Assuming Elon Musk and Twitter can iron out their legal differences in the next couple of days, he will take ownership of Twitter very soon. Will he wreck it by turning it into a disinformation playground, as some critics fear, based on his vow to lift the permanent ban on Donald Trump’s account? Or will he transform it into something that rivals the other triumphs in his portfolio, Tesla and SpaceX?
Knowing Musk, he could possibly do both, constructing a sewer that poisons you with lies and hate while making it an essential part of consumers’ lives. But you’ve really got to doubt that. Nobody, not even Elon Musk on his most perverse day, would buy a property for $44 billion — 20 percent of his net worth, by the way — and then rebuild it as the world’s largest sewage treatment facility. All the fretting about the “harm” Musk might cause as Twitter’s owner is misplaced: It will be in his financial interests to make Twitter as wholesome and welcoming a place as Starbucks, even if he changes the way the site works.
[As much as I like Shafer, he makes two very faulty assumptions in this argument. First, he assumes that a less-moderated Twitter would turn into a “disinformation sewer,” and second that people can’t figure out the difference on their own. Twitter has a number of tools for users to define their own parameters and experience on the platform, and despite what the media seems to wish, most people don’t just believe something they read on the Internet as if it were a brain infection. This is nothing more than a call to eliminate open debate and free association and replace it with government-controlled censorship. — Ed]
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