On the face of it, there is no direct connection between the US supreme court’s 2010 verdict in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission and Elon Musk’s bid to purchase Twitter, a publicly-listed company. Yet, in essence, the move by the world’s richest man to play arbiter of free speech aims to make global the fallout of that verdict: Money, and its use to promote particular interests, is seen as essential to free speech. Given the “poison pill” defence by Twitter’s board, Musk’s attempt at a hostile takeover may well be scuppered. But the larger questions that the episode has raised remain moot. Where do the greatest threats to free speech come from – the state, powerful individuals, or the AI-led architecture of social media? How should the limits — if any— to the right to speak be formulated?
In a nutshell, Musk’s views on Twitter echo those of politicians — often on the Right — that its content moderation tools are an attack on free speech. A self-described “free speech absolutist”, he has been at the centre of controversy before for allegedly misleading tweets that helped his business interests. In the aftermath of allegations of allowing elections to be manipulated, and Covid misinformation, social media sites have indeed increased regulation. Some of his suggestions — an “edit button”, greater transparency on how content is deemed unsuitable — carry merit. But his larger, somewhat messianic mission — that complete private ownership in his hands will solve free speech dilemmas — must be seen for what it is.
The rise of social media has given a handful of companies an inordinate amount of influence over politics and the public conversation. And, by eliminating the need for mediators between the powerful and the people, they also gave the former unfiltered means to amplify their agenda. In the aftermath of decisions like Citizens United, this has meant that individual actors can spend their way to crowd out other, contrarian voices. And the near-universal spread of social media giants has allowed platforms to become a propaganda frontier in global conflicts. This flies in the face of what were imagined as the conventional threats to free speech — ideologically-driven organisations and overly-powerful executives. Constitutionalists found that the most reasonable protection against those threats is a decentralisation of power, the system of “checks and balances”, and giving all citizens equal rights before the law. Musk’s solution, in terms of first principles, is the opposite: A concentration of power in his own hands.
This editorial first appeared in the print edition on April 19, 2022 under the title ‘Freedom, unfreedom’.
