Twitter is likely to be in billionaire businessman Elon Musk’s hands by Friday. That means, so will we all, regardless of whether any of us personally use Twitter.
Friday is court-mandated closing date for Musk’s beleaguered, belatedly regretted and definitely overpriced $44 billion (€44 billion) Twitter acquisition, so costly that one of the world’s richest people couldn’t fund it solely through his personal wealth. Musk had to piece together a mix of massive institutional loans and money from billionaire friends alongside his own funds, raising puzzling questions about how business-wise, versus arbitrarily, lucky such corporate titans are, unless they truly don’t care if they lose a random billion.
Who would possibly have seen the purchase of financially-struggling Twitter as a good investment in 2022, given the desperately uneasy global political climate, the pending expansion of international regulation, the threat of corporate liability and alarm about the ridiculous overvaluation of many technology companies?
If Twitter sinks, another platform will rise to replace it, and face the same urgent quandaries over management, moderation, hate speech, censorship, free speech and ownership
Unless, say, you just want to control an enormously important domain of speech and debate, one now so influential that it doesn’t even matter how many of us use it?
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Most of us don’t. Only a fifth of Americans are on Twitter. By contrast, Facebook numbers are the reverse – only a fifth of Americans do not have a Facebook account. Likewise, in Ireland, about a fifth of people are on Twitter, compared with about half using Facebook or Instagram, with TikTok fast closing in.
Yet, how many times a week – a day – are politicians and other high-profile individuals tweet-quoted? How often does any public figure (barring a celebrity) pass comment via their Insta, Facebook or TikTok account?
For better or worse (sometimes, very much worse), Twitter is easily the most important global communications medium for public comment. With its instantaneous reach, it has largely replaced the press release or briefing for the public figure who wants to get a reaction, an opinion, a preen or a bully-pulpit exhortation out to the masses. Need to float a policy trial balloon? Tweet it. It doesn’t matter that only some tiny fraction of a fifth of a national population is likely to ever see it because the media heavily populates Twitter, scanning it for insta-quotes. Public figure tweets will be amplified for that reason alone.
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And yet, despite this particular media focus, “free speech” discussion and posturing in the enclave of wealthier democracies, Twitter is also extremely important to vulnerable communities, to small-scale activists, to developing democracies and to those in oppressive, highly restrictive countries.
The platform is not just about what a Kardashian, a Sunak, a Micheál, a Rihanna or even an Elon thinks. It’s also where networks of activists distribute crucial information during times of unrest and crackdown; where video evidence of suppression and abuse is distributed; where important issues are surfaced; where the powerful are questioned.
Musk has famously – pointedly – claimed the promotion of “free speech” as a reason for his pending Twitter purchase, signalling this means bringing back banned, extremist voices in the United States and Europe, not enabling greater challenge to and transparency from his own business or political circles, much less to the powers in oppressive countries.
Public response, though, has been exasperating: the discussion of the problems of social media, and of Musk’s Twitter purchase, are articulated almost entirely in the context of the wealthy West. The “solutions” offered – be they vague notions of “free speech”, or requiring national identification to open social media accounts, or giving governments extensive oversight powers – might seem on paper to work for various corners of privileged populations, but ignore their dire effects and further oppression of the less privileged and more vulnerable people worldwide (and at home).
Multiple-company CEO Musk’s intentions towards Twitter may well mean the platform crashes like a Tesla in auto-drive, while the driver’s attention is elsewhere
As for the billionaires? There’s nothing new in the ultrawealthy owning media outlets. But the reach of print, television and cable, local or national, is as nothing compared to the immediacy, the ruthlessness, the global spread, the viral manipulation, the algorithmic opacity of online platforms. Now, billionaires, largely tech billionaires, influence and control most online, and some traditional, speech platforms – Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos with financial support from others, like Oracle’s Larry Ellison. With TikTok, there is concern about Chinese state sway. Individual and state influence and ownership must be addressed.
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Multiple-company CEO Musk’s intentions towards Twitter – perhaps he will cut three-quarters of its workforce, perhaps take it private, perhaps let “free speech” rip – may well mean the platform crashes like a Tesla in auto-drive, while the driver’s attention is elsewhere.
It hardly matters. If Twitter sinks, another platform will rise to replace it, and face the same urgent quandaries over management, moderation, hate speech, censorship, free speech and ownership.
But as society – read, the US and EU – tries to make platforms more open and accountable, we cannot forget these are global platforms. We must stop defining issues and offering solutions in ways that reflect only our own concerns, when – as with the climate crisis – the effects often have the most severe consequences for those in nations to which we continue to pay the least attention.
