Elon Musk Buys Twitter: What's Next?
Free Speech. Censorship. Algorithms. What Is The Future of Twitter Now That Elon Is At The Helm?
I may be biting off a little more than I can chew with this post, but the idea of free speech has fascinated me for a few years, mainly how our right to free speech is regulated within the conglomerate of tech giants such as Twitter.
This article aims to break down Twitter’s issues, why they face them, and what led Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, to put skin in the game.
If you’re a person like me who tries to stay up to date with the world, you probably know that news broke Monday morning that Elon pulled the trigger and bought a significant stake in Twitter. 73,486,938 shares, to be exact, for a cost nearing $2.89 billion. This purchase makes him the company’s largest shareholder, with 9.2% ownership in the company. If you don't know how massive this is, for context, Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey has just a 2.25% stake. Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO of Twitter last November.
The news of Elon’s purchase of the social media platform follows a series of tweets starting on March 24th, in which he seemed frustrated with how the platform operates.
First off, I’m going to stray off-topic for a brief moment, but I promise it ties into the central theme of this story.
As a former Tesla employee, I feel safe saying that Tesla’s number one priority is profit. Not a knock on Tesla. Profitability should be the goal for any company that wants to remain afloat. This goal was made abundantly clear to me when I started.
My first day on the job was smack dab in the middle of Q4 of 2020. Tesla failed to provide me with the essential tool to perform my daily duties; A laptop. When I requested one from management, the response I received was that I would have to wait until the new year. And that corporate had laptops available but didn’t want to send me one because the few dollars of shipping costs would ultimately affect the bottom line. This event came after Elon’s email to employees that I’ll provide below.
At a time like this, when our stock is reaching new highs, it may seem as though spending carefully is not as important. This is definitely not true.
When looking at our actual profitability, it is very low at around 1 percent for the past year. Investors are giving us a lot of credit for future profits, but if, at any point, they conclude that's not going to happen, our stock will immediately get crushed like a soufflé under a sledgehammer!
Much more important, in order to make our cars affordable, we have to get smarter about how we spend money. This is a tough Game of Pennies -- requiring thousands of good ideas to improve part cost, a factory process, or simply the design, while increasing quality and capabilities. A great idea would be one that saves $5, but the vast majority are 50¢ here or 20¢ there.
In order to make the electric revolution happen, we must make electric cars, stationary batteries, and solar affordable to all.
Thanks and great working with you as always,
Elon
My story is just one example of how he has designed Tesla to operate: to profit at all costs. Having said that, I do not personally believe Elon is in it for the money.
Tesla’s mission statement is: “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
Anyone who has put time and effort into understanding him by reading statements or watching his interviews should know that his role at Tesla is ultimately ideologically driven. Meaning the mission is the motivation.
This goes for SpaceX as well. In an interview with Jonathan Nolan in 2018, Elon said that he founded the rocket company and stepped up as CEO of Tesla because he believed in the companies’ abilities to change the world for the better.
You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great - and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars. - Elon Musk
Seeing that he runs companies from purely an ideological perspective, and given the nature of his tweets I’m about to show you, one could safely assume that buying a stake in Twitter is another ideological move from him.
Above is his first in the series of tweets. You can practically feel his answer to the question.
But what is an open-source versus a closed source algorithm? According to Utopia, the definitions of both are:
OPEN SOURSE
OSS or open source software – is software that has been implemented under the rules of a license agreement which allows the code to be used, viewed, or modified by other users or organizations.
In simple terms, the open source code is in the public domain. Any internet user can make some edits to its structure online free of charge. They don’t need to be in a specific location to do this. Everything happens remotely, from anywhere in the world.
Such an open system allows the source code to be improved over time. Thanks to constant changes, the source’s structural and technical components are modified, and new forms and elements of the code appear.
Theoretically, the internet should be built on open code because each user can then develop and improve the entire system.
However, in practice open source code is more vulnerable to security issues, and it is subjected to hacker attacks more often than a closed one.
CLOSED SOURCE
Closed source software or CSS is implemented under the rules of a license agreement which allows only authorized users or organizations to access or modify the source code. In any other case, modification of the structural component of the code is impossible without permission.
In simple terms, CSS is not intended for extensive audience modification. Usually, large companies use such a system to protect their products and maintain control over the market.
