High-indignation, low information commentary is... I feel, almost inevitable here.
Elon himself has not really, IMO, provided any information about his plans. His points about making Twitter free, bot problems and such are themselves low-information, high-indignation. The "business plan" regarding advertisers, revenue and such that we have seen so far is basically boilerplate. It reads like generic business school wordage, rather than an actual plan. We don't really know anything.
So... what we're left with is a detached, high-level commentary that is more about the commentor's broader views than Twitter or this acquisition specifically.
I suspect that ambiguity isn't just a communications strategy. I don't think there is a real, ready-to-use conceptual model for free speech on social media. Elon doesn't have one. These problems aren't Twitter specific. Facebook, youtube and other meta/alphabet sites have even deeper issues. Those sites are just less prone to meta debates about the platform itself.
Compare modern social media to Wikipedia, for example. Does Wikipedia uphold free speech? You could argue either yes, no or n/a. I would argue not applicable. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such. This despite being a high value target with far less resources than comparably important sites. Also despite being more user-controlled.
So... I think free expression related issues are artefacts of what Twitter is, not what the CEO of Twitter does. One giant, centralised, social media site will have the characteristics of a Twitter. The focus may shift around. The political orientation may shift left or right. Maybe content policies go from being US-centric to something else.
> Meanwhile, Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such
How could you tell? It's wikipedia (well, the information aggregate that includes wikipedia as a major component) that decides what is or isn't misinformation.
>Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such
wikipedia outsources the duty of figuring out what is misinformation or not by trusting secondary sources, which themselves can and quite often are wrong. And while sure, they do have far less politization as twitter I'm unconvinced that isn't just due to a difference in mediums, because there is a massive amount of politization under the hood there. Just go into any mildly controversial figure's talk page and you'll find out.
Elon himself has not really, IMO, provided any information about his plans. His points about making Twitter free, bot problems and such are themselves low-information, high-indignation. The "business plan" regarding advertisers, revenue and such that we have seen so far is basically boilerplate. It reads like generic business school wordage, rather than an actual plan. We don't really know anything.
So... what we're left with is a detached, high-level commentary that is more about the commentor's broader views than Twitter or this acquisition specifically.
I suspect that ambiguity isn't just a communications strategy. I don't think there is a real, ready-to-use conceptual model for free speech on social media. Elon doesn't have one. These problems aren't Twitter specific. Facebook, youtube and other meta/alphabet sites have even deeper issues. Those sites are just less prone to meta debates about the platform itself.
Compare modern social media to Wikipedia, for example. Does Wikipedia uphold free speech? You could argue either yes, no or n/a. I would argue not applicable. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has been far more resilient to misinformation, politicisation, and such. This despite being a high value target with far less resources than comparably important sites. Also despite being more user-controlled.
So... I think free expression related issues are artefacts of what Twitter is, not what the CEO of Twitter does. One giant, centralised, social media site will have the characteristics of a Twitter. The focus may shift around. The political orientation may shift left or right. Maybe content policies go from being US-centric to something else.