In 2016, 12 year old me found his new role model. Unlike most Americans, I encountered Elon Musk the man before Elon Musk the idea, meeting him not through his Twitter account or Joe Rogan appearance, but through a biography. I loved Musk because he was brilliant, fiercely optimistic, and wanted to change the world: everything I wanted to be. And unlike other biographies I had read, it was unfinished; Musk had more to do, though how much more I had no idea. Tesla has grown to one of the top corporations in the world and Musk is the world’s richest man. A rocket ship company is worth over 100 billion. But some things have gotten worse for Musk. He used to be a figure praised on all sides, by the Right for his made in America entrepreneurship, by the Left for his help against climate change, and by the visionary in all of us for daring to look towards the stars. A few criticized him for his overzealous promises, wearing out his workers, and a penchant for showmanship, but overall for someone who wants to be perceived like a Tony Stark (even appearing in Iron Man 2), times were good. But with his entry into the culture war, commenting on Twitter and Joe Rogan on Cancel Culture and Covid, views about Musk have polarized. Nowadays, “controversial billionaire” is Musk’s prefix and one side’s love for him is equaled by the other’s hatred. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter.
I’ve had to repeat that sentence to myself many times over the last few days, not because it wasn’t possible, but because it just feels like the most expensive meme of all time. This is Musk’s biggest gamble yet, not in a financial sense, but to see whether he can actually establish something new for social media. The task is extremely difficult, but many have wrongly doubted Musk before. Many have tried to extend the vision of constitutionally protected free speech online and have failed miserably, because the first amendment just isn’t the proper way to think about social media.
Every system of discourse falls somewhere along the free speech ladder which leads from the ground of complete free speech up to complete censorship. Our constitution places our democracy close to the ground, censoring incitement to violence, libel, and child pornography while allowing most other forms of speech, while China doesn’t allow speech that threatens CCP power. The same applies to social media. The top has forums on Reddit, where each contains a long list of rules which are enforced with frequent bans. At the bottom of the ladder are free speech platforms such as 4chan, 8chan, Gab, and Parler. These platforms often fell to the lowest common denominator of speech, dominated by trolls and harassment. The question isn’t free speech or no free speech, but where to draw the line.
Let’s start from the bottom and climb up. We start with the clear cases, the child abuse material and the ISIS decapitation videos. No one objects to these beings being banned. Next on the continuum are the obscenities and harassment, trolls spamming the N-word, doxxing, and attacking people in dms, which make the site too unpleasant for use. We’re already running into hairy cases. What constitutes harassment? When does criticism by a sufficiently large user become an invitation for harassment, cancellation, or doxxing? The same applies to misinformation. Most people would agree false news stories should be taken down, such as antisemitic conspiracy theories or libelous material. Do we ban accounts who spread those lies? What percentage of falsehood is acceptable? What if people don’t trust us to determine what is false, perhaps because we don’t share their political biases? Each reader will have the place they want to draw that line, where moderation becomes censorship. I propose that the question is fundamentally unsolvable. Any social media site that goes all in on free speech will collapse into the base vileness of the internet, while censorship will eliminate its role as a public square. In reality, it will be stuck forever in between, pleasing no one.
There’s a more realistic view among some conservatives behind all the rhetoric of free speech and the jubilation around Musk’s purchase. On some level they realize that arbitrary regulation of speech is inherent to social media, but they object to those who have power over that speech. They know the hard questions, but wished that the people thinking about them shared their values. In this sense, the battle over social media was about power, not more or less free speech.
Enter Elon Musk. Musk is only a conservative in the post-Trump sense of the word where a conservative is anyone hated by liberals. He used pure financial power to purchase the entire corporation and implement his free speech vision. I admire attempts to make change in an industry in dire need of it. I’m just pessimistic.