Opinion: Here's hoping Twitter will champion integrity under Musk leadership

Elon Musk’s announcement last week that he’s purchased Twitter for $44 billion has brought equal amounts of joy and dread to the social media world, mostly depending on political affiliations.

Many Republicans are hopeful he’ll reinstate Donald Trump to the platform and allow free speech to flourish under a broad definition of truth.

Many Democrats are concerned he’ll reinstate Donald Trump to the platform and encourage misrepresentation, lies and insurrection.

Or something like that.

Here’s hoping he’ll simply turn Twitter into a community with journalistic integrity. There is evidence this could happen, which should agitate both ends of the political extremes.

National Public Radio reported last week that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO refers to himself as a “free speech absolutist” who has criticized what he sees as excessive moderation on online platforms.

“Musk has argued that social networks should not remove comments that, while offensive, are still legal,” Bobby Allyn wrote for NPR.org.

The problem with most social media sites has always been a lack of responsible oversight. It’s fine to allow users to proclaim “Penelope the Politician is a sorry so and so.” It’s not fine when users add “Penelope is a convicted felon, having robbed churches and cut off babies’ heads” when that last part is not true.

Musk’s qualifier about “legal” comments suggest he’s at least vaguely aware of libel laws that even responsible free-speech absolutists embrace because they help champion credibility.

Credibility is what’s missing from many distributors of information these days.

Our newspaper Facebook page recently cut off comments, in part, because false statements were posted that we could neither excuse nor afford to defend in court. And we don’t want to use our limited resources to oversee outlandish commentary that has proven financially favorable for Facebook, but not for us.

Musk has described himself as “half Democrat, half Republican” and “socially liberal and fiscally conservative.”

He downplayed COVID-19 concerns and said lockdowns were “fascist.” He also supported 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and his concept of a universal basic income.

He is a complicated fellow.

Some think Musk is a libertarian, others suspect he’s just wishy-washy. He mostly calls himself an independent.

Whatever he is, his venture into Twitter is an opportunity to bring credibility, as well as profit for investors, to a social medium we all know is here to stay, warts and all.

Let’s hope he uses his considerable resources to make responsible free speech great again.

— David Stevens

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