Yesterday was the day that, after many years with the issue on the table, Twitter was finally sold to someone, and in this case it was the richest man in the world who decided to take over the platform.
Elon Musk bought Twitter using much of his fortune, $44 billion, a hefty chunk considering that Musk’s total amount of money is between $200 billion and $250 billion.
The fact is that Elon Musk says that he wants to transform Twitter into the pillar of freedom of expression on the Internet, and that is generating several concerns. Amnesty International has already spoken, with two words “Toxic Twitter”. In the same thread he says:
We are concerned about any steps Twitter may take to erode the enforcement of policies and mechanisms designed to protect users.
Among the main fears we have:
– Allow abusive speech against certain sectors of the population. Open bullying.
– That hate is incited, which is why Trump’s account was deleted at the time. By the way, Trump has already said that even if they let him back on Twitter, he won’t.
– That, as actress Jameela Jamil said, Twitter becomes an even more anarchic, hateful, xenophobic, intolerant and misogynistic space.
– That millions of users leave the network (there are already many who have done so).
These are reasonable fears, but we still don’t know exactly what “freedom of expression” means in the mouth of Elon Musk. It is one thing to express an opinion openly on any matter, another thing is to threaten and transform the network into hell for any decent person. I personally highly doubt that Elon Musk will make radical changes.
