does to install his own ideology at Twitter will impact not just the social networks’ users and shareholders but all of us, feel experts.