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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. You probably know by now that yesterday the world's wealthiest person bought one of the biggest social media and communication platforms, taking the company private and assuming full personal control. What could possibly go wrong? Yes, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and other major companies, including some that are in business with the US government, and a major free speech advocate - he calls himself - decided he also wanted to own Twitter, so he bought it.

Social media is supposed to democratize the flow of information away from elites, and in a way it does. At the same time, just as wealthy individuals of the 20th century like William Randolph Hearst and others tended to own the country's newspapers, so now we have Elon Musk owning Twitter outright. On how this acquisition went down, earlier this year Musk took about a 9% stake in Twitter, making him the bigger shareholder in a publicly-traded company. He was offered a position on the board before announcing that wasn't good enough, he would go for a complete and total takeover. Musk met with Twitter's board of directors on Sunday to discuss his ability to finance the purchase.

He is already, of course, an influential figure on the platform with more than-- did you know that he has 83 million followers? With a network worth reported at $249 billion from Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX and other things, he is said to be the wealthiest person on earth, so I guess the $44 billion price tag for Twitter is, by his lights, a subway swipe. He also calls himself a free speech advocate, but what does that mean? Well, when Musk asked users on a poll if they wanted an edit button, more than 73% replied yes. What is an edit button on Twitter? What would it be? We'll talk about that.

Misinformation can and does flourish on social media. We know that, and lots of people are worried that a "free speech evangelist like Musk, with him at the helm any hope of controlling misinformation and disinformation on Twitter might be lost."

Here to speak with us about the future of the platform and the implications of these changes are Faiz Siddiqui, a technology reporter at The Washington Post, and Dr. Nahema Marchal, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Zurich and a communication scholar working on the relationship between digital technology, politics, and democracy. Faiz and Dr. Marchal, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Dr. Marchal: Thanks, Brian.

Faiz: Hey. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Faiz, why does Elon Musk, as far as you can tell, really want Twitter? I mean, to judge from the media conversation over the last day, it's mainly so he can unban Donald Trump, [chuckles] but I'm sure it's much more complicated than that. What does he want with Twitter?

Faiz: Twitter does build on a portfolio for him that includes a company focused on obviously electrifying the automotive fleet, revitalizing the space program. Musk sees Twitter-- we all probably see it as a bit of a pain or sort of a cesspool at times. Musk has expressed that he sees it as the defacto town square. There is a question about what his view of free speech is and where that absolutism might end. He does want to delete the spambots, for example. I don't know. Musk has expressed a view of Twitter that suggests he wants to clean up some of what he has experienced on Twitter. This is just something within reach for him that he can build on his portfolio with and experiment with cleaning up, in his view.

Brian Lehrer: What was that you said about the spambots? Put that in non-tech speak for people who don't know what that is.

Faiz: There is just this proliferation of fake Twitter accounts. Twitter accounts that don't have people behind them that pedal cryptocurrency scams or other types of scams. Maybe fishing where you click on a link and you enter your password to a website and it's a fake version of the website, and they've now stolen your password. There are all of these bots. There are a lot that actually impersonate Musk, and so they will be pedaling these cryptocurrency scams or whatever to try to log into people's cryptocurrency accounts and steal their money.

Musk has said he wants to get rid of those types of bots. It's a priority for him. That's a key example of how Musk is reacting to what his experience of Twitter is with this acquisition.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Must be great to have that luxury. Professor Marchal, how do you think the sale to Elon Musk will affect the way information is presented on the site? Will disinformation be able to flourish more? What Faiz was just describing makes it sound like he wants to clean it up in certain respects, and yet we have this political conversation around letting some of the right-wing disinformation providers back on.

Dr. Marchal: I think that's a very good question, and really gets to the core of the paradox in Musk's whole endeavor here. I think one really important thing to bear in mind is that Twitter is really not operating in a vacuum here, and so there's a number of things that are going to limit or make some of his proposed suggestions a little bit difficult. For example, there's very good reasons why a platform like Twitter has policies around things like disinformation. One of those reasons is that as platforms get bigger and bigger and bigger, things like spambots or scams or just content that people don't want to see start popping up.

It's almost a universal role that as platforms get bigger and as they scale, you just need moderation to happen. I think that's something that Elon Musk is going to be faced with, is having to acknowledge that. There is just some level of moderation that he cannot rid himself of even if he wants to push for more free speech. The second, I think, element that's super important to bear in mind is he's working against legal constraints that are already in place. To give you a brief example, the EU just passed what's called the Digital Services Act, which literally requires platforms to take down reported content that is illegal in a very short period of time or face enormous fines.

That's going to have a very quick but also tangible impact on, again, how much speech Twitter can get away with not moderating. Certainly, speech that is not legal will have to be tackled in one way or another.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls, questions, or comments on Elon Musk buying Twitter. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Dr. Marchal, let me stay with you for a minute. You've been studying how social media platforms do or don't react to public criticism. Musk famously does not respond to negative feedback from the press. I think that's his practice and reputation, though there's an argument to be made that he does respond quickly to feedback from his customers, so thinking about Tesla feature updates, for example. Might Twitter become less responsive to its users or the outside media, especially in this particular case where a lot of the users of Twitter are members of the media?

