Elon Musk’s Next Surprise? ‘Free Speech’ Has Limits

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 28, 2022

Digital-age media moguls at Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other companies with an international reach have made grand promises of unrestrained expression, only to be humbled by reality into putting in restraints of their own, if only to save their companies’ profits, reputations and, possibly, their existence.

Junk mailers use social networkers to pitch a variety of shady schemes. Autocratic governments have weaponized social media to harass critics and spread lies to destroy reputations, incite violence and justify arrests — and worse.

The 2016 presidential election and that year’s Brexit vote in the United Kingdom turned out to be influenced by a horror show of disinformation, amplified by Russian internet trolls who further polarized the already-divided electorate.

Under increasing public pressure, social networks tightened their enforcement, reversing their previous attitude of “When in doubt, let it out,” sometimes snagging more posts than they should have and arousing customer anger.

When Facebook, Twitter and YouTube expelled Trump from their platforms after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, it only confirmed in many minds the partisanship they already detected in the Twitterverse, as if insurrection talk should be OK.

I don’t think it should be OK. Musk hasn’t been specific about whether he would lift Twitter’s ban of Trump, who praised Musk’s deal but said he won’t even try to go back to Twitter.

We’ll see. I’ve followed Trump enough to know that would be a tough opportunity for him to resist, especially after stock in TruthSocial, Trump’s own social media venture, fell 12.9% Monday after Twitter announced its deal with Musk.

Trump loves a big audience like Yogi Bear loves honey, and TruthSocial has yet to produce one.

I expect Musk, who loves to clown around sometimes but has not been a fool about money, will find he is better off avoiding unnecessary clashes with Twitter’s current or potential users and advertisers. That means he, too, will have to strike the age-old and elusive delicate balance between free speech and public sensibilities.

In America, as the great media sage A.J. Liebling famously wrote, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”

Today’s social networks allow everyone to have their own press or, in Elon Musk’s metaphor, access to the town square. But sometimes that “bedrock of a functioning democracy” needs gatekeepers to keep it from turning into a battle zone.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)