I’m fascinated by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. This is going to get interesting because while social media companies pretend to have community guidelines that are designed for the public good, they are private companies that can make arbitrary decisions… and they often do. There are always stories in the news about how certain perspectives are silenced, or questions about why some extreme groups are banned while others are not.
But in the end, they are private companies and they can make arbitrary decisions. Elon wasted no time making some of his own:
“Elon Musk fired key Twitter executives Thursday, one of his first moves as the official owner of the social media platform. According to reports from the New York Times, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other outlets, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde.” ~ TechCrunch
I suspect that he is going to make some very subjective decisions in the coming weeks, and while the narrative used to be, “we are looking out for you as best as we can,” Elon’s message will be more like, “I’m running a private company and I make the decisions.” He will say he is trying to ‘clean up’ Twitter, but his decision-making will be very personal and I’m not sure his perspective on public good will be transparent or based on public feedback.
I’m uncertain where he’s going to take Twitter, but I don’t think the social media landscape will look the same 6 months from now.
