Twitter faces the ‘nightmare’ of being forced into free speech
Free speech is anathema and public enemy #1 to the bi coastal secular progressive urban elites. They love using gatekeepers so that media, traditional and social can silence the middle and working class rubes from flyover heartland America from freely expressing their religious and political beliefs and opinion. Turley is right about what he says below.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Twitter faces the ‘nightmare’ of being forced into free speech
Twitter’s board of directors gathered this week to sign what sounds like a suicide pact. It unanimously voted to swallow a “poison pill” to tank the value of the social media giant’s shares rather than allow billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company.
The move is one way to fend off hostile takeovers, but what is different in this case is the added source of the hostility: Twitter and many liberals are apoplectic over Musk’s call for free speech protections on the site.
Company boards have a fiduciary duty to do what is best for shareholders, which usually is measured in share values. Twitter has long done the opposite. It has virtually written off many conservatives — and a large portion of its prospective market — with years of arbitrary censorship of dissenting views on everything from gender identity to global warming, election fraud and the pandemic. Most recently, Twitter suspended a group, Libs of Tik Tok , for “hateful conduct.” The conduct? Reposting what liberals have said about themselves.
The company seemingly has written off free speech too. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was asked how Twitter would balance its efforts to combat misinformation with wanting to “protect free speech as a core value” and to respect the First Amendment. He responded dismissively that the company is “not to be bound by the First Amendment” and will regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.” Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”
Not surprisingly, selling censorship is not a big hit with most consumers, particularly from a communications or social media company. The actions of Twitter’s management have led to roller-coastering share values. While Twitter once reached a high of about $73 a share , it is currently around $45 . (Musk was offering $54.20 a share , representing a 54 percent premium over the share price the day before he invested in the company.)
Notably, Musk will not trigger the poison pill if he stays below 15 percent ownership of the company. He could push his present stake up to 14.9 percent and then negotiate with other shareholders to take greater control.
Another problem is that Twitter long sought a private buyer under former CEO Jack Dorsey. If Musk increases his bid closer to $60, the board could face liability in putting its interests ahead of the company’s shareholders.
Putting aside the magical share number, Musk is right that the company’s potential has been constrained by its woke management. For social media companies, free speech is not only ethically but economically beneficial — because the censorship model only works if you have an effective monopoly in which customers have no other choice. That is how Henry Ford could tell customers, back when he controlled car-making, that they could have any color of Model T “as long as it’s black.”
Of course, the Model T’s color was not a critical part of the product. On the other hand, Twitter is a communications company selling censorship — and opposing free speech as a social media company is a little like Ford opposing cars.
The public could be moving beyond Twitter’s Model T philosophy, however, with many people looking for access to an open, free forum for discussions.
Censorship — or “content modification,” as used in polite company — is not value maximizing for Twitter, but it is status enhancing for executives such as Agrawal. It does not matter that consumers of his product want less censorship; the company has become captive to its executives’ agendas.
Twitter is not alone in pursuing such self-defeating values. Many in the mainstream media and many on the left have become some of the loudest advocates for corporate censorship. The Washington Post’s Max Boot, for example, declared , “For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.” MSNBC’s Katy Tur warned that reintroducing free speech values on Twitter could produce “massive, life- and globe-altering consequences for just letting people run wild on the thing.”
Columnist and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich went full Orwellian in explaining why freedom is tyranny. Reich dismissed calls for free speech and warned that censorship is “necessary to protect American democracy.” He then delivered a line that would make Big Brother blush: “That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.”
The problem comes when you sell fear for too long and at too high a price. Recently, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) agreed with MSNBC analyst John Heilemann that Democrats have to “scare the crap out of [voters] and get them to come out.”
That line is not selling any better for the media than it is for social media, however. Trust in the media is at a record low, with only 7 percent expressing great trust in what is being reported. The United States ranks last in media trust among 46 nations .
Just as the public does not want social media companies to control their views, it does not want the media to shape its news. In one recent poll , “76.3% of respondents from all political affiliations said that ‘the primary focus of the mainstream media’s coverage of current events is to advance their own opinions or political agendas.'”
Thus, an outbreak of free speech could have dire consequences for many in the political-corporate-media triumvirate. For them, the greatest danger is that Musk could be right and Twitter would become a more popular, more profitable company selling a free speech product.
Poison pill maneuvers are often used to force a potential buyer to negotiate with the board. However, Twitter’s directors (who include Agrawal and Dorsey) have previously limited their product to advance their own political preferences. This time, federal law may force them to fulfill their fiduciary duties, even at the cost of supporting free speech. The problem for the board will occur when the “nightmare” of free speech comes in at $60 a share.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley .
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Its remarkable how closely Turley adheres to right wing ideology no matter what the topic is.
Do you have anything other than trashing the author?
Its sad to see a one time somewhat respectable law professor resort to defending conspiracy nuts, crackpots and far right extremists.
what in this article is any of those things?
Because it’s better to use content control and gate keeper censorship to silence those we disagree with rather than engage their speech with more speech as the founders intended.
Since when did the 1st amendment and the concept of free speech become right wing ideology? We’ll take it as ours though….
The minute that they thought that the 1st amendment applies to privately owned companies.
It does when private companies act as agents of the government to silence and censor views and opinions opposed by or disliked by said government or its representatives or they take a side in political matters for one and silence the other.
No, it doesn't. It's privately owned. They are free to make any rules they see fit. Sorry!
But if they work in league with government to silence and censor the opposite then both can be sued for relief under the 1st amendment. Justice Thomas has already expressed interest in seeing the Supreme Court explore this matter.
Free speech is a right wing concept?
Ok.
Musk's idea of free speech would be a nightmare, that's true. What I don't get is why don't the cons just go to Parler, GETTR, TruthSocial, etc. Lot's of other places to go. Oh wait, they are all failures.
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None of this fantasy is going to come true if Twitter flat out refuses to sell to Musk, or, changes the rules, (which they have already done).
Musk isn't dumb, and he has money, why not just create his own 'Twitter'? Because he knows, like the rest of us, it will turn into a right wing echo chamber and with no one to argue with, it will fail, just like all the others.
Musk simply intends to take Twitter back to what it was intended to be like it was before it became a content control censorship tool.
Privately owned, they are entitled to make whatever rules they want. If they wish to censor hate speech, they can. What you are advocating for is called socialism.
so they can make whatever rules they want???
lol!
As long as they content control and censor Christians, conservatives, 2020 election skeptics, man caused global warming skeptics, believers in literal creation and global flood and angels, and those opposed in any way to the fascist Fauci cult of control freaks, they will be happy. The whole point of gate keepers, “fact checkers”, etc is for no other reason that to content control and censor viewpoints that they are intolerant of and have no interest in debate or dialogue with those points of view. That’s why they are so threatened by free speech at Twitter and hate it so much.
Unless Musk successfully buys Twitter. Then government through the Biden regulatory regime will be all into interfering with what a private company does
The whole "They can make whatever rules they want" is a farce at best and an out-and-out fib at least.
Can you even imagine the outcry and hysteria from some folks if Twitter said "No more white people allowed" or "No more black people allowed"?
Twitter did not want to allow free speech nor did it want it's algorithm examined..
Any contention that a major gazillion dollar publicity traded social media site is going to go unmoderated for political reasons is preposterous. Nobody wants that. Not the users! Not advertisers! Not stock holders!
I’m sure that Musk knows what he’s doing. I am a small shareholder of Twitter and I’m sure that there are others that bought shares like I did because he did with the intent of aiding him in a hostile takeover over the board’s objections to the contrary. As to Musk and his free speech speech absolutist ideals, he’s right and I’m sure he knows how to implement that within reason as well.
I see no particular reason to assume that Elon Musk wants to be a champion of free speech. I have no doubt he will fight hard to support his own speech, but what about the speech of others? Especially those who disagree with or offend him?
I’ll take him at his word when describing himself to be a free speech absolutist and answered issues just like you raised during a presentation around the time he announced his takeover bid. Elon Musk is a quirky libertarian and it seems free speech is a huge priority for him.
Do you know what that means?
It’s preferable to idiots and asses in the msm and democrat party who think that free speech is the biggest threat to democracy and the worst jerk of all who said that for “democracy to survive we need more content moderation, not less”. How utterly imbecilic and moronic an idea that is. Max Boot…
🤬
So, if they went the absolutist route, you know then people can call for death threats. I could call you every name in the book while telling you to do horrible things to yourself and you couldn't even report it to management.
So go ahead and get what you ask for. You would be crawling back here to where you could flag.
That wasn’t happening on Twitter through 2017 and there will still be rules so that one can’t break the law or yell fire in a crowded theater, or wish someone dead. That didn’t happen before Twitter became a censorship and content controlling company.
Why? Have you seen him defend speech he disagreed with or that personally offended him?
Yes in his TED talk around the time he was about to begin his offer to buy the company. The issue is why is it your default position to question his sincerity and honesty on this matter? Do you favor censorship and content control by the establishment?
Feel free to elaborate and support that idea.
No, that’s actually not the issue. I said I see no reason to assume he is a genuine champion of free speech. That truth remains. I still have yet to see a reason.
That’s a dumb question since I have been taking the opposite position.