With the subject being extremely contentious, the nuances in grappling with the exercise of free speech have been lost. (File)At 9:19 am on October 28, Elon Musk announced that he has solved the world’s free speech problem. Musk, talking to his audience on and about the social media giant Twitter, sent out the message — “The bird is freed”. Musk officially bought out Twitter on October 27.
This Friday, he began mass retrenchments in a bid to cut costs and make Twitter financially viable. Employees were apprised of this via an unsigned, company-wide email, and the company has shut offices temporarily. Along with the infamous sink, he seems to have carried in his personal brand of eccentricity and chaos through the doors of the Twitter headquarters.
In a similar vein, since acquiring Twitter, Musk has made various claims about how he plans to run Twitter, bringing into focus free speech and online “freedom” on the website. These flag three critical issues about the digital ecosystem today.
The first issue is “free speech” online. Even with regulations in place, Twitter remains opaque in its operations. This has been a consistent complaint across the political spectrum. It is in this context that the company’s new CEO calls himself a “free speech absolutist”.
Now, as the owner of the platform on which he leads the fight against “censorship”, Musk has to walk a tightrope – the negotiation between this “indiscriminate” free speech, and ensuring Twitter remains a profitable business. This is well illustrated in the contrast on his own Twitter feed. “Comedy is legal on Twitter again”, juxtaposed with a message to advertisers that reads “Twitter will not be a free-for-all hellscape”.
This tension is going to be crucial in determining the fate of Twitter — and by extension, of dialogue online.
What is “free” speech? More importantly, what is Musk’s definition of free speech? With the subject being contentious, the nuances in grappling with the exercise of free speech have been lost. Musk seems to be reaching for a simplistic resolution to a layered issue. Is there no such thing as hate speech? Is “free speech” a stationary concept with no distinctions between different kinds of speech? And if so, how does one ensure that the space does not indeed turn into a “free-for-all hellscape”? If he can sustain conversation on the website — regardless of the quality of said conversation — advertisers will likely have little reason to step away. This is cause for concern for users and democracies the world over. With the incentive of profit not under threat, impunity in online-speak will likely get bolstered further, given Musk’s attitude on the subject.
The second issue of “freedom” that Musk’s tweets bring up is whether users should have access to digital platforms “free” of cost. Twitter indeed has a problem when it comes to transparency. Verified accounts, for instance, are awarded to people on arbitrary grounds. On November 1, Musk tweeted, “Power to the people! Blue for $8/month.” The mandate now is, as he says in another tweet, “You get what you pay for.” But this is not a solution to the issue at hand. Instead of addressing the digital hierarchy that the blue tick enables, he has just shifted the axis to a different kind of hierarchy – one governed by class. Charging users $8 a month to have verified accounts on a platform that has given a voice to the voiceless (intentionally or not) effectively marks the end of Twitter as we know it. Additionally, verified accounts serve a function larger than Musk would have you believe. The “peasants and lords” analogy Musk used in his tweets has some truth to it, but verification ultimately serves as a security feature — impersonators, scammers and predators are all kept at bay with famous/reputable users’ accounts being verified. The freedom to browse a secure and accountable online space will be compromised with this shift.
On October 30, alluding to the hostility between Twitter executives and Musk, the latter tweeted, “Wachtell & Twitter board deliberately hid this evidence from the court. Stay tuned, more to come …” (with an attached image of a confidential exchange between Twitter executives). This brings up the question of “freedom” from regulation and fiduciary accountability. Now, more than ever, the question of who gets to regulate Big Tech is relevant. Elon Musk fired the top executives and the board of directors of Twitter as soon as he took over the company – effectively making him the sole arbiter on matters in the company, at least for now. Twitter has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange as a result of Musk’s acquisition of the company. For a platform that is as central to politics and policy today, this lack of checks and balances is alarming.
In India, digital governance has been deployed by the state repeatedly to control, influence and discourage dialogue in the digital ecosystem. The Personal Data Protection Bill, the Telecom Draft Bill have all awarded the state arbitrary and disproportionate power over these platforms and users on it. The lack of appropriate frameworks to tackle questions that now permeate well beyond the digital space puts all of us in danger — through the lack of accountability on the state and tech giants and on users. The most viable option here is cross-national digital governance. It will allow multiple perspectives across nations to be accommodated or, at least, heard, and allow us to reach a general consensus with which to approach digital regulation in an era where laws are struggling to keep up with Big Tech.
No matter how well Musk markets this purchase he got strong-armed into as a move that has “freed the bird” and all twitteratis, it is simply not true. Issues of digital regulation and free speech online require more than a “cool” billionaire who thinks he has the fix.
sukhmani.malik@expressindia.com