Back in 2019, Joe Rogan highlighted in his interview with Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Twitter at the time, and Vijaya Gadde, the lead of Twitter’s Trust, Safety, Legal, and Public Policy, that many people’s accounts, including people he knew, were being locked on the platform for “violating the Twitter rules.” In the particular case that Joe presented, Sean Baker, a carnivore diet advocate, was locked out of his account for “Violating our rules against graphic violence or adult content in profile images.” The image was of a lion eating meat, which does not violate Twitter’s rules. Vijaya suggested that an algorithm likely detected it and that it made the assessment to lock the account. When asked if Sean Baker could dispute this, Vijaya said he has the choice to appeal any action done by the platform. And doing so would result in an actual human employee reviewing the account to verify if it’s indeed a violation.
In this case, the algorithm failed due to a lack of knowledge of the context. From what I understand, if the algorithm had been open-sourced, this error may have been avoided or, at least, rectified quickly.
This brings me to the second tweet in the triptych.
I feel like I know Elon's answer to this question as well. He doesn't believe that Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech. And with the results of his poll being 70.4%, 'No,' neither do his followers.
Is Twitter's algorithm to blame for the distrust? Or is it deeper than that?
As mentioned above, actual human employees of Twitter review content that's appealed against the algorithm. In the same interview with Jack and Vijaya, Joe brought up the elephant in the room, "Would you all agree that tech tends to lean left?" Vijaya replied that she would guess many employees of tech companies are probably left-wing liberals. Jack followed by pointing out that most tech companies are based in the same geological region, referring to Silicon Valley, which is not entirely but almost exclusively liberal.
So if it comes to a human reviewing a case, biases could naturally lean in favor of the particular person's political views, which would more likely be left-wing. The concern of this is nothing new. It was discussed extensively during the height of the Trump presidency as many right-wing folks felt disenfranchised and wrongly censored.
Another major issue sprung during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Twitter locked, suspended, and banned users who they have claimed to have spread misinformation about the virus. Vijaya said that Twitter doesn't want to police what is or isn't true but stated they feel obligated to step in if they believe it can cause physical and tangible harm outside the service.
But who's to say what is or isn't misinformation? The WHO? The algorithm? Or the company employees with political beliefs that only represent half the population?
The intention is to do good. But this is a trek down a muddy slope.
A “free speech absolutist,” Elon claimed to be in reply to a Twitter follower asking if he would ban Russians from benefiting from his high-speed satellite internet service, Starlink. It seems as though the issues that I mentioned influenced Elon’s new passion for advocating free speech.
If he wants to implement free speech on the platform using an open-source algorithm, does this mean he also wants to decentralize Twitter? Well, let’s break down what “decentralized” means.
Google says the definition of the word “decentralized” is; Controlled by several local offices or authorities rather than one single one.
What does this mean in terms of the Twitter app and its software?
According to TechTarget:
DCENTRALIZED APPLICATION (DAPP)
is a type of distributed open-source software application that runs on a peer-to-peer (P2P) blockchain network rather than on a single computer. DApps are visibly similar to other software applications that are supported on a website or mobile device but are P2P supported.
The decentralized nature of dApps means that once a developer has released a dApp's codebase, others can build on top of it. The app is free from the control of a single authority. A dApp is developed to create a variety of applications, including those for decentralized finance, web browsing, gaming and social media.
DApps are built on a decentralized network that is supported by a blockchain distributed ledger. The use of blockchain enables a dApp to process data through distributed networks and to execute transactions. dApps are also often built using the Ethereum platform.
Distributed ledger technologies like the Ethereum blockchain have helped popularize dApps. The major advantages of dApps are that they are always accessible and do not have a single point of failure.
Email is an excellent example of something decentralized. No matter who you are, what you are, if you’re the pope or a serial killer, you have the right to create an email address and send a message. This cannot be taken from you.
Days before Elon’s purchase of Twitter went public, Jack tweeted the image above.
This is another assumption, but I don’t think there’s any other way to interpret it. Jack feels guilty for centralizing Twitter. I believe that’s why he stepped down as CEO in November.
I believe this from his tweet and how he has embraced decentralization since departing the company. He has come out as a major proponent of bitcoin, and his fintech company, Block, formerly known as Square, is working to improve cryptocurrencies with blockchain technology.
So to wrap this up, why did Elon buy Twitter and not create a new platform that may or may not be decentralized? I mean, if he really cares about free speech.
Easy.
Twitter is how we interface with him. It’s where he has built his persona. The two are now synonymous with each other like peanut butter and jelly. It’s where everyone is. It’s where he has over 80 million followers. Maybe he believes that free speech on Twitter is only a few adjustments away and that building a rip-off version and abandoning all of the above isn’t the move when he can buy his influence.
Whatever Elon’s plans may be, we can surely expect that there will be significant shake-ups in how Twitter operates.
Sources: Utopia, TechTarget, Twitter, Spotify, FoxBusiness, USAToday