Musk's free speech plans for Twitter to face challenges: expert
BNN Bloomberg
A social media expert says Canada and other global governments could scuttle Elon Musk's plans to moderate policing of Twitter in the name of free speech.
Canada and governments around the world could scuttle Elon Musk's plans to ease restrictions on Twitter in the name of free speech, say social media and anti-hate experts.
They believe Musk, a self-described "free speech absolutist" whose US$44-billion bid to take over the platform was approved by Twitter's board on Monday, will face several regulatory hurdles as he works to create "an inclusive arena for free speech."
Among the challenges are Canada's plans to reintroduce a bill aimed at reducing hate speech on online platforms like Twitter, and the European Union, which already warned Musk on Tuesday that the company must obey local content rules targeting harmful and false information.
"The broad sounding principles of free speech become much more complicated because one has to take into account questions around the types of moderation that are already happening ... and what different governments already do to put pressure on Twitter and how Twitter tries to respond to that," said Heidi Tworek, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a Canada research chair at the University of British Columbia.
"That will not just be a U.S. question. It will be an India question, an EU question, et cetera, et cetera."
Musk's bid to buy the platform still requires sign off from shareholders and U.S. regulators, but he has already tweeted that he plans to make the platform's algorithms open source to increase trust, defeat spam bots and authenticate all humans.
