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How will Elon Musk's political views impact Twitter?

From what I have read, it is pretty obvious that he is right-libertarian. His takes on economics, foreign policy and the culture war all put him firmly in that camp. Even his idea of the political centre (that includes himself) depicts the Democrats as the radical left.

I think Musk will ultimately struggle as a Twitter owner because the right-libertarian view of free-speech absolutism is naive, absurd and unrealistic. It can give you scope to complain about people but it's extremely hard to implement in practice unless you want Twitter to collapse into a pool of racism, misogyny and other types of hatred. I mean, more than Twitter actually is now. If he goes down this road, users and advertisers will bail, making Twitter even less profitable. Also, Musk's other businesses are international and he is likely to find his free-speech ethics tested when the Chinese are pissed off by someone's Tweet. There are so many minefields and he appears aware of none of them.

I once read him compliment Iain M Banks, the late (and great) socialist science fiction writer. Most of Bank's novels were set in a far-future utopian society called The Culture where there is no money, property or poverty. Ironically, he is precisely the sort of person that The Culture's 'Special Circumstances' division would see as a barrier to actual social progress. Musk would be happy in The Culture, only if he owned and controlled it.

Though clearly highly intelligent in some ways, Musk has made a schoolboy error. The narrative that he's bought into identifies a simple problem and provides a simple solution. I think he will find the reality pretty difficult.
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CountScrofula · 41-45, M
Musk has the confused nonsensical politics of someone who thinks he is a genius but has never actually learned anything about politics. So yeah he's gonna lean to "I should be able to do whatever I want" which naturally means libertarianism and free speech absolutism. He called himself some varying degree of socialist for years without understanding what that meant either.

He also doesn't particularly like or support free speech, it's just his political conception of free speech is [b]him[/b] doing whatever [b]he[/b] wants. Largely just posting. But not, say, drafting an open letter that your employer's erratic behaviour is toxic for morale (which he fired a ton of people for).

Consequential free speech is only "free speech" when it reinforces his comfortable status quo which goes the same for most other free speech absolutists.

He's going to find, I imagine, that rules exist for a reason. Social media content policies exist for a reason, and it's not because Twitter is a woke corporation. It's because they make more money with them, as the alternative drives away users and advertisers.
Burnley123 · 41-45, M
@CountScrofula One of the reasons why the right (including Musk obvs) get so annoyed is because they receive criticism. Most examples of 'cancel culture' involve no more that petitions and criticism. As you say, free for me and nobody else. True of Musk and all those like him.