Unease grows as US conservatives rejoice at Musk’s Twitter purchase

“We’re back”, tweeted Tucker Carlson ahead of his nightly programme on Fox News in America on Monday, just hours after the sale of Twitter to billionaire business Elon Musk was announced.

Carlson is one of the foremost figures in conservative media in the United States and his tweet related directly to the ending of his temporary suspension from the social media platform after he supported comments by others last month about US assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine, America's highest-ranking openly transgender official.

It could also have been a metaphor for the views of many on the right in America. They believe that, with Musk in control, the censorship of their views on Twitter as they see it – and which they ascribe to political bias on the part of liberals in the tech industry – will come to an end.

It is an article of faith among many in conservative circles that big tech, whether it be Twitter, Google, Facebook or Apple, does not treat them fairly.

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And, for course, the elephant in this room is the former president Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter last year on the grounds of inciting violence in the wake of the January 6th riots by his supporters at the Capitol in Washington.

Conservatives in the US argue that the ban on Trump hindered free speech.

One of the rising stars of the American right, Florida governor Ron de Santis, on Monday maintained that big tech companies, including Twitter, “have gone from open platforms to being enforcers of the narrative”.

Carlson on his programme on Monday summed up the views and hopes of many on the right at the prospect of a Musk-run Twitter. He said Twitter would in future be privately held and Musk would determine what was allowed on the platform.

Pivot point

He said this was “big news” and maybe even a “pivot point” in the country’s history. “Elon Musk does not agree with the rest of the billionaires in the tech industry. He believes in free speech.”

Another figure on the American right, controversial Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was also rejoicing over the takeover of Twitter by Musk and at what it might mean.

Greene’s personal Twitter account was permanently blocked last January over misinformation surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. On Monday, she forecast that, with Musk running the show, her Twitter ban would not remain in place for long.

“Prepare for blue check mark full scale meltdown after @elonmusk seals the deal and I should get my personal Twitter account restored,” she said.

Carlson argued that Twitter was the smallest of the big tech giants that control the flow of information and comment. However, he maintained that access to Twitter for those with alternative (or more right wing views) would give them an audience.

“After today, you will be able to post your dissent in a place where other people might have a reasonable chance of seeing it. In other words: You will have a chance to change other people’s minds,” he said.

The hopes of conservatives are based around previous statements of Musk, including comments made on Monday at the time of the $44 billion takeover.

"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," he said in a statement.

Musk has gone further in his views in earlier public comment. He declared himself a “free speech absolutist” and signalled, for example, that his satellite service, Starlink, would not block Russian state-run news sources that were cut off by some social media platforms following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“If in doubt, let the speech exist,” Musk said in an on-stage interview at a TED conference in Canada earlier this month. “If it’s a grey area, I would say let the tweet exist. But obviously in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”

But while he has signalled his preference for a less-moderated Twitter, Musk has not set out details of how precisely the rules would change.

Unsettling

His comments on free speech and the joy of conservatives at what it all could mean, has unsettled others. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that there were serious worries among Twitter staff at an internal company town hall held shortly after the sale to Musk was announced, both at the potential implications on its existing liberal culture and at how Musk’s views on free speech could impact on the way it currently operates.

The Washington Post said current senior executives seemed to be uncertain as to what will happen.

It reported that, at the staff meeting, current chief executive Parag Agrawal was "far less clear about the future, particularly on questions about whether Musk would change how the company polices speech and enforces its rules online – and even whether the company would maintain its business model of running advertising long term".

“Agrawal said leadership ‘will continue to spend time with Elon to learn more, and as we learn more, we will share it will you’. He also said his team would seek to better understand what Musk’s ‘aspirations and ambitions might be’ so that executives could figure out how to ‘best collaborate’ with the new owner.”

The report said a central concern of employees was that Musk would attempt to break down safeguards to protect everyday users that staff had built over many years.

It said engineering teams at Twitter had spent years building tools to fight spam, disinformation and hate speech under an initiative known as healthy conversations. This health conversations initiative, ironically, stemmed from an earlier acknowledgement by senior management of the dangers that could be posed by an open free speech policy.

Free speech

In January 2011, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone set out its original philosophy in a manifesto entitled "The tweets must flow".

“Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential. Some tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, and some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don’t always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.”

