“If unsure, let the speech exist,” Musk mentioned in an on-stage interview on the TED convention earlier this month. “If it is a grey space, I’d say, let the tweet exist. However clearly within the case the place there’s maybe plenty of controversy, you wouldn’t essentially need to promote that tweet.”

Below his possession, Twitter may unwind steps taken lately to make the platform extra palatable for its most susceptible customers, usually girls, the LGBTQ neighborhood and folks of coloration, in response to security consultants.

Past doubtlessly alienating staff who’ve labored on or help efforts to enhance content material moderation on the platform, undoing Twitter’s progress on “wholesome conversations” additionally dangers shedding customers at a time when the corporate has been preventing to reverse sluggish development. It may additionally flip off advertisers cautious of getting their advertisements run subsequent to dangerous content material. Whereas Musk has mentioned his bid for Twitter is “not a solution to earn money,” it’s nonetheless a enterprise and promoting stays its central income driver.

Although smaller than some rival platforms, Twitter additionally has an outsized affect within the on-line (and offline) world as a result of it’s in style amongst influential figures in media, politics and leisure, and since it has typically acted as a mannequin for different platforms on how one can handle thorny dangerous content material points. Thus, adjustments to Twitter’s insurance policies may have broader ripple results on politics and society.

Twitter has actually not been excellent on content material moderation points, however as Kirsten Martin, professor of expertise ethics at Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Enterprise, put it: “Twitter has constantly strived to be a accountable social media firm by means of not solely their content material moderation but in addition their hires within the space of machine studying ethics.”

“I’d be anxious as to how this could change Twitter’s values,” Martin added.

Twitter and Musk didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

A billionaire with a historical past of trolling

Musk has a combined status within the tech trade. He’s undoubtedly one of the vital bold and profitable innovators and entrepreneurs of this period, however he’s additionally somebody who has courted controversy, typically from his personal Twitter profile, the place he has 83 million followers.

Musk and others have identified that almost all of Twitter’s board has little expertise really utilizing the platform. The identical can’t be mentioned of Musk, an avid Twitter person with a rabid following who properly understands the dynamics of the platform. Nonetheless, Musk’s expertise of utilizing Twitter as an ultra-rich, White man, is inherently completely different than that of most customers, and particularly those that are girls or from different marginalized communities Twitter has tried to guard and who now could also be in danger if its moderation insurance policies are rolled again.

For his half, Musk mentioned on Twitter Monday: “I hope that even my worst critics stay on Twitter, as a result of that’s what free speech means.”

“There have been so many laborious fought battles over these [safety] insurance policies behind the scenes,” Wu, who now serves as govt director of a PAC for progressives, advised CNN Enterprise. “I’m extraordinarily involved Musk goes to roll again all of the laborious work that is been performed to fight hate speech on the platform.”

Musk’s plan for Twitter

“My robust intuitive sense is that having a public platform that’s maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extraordinarily essential to the way forward for civilization,” Musk mentioned.

Many followers of the corporate have speculated that if his takeover bid succeeds, Musk may restore the Twitter account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned early final 12 months following the revolt on the US Capitol. Such a transfer may have big implications for the upcoming 2024 presidential election as Twitter was a key instrument for Trump to rally his base, promote political allies and deride critics and unfold false and deceptive claims.

Musk mentioned in a press release Monday that he additionally needs “to make Twitter higher than ever by enhancing the product with new options, making the algorithms open supply to extend belief, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all people.”

A platform with extra work to do

Every of the key social media platforms have confronted strain from lawmakers, researchers and the general public to do extra to crack down on abuse, harassment and misinformation, and have taken completely different approaches with various levels of success. Twitter has in lots of instances been seen as a pacesetter within the trade when it comes to the way it handles problematic content material, and in being clear about its strategy and the success of its efforts. Most notably, Twitter was the primary of the key platforms to ban Trump for violating its coverage on inciting violence, pushing different platforms to observe swimsuit.

“It is not nice as we speak, however it’s higher,” Wu mentioned. “I feel folks do not perceive how a lot we’ve to lose.”

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt mentioned he is hopeful that Twitter stays a spot the place folks can converse freely whereas additionally feeling protected. “After I say protected and safe, I imply from bigotry, and the type of horrible trolling that makes it too poisonous for thus many people,” he added.

Others, nevertheless, are much less optimistic. Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Middle for Countering Digital Hate, mentioned that Musk has a “pretty unsophisticated view” of the components a platform should take into account when it “supplies entry for unhealthy actors to regular folks.”

Dangerous content material can have real-world penalties — the Myanmar Genocide and the Capitol Riot are two of probably the most egregious examples, however a deluge of harassment and veiled threats of offline hurt can severely impression customers on a person foundation, as properly — and social media platforms face a troublesome balancing act in contemplating how one can enable customers to talk as freely as doable whereas additionally defending them from such harms.

Whereas Musk has mentioned he needs to permit “all authorized speech on Twitter,” the strains for what’s authorized could be blurry and fluctuate from nation to nation — and might also be quickly to alter, as regulators house in on the harms social media platforms can have on customers, particularly younger folks, and civic processes.

“[Twitter has] began to speak in regards to the morality of what they do, in a method that suggests that they get it,” Ahmed mentioned. However with Musk, “it seems like … we’ve to go and re-educate one other type of billionaire, libertarian, man-child that [Twitter] is the actual world … I’d hope he can see the distinction between you already know, being a douche and being harmful.”

“Most people does not need to see extra conspiracy theories and extra harassment and extra hate speech,” mentioned Karen Kornbluh, a senior fellow and director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative on the German Marshall Fund. “There’s this [disconnect] between what he is saying he needs to do [to loosen content restrictions], which feels like a tradition conflict initiative, versus saying that he needs to extend their income. It does not appear so as to add up.”