Twitter has played the role of de facto public square for several years, and the debates and arguments held within that cyberspace are extremely consequential for public policy and public opinion. Over the last few years, they’ve fallen into a nasty habit of booting people off the platform. Alex Jones was banned in 2018, and just three years later a sitting US President. Many considered to be “right-wing” are regularly kicked off, censored, muted on the platform. Some issues aren’t even allowed to be discussed, namely, vaccine safety, heterodox viewpoints on the COVID pandemic, and others. It’s been a downward spiral of escalating censorship, and this bodes ill for society at large if the public square is corrupted so. Now Elon Musk steps in, buys a majority stake, and then offers to buy Twitter outright for $41 billion. The Establishment immediately begins circling the wagons. Vanguard increases its holdings to a majority stake. Saudi butchers decry Musk’s actions. Everyone currently making their millions off the Narrative goes on offense, because Twitter is the primary artery for that narrative. Allowing truly free speech on Twitter would destroy the narrative that relies so heavily on censorship to survive. The players who rely on a censorship-heavy Twitter will bring every weapon to this fight with Musk. So instead of prolonging the inevitable, Musk should soon sell is entire stake, and then find the best minds to create his own social media square. He should name it, simply, “public square”, and then use his massive wealth to build it into an arena for ideas that far outshines Twitter, which should go the way of MySpace and Xanga. I have a feeling that Musk will eventually do something like this, but hopefully sooner rather than later.