Dr. Marchal: Of course, it's hard to tell at this stage, but one thing that Twitter cannot get away from is the fact that their most important assets are their users at the end of the day. No users, no user base means no ad revenue, and so it's really not in the company's best business interest to turn into a kind of cesspit of, "Hey, it's an abusive language and harassment and spam." Another thing that we can look back on, I guess, is the history of some of these things with other platforms. I imagine that any major significant change to the way information is presented on Twitter would probably generate quite significant backlash if he does anything truly unpopular.

If you think about the early days of Facebook, for example. When Facebook implemented some of the first changes to its newsfeed, every single time without fail there was a huge public outcry. These are forces and pressures that companies cannot fully ignore because their business models are so dependent on their users and how happy they are, and for them to be staying and engaging with the platform.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Robert in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robert.

Robert: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. Elon Musk is famous for blocking people on Twitter who he doesn't agree with or who say things he doesn't like. He tried to stop this kid who was tracking his private plane where it went, and his free speech when it works for him. I wonder if I were to tweet his home address and his cell phone number, would that make it through? He seems to have a complicated relationship with free speech.

Brian Lehrer: Robert, thank you. Faiz, what do you think about that call? The examples he raises are that's borderline harassment, isn't it? If you're tweeting out somebody's home address, or maybe it could be frightening to somebody if you're tracking their airplane. If he's known for blocking people who he doesn't like what they say, but then there's got to be a line somewhere that we accept for blocking people. That's part of what more progressive folks are advocating for Twitter. That they block people who are acting dangerously or putting out lies. There's a whole complicated ball of wax there, isn't there?

Faiz: Yes, absolutely. Musk has said obviously that the laws of the countries that I suppose the site is operating in or the site is being viewed in will apply, but you do get to where does the free speech absolutism end for him or what is the limit? I think it's interesting that the caller pointed out how Musk wanted that account taken down, at least according to media reports who wanted that account taken down that was tracking his private jet, I think using information available in the aviation space.

That is a question that tests the limits of Musk's own free speech, but free speech in general. I think we need to learn more about where this ends for him, but I will say the parameters he has set out obviously comply with the law. He doesn't like permanent bans. He wasn't talking about President Trump necessarily, but he was talking about bans in general. He said he prefers timeouts. He said he would err on the side of allowing a tweet if there was some debate over whether it crossed the line or didn't. He would err on the side of allowing it.

Brian Lehrer: Faiz, a listener asks via Twitter, "Does private ownership open Elon Musk to legal liability for misinformation, hate speech, violent consequences?"

Faiz: That's a great question. Tech companies have this provision in the law, Section 230, that basically insulates them from what the content is that's posted on their website and a lot of the legal implications of what that is because the owners are no longer the stewards of that content itself posted by users. Companies like Facebook and Twitter and others have been insulated by that legal provision for a long time. The Section 230 implications are unclear except that it would still apply to a private social media company I believe, but as far as the regulatory implications of whether Musk by acquiring Twitter is potentially opening up antitrust concerns.

We've done some reporting to that effect, and Twitter is not like a direct competitor to any of his companies. It's so far out of the realm of what he is normally interested in. It's not an electric car company, it's not a space company. While I think there might be some debate about it, it's not some kind of open-shut like the antitrust case.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call. Anne in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anne.

Anne: Hi. I was just worried as a Black American about what seems to be his arrogantly racist attitude. There have been African Americans who work for Tesla who have said they've undergone a lot of racist behavior in the workplace; he does nothing about it. I also know that the NAACP has released an open letter to him explaining to him the difference between misinformation is not information. I wonder since he wants to take it private, does that remove him from any judicial problems, any legal problems if he allows Twitter to be very racist? I mean, it's never made a profit because the only people that like Twitter are celebrities and journalists.

Brian Lehrer: Anne, thank you. Yes, I saw the open letter from President Johnson of the NAACP saying racism and lives are at stake from how he changes Twitter's speech policies. Professor Marchal, have you thought about that?

Dr. Marchal: I think that's a very good question. There are some real limitations that exist around certain forms of speech, again outside of the United States, that will not allow or permit Elon Musk to let things like certain forms of institutions of violence or glorification of terrorism, or even hate directed against protected groups to run afoul on the platform. Having said that, these protections do vary a lot between European Union and the United States, which has a much stronger free speech mandate.

Therefore it's going to be difficult to, I guess, assess in the long term, but as I mentioned, it's not going to be in the interest, I think, of the platform to turn into the new 4chan or to turn into the new Parler. These are not platforms that [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Meaning just social media tools of the right. You don't expect that.

Dr. Marchal: Exactly, and platforms that were premised on this idea of everything goes and do not end up scaling because they become echo chambers and cesspits of [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: We just have 15 seconds, but Dr. Marchal, do you think we overestimate how much impact Twitter might have on democracy at all? Because for all the talk about Twitter in the media, the caller is right. It's largely used by celebrities, politicians, journalists. It's a tiny speck compared to Facebook, say.

Dr. Marchal: Absolutely. I think the person who called made a very good point on that. Elon Musk himself has called Twitter the great public square, but I think this is a bit of a misnomer. Twitter is only used by actually quite elitist or fairly educated and higher-income, people that doesn't represent all segments of society, but it's a private [crosstalk].

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Brian Lehrer: With that, we have to leave it because we're out of time with Dr. Nahema Marchal from the University of Zurich, and Faiz Siddiqui from The Washington Post. Good conversation. Thank you both very much.

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