Elon’s Bid to Buy Twitter for the Sake of Democracy and Civilization
By The Editors
Elon’s Bid to Buy Twitter for the Sake of Democracy and Civilization

Elon Musk spoke Thursday at TED2022, where he was of course asked about his bid to buy Twitter. He said he will define free speech based on: “Is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like?”

“I think it is very important that this be an inclusive arena for free speech,” Musk said. “Twitter has become the town square. It is really important that people have the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely, within the bounds of the law. One thing I believe Twitter should do is open-source the algorithm.”

“And make any changes to peoples’ Tweets, … that action should be made apparent. So there is no kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation algorithmically or manually.”

“If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it is my fault, 100%. I think there will be quite a few errors. I hope it is not too miserable, but I think it is important to the function of democracy, of the United States as a free country, and many other countries, and to help freedom in the world, more importantly than in the U.S.”

Civilizational risk is decreased if Twitter, the more we can increase the trust in Twitter as a public platform.”

“This is not a way to make money,” he said. “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I don’t care about the economics at all.”

A+
a-