9.2 percent, which makes him the largest shareholder, setting up a potential showdown over censorship. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/04/elon-musk-twitter-stake/
I believe conservative billionaire Paul Singer still holds his shares from 2020. Together they could wield some power with stockholders. Singer’s Elliott Seeks to Replace Twitter CEO Dorsey
Why? Because they banned Vladimire Putin for invading Ukraine? Oh, they didn't, they banned the Babylon Bee instead.
Twitters not that bad. Facebook can be a bit vile these days but if you block the political feeds even Facebook is ok. If you feed on the nonsense the algorithms will give you more nonsense. No one to blame but yourself.
Looking at Putin’s prior posts, there doesn’t seem to be much “bannable” per Twitters TOS, they only seem to use it to announce his official meetings. Russia obviously is responsible for a lot of malign activities online (hacking, propoganda bot farms, misinformation, etc), but the “official” account seemingly follows the rules - unlike the Babylon Bee which pretty directly violated a TOS. That being said, Twitter probably should have joined the rest of the world and cut off their platform to the Russian govt or anyone that works for it regardless of whether the official account technically follows their rules or not. Of course this actually extends the “free speech” debate, as it means these tech entities would be going outside their TOS and enforcing bans based on “real world” non-online activities rather than direct violation of their online terms. I think Russia is an extreme case where I’d be ok with that. Plus we know Russia abuses the hell out of Twitter’s platform anyway, undoubtedly at Putin’s orders. Twitter has to know this.
How are all the rival platforms faring that have an "anything goes" approach? For that matter, how is the forum where all the people dissatisfied with the content moderation here fled to faring?
I don’t know. It gives them plenty of ammo to point out what an ignorant and spiteful person he is. It also reminds the moderates.
This will be fascinating to see play out, and I think it's probably good he has. Elon is an advocate of free speech - in the main, so am I. I think everyone should be listened to rather than shut down. But the bit I struggle to reconcile in my head is that the has to be some sort of end line, eventually. Otherwise anyone could go Twitter, threaten people, defame them etc, without reproach. I've seen his JDART defense. I get that and yes, it makes some sense (although a little restraint is never a bad thing too!) But - as with everything - balance and consensus is needed.
Funny thing is Musk is friends with Jack Dorsey who is no longer CEO of Twitter. The more I think about it I'm not so sure that this isn't more of seeing an opportunity to make money than it is about free speech. If he was concerned about free speech he would have been saying so when the company was under Dorsey's leadership since he was the one who instilled so much censorship. Twitter has dropped to being the 15th most used social media platform behind such well know names as Qzone and Telegram....whatever they are. They have lost 50% of their users from their all time high. Perhaps Musk thinks he can somehow revive their usership and stock price. Hopefully he sees allowing free speech as a way to do it.
Twitter has always been the hardest social media platform to monetize. I'm not sure if he has a plan or just has money burning a hole in his pocket. He doesn't seem to always have a plan.
