Elon Musk is Wrong - Twitter Is Not the Town Square
Twitter shouldn't desire to be the town square - there's a reason we don't hang out in town squares.
Elon Musk made headlines yesterday with his offer to buy Twitter and make it a private company. He’s given a few reasons for wanting to do that, but it’s his take on “free speech” that is the most concerning.
Yes, I’m putting that in quotes because the free speech he’s talking about has nothing to do with the First Amendment right to free speech. As many have pointed out, Twitter is not the government, there are no 1A rights.
He was quoted yesterday talking about Twitter and free speech:
Musk also said there should be very little moderation of what can and can't be said on Twitter, calling the platform the "de facto town square."
Let’s get something straight. If we had a town square where anyone, at anytime, could not only take the stage and speak, but actually follow other people around the town square and harass them no one would spend any time in the Town Square. If you’ve spent any time at all on Twitter, you know that these things are possible. You can not only shout to the people who choose to stand by and listen to you, i.e. your followers, but you can look around at the crowd and start directly communicating with any individual you feel like targeting, putting the onus on them to move away. (Replies, DM, etc.)
In a real-world town square this would be a horrible experience. No one would want to be there. Eventually the town square would be populated with only the loudest voices, the trolls who drove everyone else away.
That’s why we need to reconsider Elon’s idea of free speech expanding beyond the government. Companies like Twitter can’t be totally open and free for all. It would be completely self-destructive for Twitter to abandon all rules about what you can say and how you can interact with others on the platform. There are already a large number of people who choose not to take part in social media because it isn’t a place where they feel safe.
Making it a free for all is not going to attract those people to Twitter. It will drive more people away. That’s no way to run a business.