3 May 2022

How Elon Musk might shift Twitter content moderation

Mark MacCarthy

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter raises the issue of social media content moderation in an especially urgent form. Despite the regulations looming in the United Kingdom and the European Union, to which Musk’s Twitter must conform, no legal requirement will prevent Musk from running Twitter according to whatever editorial policy he chooses to adopt. It’s his candy store.

How is this possible? Can it really be true that the content moderation policies of such a powerful forum for public discourse should depend on the whims of its new billionaire owner? Evan Greer, a political activist with Fight for the Future, speaks for a lot of us when she says, “If we want to protect free speech online, then we can’t live in a world where the richest person on Earth can just purchase a platform that millions of people depend on and then change the rules to his liking.”

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