Freedom and Twitter

How the bird isn't free

Recently, one of the big news stories concerning freedom of speech and expression in social media has been Elon Musk’s tweet concerning the supposed free speech upgrade of Twitter. Indeed, the change from public to private ownership may be seen as freeing it from the restrictions of being a publicly owned company to one being owned by Musk himself.

However, it is more likely he was referring to the platform being freed from the posting constraints leading to banning of certain users (notably Donald Trump). The bird may be freed but not process-free in doing so and the top bird hasn’t yet clarified how the process would work. More importantly as concerns free speech is the question whether this process makes speech less restrictive or does it simply constrain it differently compared to the former terms of reinstatement?

Musk also reiterated in his tweet that Twitter will create a content moderation council composed of representatives with "widely divergent views." Score up for a freer bird.

Free of course has a monetary meaning and this has recently been discussed in various tweets about free vs. subscription aka Twitter blue. One is free to pay the $8 or not but many see this as a limitation where freedom to reach a wider audience on a priority basis comes for a price. Moderation would presumably be the same for blue members but “being held to a higher standard” is certainly a possibility. One wonders if this higher standard could involve an evaluation of “small talk” considering a recent tweet by Musk questioning the “legality” of small talk. Would paying users need to tweet on more important topics to reach their intended audience. How does this make the bird free?