Last month, Elon Musk shocked the world by suddenly becoming Twitter’s largest shareholder — then announcing that he had reached a $44 billion deal to purchase the social media platform in its entirety.
Musk — who also serves as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — has promised to “make significant improvements to Twitter” and has polled his followers on whether Twitter “rigorously adheres” to the principles of free speech.
In interviews with The Daily Wire, several free speech experts and leaders of free speech advocacy groups suggested how Musk can maximize the new Twitter’s ability to protect users’ First Amendment rights.
‘A Major Shift’
Experts agreed that Musk’s purchase of Twitter changes the dynamic around government and corporate censorship of free speech.
Kara Frederick — the director of the Tech Policy Center at the Heritage Foundation — told The Daily Wire that she is “hopeful” Musk’s public pronouncements in favor of free expression bode well for Twitter’s future.
“It shows he at least understands the fundamentals of the problem,” she noted. “The fact that the Twitter board had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this conclusion says all you need to know about the state of free speech on digital platforms.”
Frederick, who formerly led Facebook’s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program and spent six years as a counterterrorism analyst at the Department of Defense, pointed out that governments are by no means the only actors able to encroach upon Americans’ liberties.
“Private, monopolistic corporations should be held accountable if they violate these liberties to the degree that Big Tech has violated them just during the past year,” she argued. “Recommended remedies should acknowledge this truth and reflect the imperative to protect Americans’ natural rights against abuses flowing from the consolidation of power—whether by the government, private corporations, or a combination of the two.”
“Fundamental to this imperative is an understanding that our rights are God-given, enshrined in our founding documents such as the Bill of Rights… and that our government exists to preserve them for its citizens, too,” Frederick added. “Second, when private companies actively work with the government to censor the speech of American citizens, they become quasi-state actors and should be treated as such.”
Greg Lukianoff — the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education — called Musk’s takeover “a major shift.”
“It marks the first time the public really got to see how successful the multi-decade-long campaign to taint the term ‘free speech’ has been,” he explained. “For most of my life freedom to express your opinion was considered an unalloyed good, particularly on the Left. But free speech has been framed by many as ‘problematic’ on campus for 40 years now.”
Lukianoff — who authored New York Times bestseller “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure” — added that some progressive academics began opposing First Amendment rights in the decades after the modern free speech movement launched at Berkeley in 1964.
“Nominally it was in the name of going after hateful, racist, or sexist speech, but it proved to be an excuse to justify the new speech codes that, despite constantly being defeated in court, restrict the free exchange of ideas on campus,” he said. “Now, true believers of ‘enlightened censorship’ have moved on to positions of influence in the culture, and they believe that freedom of speech is part of the problem, not a necessary component for progress.”
Lukianoff observed that many opponents of Musk’s takeover are mimicking the tactics of campus leftists by expressing “unattributed concerns about how this will allow ‘hate speech’ on Twitter.”
Meanwhile, Cherise Trump — the executive director of Speech First, which works to protect students’ First Amendment rights on college campuses — noted that “free speech is once again at the forefront of political debate.”
“My concern is that the actual concept of free speech is now being characterized as undesirable,” she said. “Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is a threat to the increasingly dogmatic view that ‘free speech’ is bad. The severely negative response in some corners to Musk’s aspirations for open discourse evidences that one of the most fundamental and basic concepts we built this country on is now a political football.”
“It’s no secret at this point that Twitter’s algorithms targeted certain ideas and commentary and placed limitations on the exposure they got. This type of censorship leads down a dark path.”
‘The Left’s Meltdown’
In explaining leftists’ negative reaction to Musk’s takeover, Frederick noted that the outrage has revealed “exactly what they think about free speech.”
“Musk’s fight to take down Twitter’s censorship regime has exposed the platform’s leaders as anti-free speech ideologues more interested in silencing opponents and preserving their power than free expression or fiduciary responsibility,” she explained. “The Left’s meltdown has made clear that this fight is about free speech and whether a select few control the flow of information for millions.”
Lukianoff characterized the Left’s opposition to free speech as a “slow motion train wreck” that began on college campuses decades ago.
“Freedom of speech was the friend of activists in the ‘60s and was triumphant in the ‘70s. However, as the activists went from protesters to those in positions of power, they began to see freedom of speech as a burden and a nuisance, and as the older free speech stalwarts on the Left retired or were replaced, the newer generation of free speech skeptics took control,” he said. “The professoriate leans heavily to the Left — administrators even more so — but with often less appreciation for freedom of speech and academic freedom.”
These officials have accordingly “taught younger people that free speech is the argument of the bully, bigot, and robber baron,” Lukianoff added.
‘Make Twitter Show Their Work’
How can Musk improve Twitter? According to Frederick and Lukianoff, Musk and other company leaders ought to be transparent and even-handed in their approach to the platform’s rules.
“Musk should commit Twitter to radical transparency. His announcement he will let President Trump back on Twitter is a signal that times are changing at the company,” Frederick said. “Make Twitter show their work when it comes to content moderation — past, present, and future. We can’t count on billionaires as free speech white knights in other cases, so platforms need both technical solutions and policy options.”
Lukianoff said that Twitter must refrain from engaging in viewpoint discrimination.
“Rules governing content should be clearly defined and consistently applied. And when it comes to restricting harassment or incitement, Twitter should make use of the actual definitions of these terms that exist in American case law,” he offered. “Something Twitter should police more are true threats. People can grow skeptical about free speech promises when doxxing and threats of violence aren’t punished.”
“But Twitter also needs to reframe the way people think about free speech,” he continued. “There’s an idea that the goal of free speech is to come to a platonic, objective understanding of truth, when, in reality, a huge advantage of free speech is simply knowing what people really think.”
‘It Is Orwellian’
Days after Musk announced his attempt to purchase Twitter, the Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security unveiled its Disinformation Governance Board. Although the experts were hesitant to draw a direct line between the two events, they found the timing — and the administration’s overall approach toward wielding governmental power — to be disturbing.
“This follows a pattern of the Biden administration’s willingness to turn the national security apparatus inward on dissenting Americans,” Frederick said in reference to the Department of Justice’s willingness to target parents of public school students and create a domestic terror unit focused on anti-government ideologies. She also pointed toward a Department of Homeland Security bulletin calling the spreading of “mis- dis- and mal-information” on social media a “terrorist threat.”
Lukianoff similarly remarked that the timing of the announcement was “uncomfortable.”
“Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement a couple of years back that Facebook should not be the ‘arbiter of truth.’ There were a lot of people who unjustifiably gave Facebook incredible flack for that,” he commented. “The thing that stands in the way of perfectly policing disinformation is that none of us are omniscient — but an awful lot of us think we are. An open-ended mandate to police disinformation grants those in power an expansive ability to police speech and opinion. I will definitely be keeping a close eye on how that develops.”
Trump commented that Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board “depends on a disinterested public that wants to only hear ideas they agree with.”
“The administration is hoping the conservative invocations of Orwellian cliches fall on deaf ears,” she said in reference to conservatives branding the entity as the Ministry of Truth, in reference to George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
“But it is Orwellian, and we must remember that George Orwell’s stories were based on the world around him.”
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.