Elon Musk’s $45 billion acquisition of Twitter and his apparent plans to reorient the platform to what he calls “free speech” are disconcerting. It raises — given his enormous wealth and global business footprint, combined with the immense reach of the social media platform — questions of whether Twitter can be manipulated to serve his business interests and often quirky political agendas. Questions arising out of a revolving door relationship between social media managements and power brokers, and politics and business have come up in the past, such as in the Cambridge Analytica case. The regulatory and policy responses the world over are yet to match the scale of the problem and its real potential to undermine democracy and transparent governance in the corporate world. Twitter as a privately owned entity raises questions of accountability with respect to finance and the social repercussions of its posts. Not that a public listing assures that everything is clean — as seen in the case of Facebook — but the risks in the case of a private, influential social media entity is heightened. The question for governments the world over is to ensure that free expression does not turn manipulative and toxic, be it hate speech or misogyny and bad behaviour against women, minorities, and other marginalised groups.

In the past, companies such as Twitter and Facebook have faced a severe backlash for not doing enough to moderate inflammatory content posted on their platforms that could have led to social unrest. Dick Colostomy former CEO of Twitter himself admitted in 2017 that he should have done more to stop abuse on the platform. Over the past few years, Twitter had learned that its policy of letting people say pretty much whatever they liked was making the platform very toxic. Twitter has also created labels for misleading content. But despite these efforts, Twitter is filled with unacceptable content. Musk who calls himself a “free-speech absolutist,” could make it much worse, despite his recent assertion that curbs will be in place. His own record on Twitter shows that free speech without any accountability can be damaging. Musk’s idea of free speech could set a dangerous precedent as pages related to political dissent or a social campaign could be taken down, or left untouched, depending on how he perceives the situation.

Many countries, including India, have repeatedly told social media companies to be accountable for content on their platforms. In India, social media is largely unregulated. Perhaps, it is time to set up an independent regulatory oversight of social media platforms. This would place much greater scrutiny on how effectively the online platforms respond to harmful content to protect consumers, with powers for a regulator to enforce standards and act if these are not met. Countries are putting in place laws to prevent the misuse of social media platforms in their domestic politics. The European Union has passed a bill called the Digital Services Act, which will require sites to more strictly monitor material about pandemics, wars, natural disasters and other emergencies that governments deem to be disinformation. Similar rules are being considered in the US and UK. The worry is that under the garb of free speech, Musk, like Mark Zuckerberg, can continue to exercise great power to interfere in the political and social fabric of nations.

comment COMMENT NOW