This week, Elon Musk purchased over 9% ($2b worth) of Twitter stock to become its single largest shareholder. He was also named to the Board of Directors. He doesn’t own a majority, but he owns the most of any individual person.

I have a few quick thoughts on this. Some good, some bad. I’m going to keep it to only the subject at hand, instead of diving too deep into his poor credibility, history and questionable morals. 

The bad: 

• The general concept of billionaires buying tremendous access to one of the world’s largest information and conversation centers is not a good thing. The amount of propaganda, disinformation and corporate interests that could be furthered is massive. It should concern everyone that any individual billionaire can basically buy out a major platform with the snap of the fingers. We rely on this stuff completely, whether we want to admit it or not. 

• Elon is described by many as “mercurial” which means “subject to sudden or unpredictable changes of mood or mind.” This is far from what any big tech company, and the users of its product, need. Especially a society that’s already fractured, divided and primed for knee jerk outrage. I don’t think Musk has the capability to understand that, nevermind care to prioritize it. 

The good:

• I do think that Musk is interested in free speech compared to most. It benefits him because of his troll nature. However, most people want the speech that they want, while censoring others. I don’t have faith Elon could find the distinction. If he and the board are capable of doing so, I do think it could be an overall net positive for free speech despite the moral of a billionaire buying out our tech platforms. That improvement to speech is a good thing for me, because my personal preference for how we handle these big tech platforms is via our 1st Amendment. Government regulations are scary, and corporations are incapable of handling it on their own, so what’s the next best thing? In my opinion, have it follow the same laws and restrictions as the 1st Amendment, and we’ve reached the least of all evils. 

My prediction:

It’s possible that there’s significant changes on the way for Twitter, but I doubt it. I think they’ll need to placate Elon on a few things to make his billions a worthwhile venture and to prevent temper tantrums, but I doubt it’ll mean wholesale change. Elon will have his victorious moments (some conservatives unbanned, etc) to celebrate before he gets bored, sells his Twitter shares with a profit (a business person’s true motive, all along) and then this dissipates into an old, meaningless story. I hope I’m wrong, and I hope if he does stay on board he genuinely advocates for true free speech principles. I’d love to be wrong. But the whole “principled kind billionaire just doing public good” is damn near a fairy tale, and I don’t think Elon is any exception, despite what his adoring fans think.