Skip to main content
Hamburger Menu Close

Advertisement

Commentary

Commentary: Elon Musk wants free speech but may make Twitter's disinformation problems worse

Elon Musk has bought Twitter with a vision of a social media platform free of content moderation issues, but the changes on his mind raise concern given Twitter's unique role in online conversations, says this professor.

Commentary: Elon Musk wants free speech but may make Twitter's disinformation problems worse

Composite picture of the Twitter logo and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. (Photos: AP/Richard Drew and AFP/Pool/Patrick Pleul)

EAST LANSING, Michigan: Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, acquired Twitter in a US$44 billion deal on Monday (Apr 25), 11 days after announcing his bid for the company. Twitter announced that the public company will become privately held after the acquisition is complete.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for his initial bid for the company, Musk stated, “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”

Musk’s ownership of Twitter and his stated reasons for buying the company raise important issues. Those issues stem from the nature of the social media platform and what sets it apart from others.

PUBLIC SQUARE FOR REAL-TIME CONVERSATIONS

Twitter occupies a unique niche. Its short chunks of text and threading foster real-time conversations among thousands of people, which make it popular with celebrities, media personalities and politicians alike.

Social media analysts talk about the half-life of content on a platform, meaning the time it takes for a piece of content to reach 50 per cent of its total lifetime engagement, usually measured in the number of views or popularity-based metrics. 

The average half-life of a tweet is about 20 minutes, compared to five hours for Facebook posts, 20 hours for Instagram posts, 24 hours for LinkedIn posts and 20 days for YouTube videos. 

The much shorter half-life illustrates the central role that Twitter has come to occupy in driving real-time conversations as events unfold.

Twitter’s ability to shape real-time discourse, as well as the ease with which data, including geotagged data, can be gathered from Twitter has made it a gold mine for researchers to analyse a variety of societal phenomena, ranging from public health to politics. 

Twitter data has been used to predict asthma-related emergency department visits, measure public epidemic awareness and model wildfire smoke dispersion.

Tweets that are part of a conversation are shown in chronological order, and, even though much of a tweet’s engagement is front-loaded, the Twitter archive provides instant and complete access to every public tweet. This positions Twitter as a historical chronicler of record and a de facto fact-checker.

ELON MUSK MAY DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD

A crucial issue is how Musk’s ownership of Twitter, and private control of social media platforms generally, affect the broader public well-being. In a series of deleted tweets, Musk made several suggestions on how to change Twitter, including adding an edit button for tweets and granting automatic verification marks to premium users.

There is no experimental evidence on how an edit button would change information transmission on Twitter. However, it’s possible to extrapolate from previous research that analysed deleted tweets.

There are numerous ways to retrieve deleted tweets, which allows researchers to study them. While some studies show significant personality differences between users who delete their tweets and those who don’t, these findings suggest that deleting tweets is a way for people to manage their online identities.

Analysing deleting behaviour can also yield valuable clues about online credibility and disinformation. Similarly, if Twitter adds an edit button, analysing the patterns of editing behaviour could provide insights into Twitter users’ motivations and how they present themselves.

Studies of bot-generated activity on Twitter have concluded that nearly half of all accounts tweeting about COVID-19 are likely bots. 

Elon Musk is an avid Twitter user himself. (File photo: AFP/Olivier Douliery)

Given partisanship and political polarisation in online spaces, allowing users – whether they are automated bots or actual people – the option to edit their tweets could become another weapon in the disinformation arsenal used by bots and propagandists. 

Editing tweets could allow users to selectively distort what they said, or deny making inflammatory remarks, which could complicate efforts to trace misinformation.

Musk has also indicated his intention to combat Twitter bots or automated accounts that post rapidly and repeatedly under the guise of people. He has called for authenticating users as real human beings.

Given challenges such as doxxing and other malicious personal harms online, it’s important for user authentication methods to preserve privacy. This is particularly important for activists, dissidents and whistleblowers who face threats for their online activities. Mechanisms such as decentralised protocols can enable authentication without sacrificing anonymity.

LESS FOCUS ON CONTENT MODERATION, MORE DISINFORMATION?

To understand Musk’s motivations and what lies next for social media platforms such as Twitter, it’s important to consider the gargantuan – and opaque – online advertising ecosystem involving multiple technologies wielded by ad networks, social media companies and publishers. Advertising is the primary revenue source for Twitter.

Musk’s vision is to generate revenue for Twitter from subscriptions rather than advertising. Without having to worry about attracting and retaining advertisers, Twitter would have less pressure to focus on content moderation. 

This could make Twitter a sort of freewheeling opinion site for paying subscribers. In contrast, until now, Twitter has been aggressive in using content moderation in its attempts to address disinformation.

Musk’s description of a platform free from content moderation issues is troubling in light of the algorithmic harms caused by social media platforms. 

Research has shown a host of these harms, such as algorithms that assign gender to users, potential inaccuracies and biases in algorithms used to glean information from these platforms, and the impact on those looking for health information online.

Testimony by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and recent regulatory efforts, such as the online safety bill unveiled in the United Kingdom, show that there is broad public concern about the role played by technology platforms in shaping popular discourse and public opinion. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter highlights a whole host of regulatory concerns.

Because of Musk’s other businesses, Twitter’s ability to influence public opinion in the sensitive industries of aviation and the automobile industry automatically creates a conflict of interest, not to mention affects the disclosure of material information that is necessary for shareholders. Musk has already been accused of delaying disclosure of his ownership stake in Twitter.

Twitter’s own algorithmic bias bounty challenge concluded that there needs to be a community-led approach to building better algorithms. A very creative exercise developed by the MIT Media Lab asks middle schoolers to re-imagine the YouTube platform with ethics in mind. Perhaps it’s time to ask Musk to do the same with Twitter.

Anjana Susarla is a Professor of Information Systems at Michigan State University. This commentary first appeared in The Conversation.

Source: CNA/geh

Advertisement

RECOMMENDED

Advertisement