For Twitter’s 200 million-plus daily active users, it’s been a long, strange week and a half. Elon Musk, billionaire, CEO and Twitter superfan, spent $44 billion on a much-contested, overvalued and at times dubious acquisition of his very favorite corner of the internet. Besides firing Twitter’s top leadership and half the rest of the staff, exactly what he plans to do with his new toy is murky at best.
Except for one thing: Among Musk’s many antics and public pronouncements since acquisition talks began in April, he has consistently cited the obliteration of content moderation on Twitter as a primary motive for the purchase.
For those in the social media industry and those, like me, who study it, what Musk views as content moderation appears remarkable for its narrowness. It focuses mostly on takedowns of controversial claims, language or account holders, ignoring the moderation work that removes destructive spam and bots. To social media experts, Musk’s disdain for Twitter’s rules comes off as naïve, and his desire for near-absolute “free speech” on the website as a misguided impossibility.
