What's next for Twitter after Elon Musk's takeover? Social media experts weigh in
CBC
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has completed his acquisition of Twitter, dissolving its board of directors and floating ideas on how to change the platform — and now some social media experts are weighing in on what the Musk era will do for democracy and free speech through the platform.
Musk, who is now the sole member of the company's board, finalized the deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion US last Thursday, and almost immediately fired the company's CEO, CFO and head of legal.
In an open letter to Twitter advertisers, Musk said he bought the company because "it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence."
But "Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said without consequences," he added.
"He has a lot of ideas around free speech and not a lot of them match up with what most of us in a valid democracy agree with," Jesse Miller, lecturer at the University of Victoria's faculty of education and founder of the social media education company Mediated Reality, told CBC's On The Coast host Gloria Macarenko.
As Musk's ideas for content moderation unfolds, according to Alfred Hermida, the billionaire will be bound to the regulations and the countries where Twitter operates.
"The European Union has made it very clear to Elon that they have strict rules on hate speech and other forms of speech like that and if you break those rules, you will be held liable," said Hermida, professor of journalism at the University of British Columbia's School of Journalism, Writing, and Media.
Both say Musk's changing narrative about Twitter's policies is part of the problem.
"What Elon Musk says one day is not the same thing as he says the next day because he's also tweeted out saying they're not going to make any changes to their content moderation policies," Hermida said.
On Tuesday, Musk tweeted a revamped verification process for Twitter users, where anyone can get verified with a blue tick beside their account name as long as they are willing to pay $8 a month, with the "price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity."
In exchange, verified users will be able to post longer messages and videos, receive fewer ads, and get prioritized in searches and mentions, which Musk believes is "essential to defeat spam/scam" that he says plagues the system.
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