Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has triggered widespread criticism. Many people are panicked about the direction Musk will take the social platform. There’s a reason for alarm, but focusing solely on Musk ignores the crisis of monopoly control without accountability that characterizes much of the media in this country.
In recent decades, the notion of a public square, or the space available to debate, contest, experiment with and expand democratic discourse is a struggle fraught with challenges. The tech sector has remade our understanding of who can speak and who should be heard, in both good and troubling ways. That has given rise to algorithmic and automated boosting of everything from evidence-based research and investigative journalism to outright racist propaganda.
Social media has created new monopolists, such as Mark Zuckerberg, who leads Facebook and Instagram. But in reality, we’ve been living in a world of media controlled by a very few private actors — sometimes single families — for a very long time. Ownership of communication outlets continues to be consolidated into the hands of a few, which has had an incredibly harmful effect on politics, education and the way we narrate and understand our shared societal challenges.