By 2018, another co-founder and then chief executive Jack Dorsey acknowledged its failure to deal with toxicity on its platform and said it wanted to promote "health conversations".

He said the company has “witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns and increasingly divisive echo chambers”.

This is the dilemma that Musk will have now to confront as he weighs his views on the rights to free speech against the worries about what this could bring with it in its wake.

Musk himself is not unknown for tweets that, to say the least, could be considered offensive. In fact, to some critics, Musk himself is a troll.

He described a British cave explorer who helped to save 12 Thai schoolboys trapped inside a cave as the “pedo guy”, then maintained the expression was common in South Africa, where he grew up. The cave explorer later sued for damages but lost a defamation case against Musk in Los Angeles in 2019.

Last November, Musk hit out at American senator Bernie Sanders who had tweeted that the extremely wealthy should pay their fair share (of tax). Musk replied: "I keep forgetting you're still alive."

And this week, he was accused by former Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo of disparaging staff at the company despite a clause in the sale agreement preventing him from doing so while he completes the deal.

The relevant clause states: “The equity investor shall be permitted to issue tweets about the merger or the transactions contemplated hereby so long as such tweets do not disparage the company or any of its representatives.”

However, Musk tweeted in support of criticism of a number of Twitter executives, including its top inhouse lawyer, Vijaya Gadde.

“What’s going on? You’re making an executive at the company you just bought the target of harassment and threats,” Costolo tweeted, adding in another tweet: “Bullying is not leadership.”

“What are talking about? I’m just saying Twitter needs to be politically neutral,” Musk tweeted in reply.

Moderation

However it is not only staff who are watching closely as to what the future of Twitter might mean with Musk at the helm. On Tuesday, the European Commission appeared to suggest that rather than a more free-wheeling, anything-goes, free speech-dominated ethos, greater moderation of content may be needed in Europe in future.

Internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, said: "Be it cars or social media, any company operating in Europe needs to comply with our rules – regardless of their shareholding."

The EU this month approved the new digital services measures, giving European governments new powers to take down illegal content, and demand platforms do more to tackle harmful content. This will require companies like Twitter to submit annual reports to the EU detailing how they are handling systemic risks posed by harmful content such as racist comments or posts that promote eating disorders.

In an interview with the news agency Bloomberg this week, Breton said: “Large platforms like Twitter, they will have to have more moderators, they will have to make sure that all the moderators will speak the language in the country where they operate.”

In the US, asked about Musk and Twitter, the Biden administration said it would not comment on any particular business transaction. However the White House said no matter who was running Twitter, President Joe Biden had "long been concerned about the power of large social media platforms, the power they have over our everyday lives [and] has long argued that tech platforms must be held accountable for the harms they cause".

It said the president had been “a strong supporter of fundamental reforms to achieve that goal, including reforms to Section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act which protects online platforms from liability for their users’ posts and allows them to moderate users’ content without being treated as publishers], enacting antitrust reforms, requiring more transparency and more”.

Human rights groups also have not been shy about their concerns at the Musk takeover of Twitter and a potential new focus on absolute free speech.

Amnesty International said the last thing that was needed was for a Twitter "that wilfully turns a blind eye to violent and abusive speech against users, particularly those most disproportionately impacted, including women, non-binary persons, and others".

Donald Trump

As Musk embarks on the process to take Twitter fully private over the next three to six months, undoubtedly the first question he will face in any interview is what his plans are for the existing ban on Trump.

The former president, for his part, said this week he did not plan to return to Twitter even if permitted by Musk. Trump said he would commence from next week using his own new Truth Social platform – which has had a rocky start to life, to say the least, with many claiming difficulties in accessing the app.

The conservative grass roots may be delighted if Trump returned to Twitter. However Republican politicians, hoping to capitalise on Biden’s poor poll numbers in next November’s midterm elections, may have a different view. Some fear that Trump bombarding his 88 million followers with daily updates on his current grudges and grievances could frighten away potential middle ground voters and leave senior Republicans being chased around constantly for comment on the latest outburst from the former president.

US political website Politico said Republican Party insiders were unanimous in the hope that Trump "stays the hell away from Twitter" lest he sink their chances at flipping the House of Representatives and the Senate.

But nobody believed his denials that he wanted to go back to Twitter, it added.