What would happen to free speech if Elon Musk bought Twitter?

What would happen to free speech if Elon Musk¹ bought Twitter?

Transcript²

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks to Kate Klonick, a law professor at St. John's university in New York, about the possible impact on free speech if Elon Musk were to take over Twitter.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Twitter is a global platform. It has hundreds of millions of active users. So what does it mean now that the world's richest person wants to buy it while saying it's all about free speech? Kate Klonick joins me now to discuss. She's an assistant law professor at St. John's University in New York. And she focuses on private governance of online speech. Good morning.

KATE KLONICK: Good morning.

FADEL: So Professor Klonick, assuming Musk follows through with his effort to buy Twitter, what would it mean if one wealthy person could buy a platform with this kind of reach and essentially³ say it's mine and I make the rules?

KLONICK: Yeah. It's a fascinating question because, of course, there are platforms like that that are owned by - technically⁴ by one person already and their boards. And so there'd still be some structure in place for this to be checked. But I think that we're seeing - what this moment is really showing us for a lot of people is that these private platforms that govern our public speech rights are really susceptible⁵ to the power of capitalism⁶ and just being - the fault lines that we expect to exist are being exposed.

FADEL: So Elon Musk calls himself a, quote, "free speech absolutist." He also has said he'll unlock Twitter's potential and allow all legal speech. So what do free speech advocates make of what he's saying?

KLONICK: Yeah. The concept of unlocking Twitter and allowing all legal speech on the platform is really complicated.

FADEL: Yeah.

KLONICK: For something to be legal is actually a very difficult thing and - to assess. And it's difficult between jurisdictions⁷. And so one of the problems with what Musk is describing is in the United States, for instance, to allow all legal speech technically allowed under the First Amendment⁸ onto the platform, you would have to allow all spam to stay up on the platform. You would have to allow all pornography to stay up on the platform, all forms of hate speech. That's all First Amendment-protected speech. And so all of that would stay up, at least within the U.S. It could make the platform functionally⁹ unusable.

FADEL: I mean, this is a big discussion we're having in society right now about what is censorship and what is free speech, what's dangerous for society. And the platform has blocked users temporarily or permanently¹⁰ over controversial or hateful speech, the most prominent example being Donald Trump¹¹. Twitter kicked him off for violating a rule about glorifying¹² violence after the 2021 Capitol attack. Would a platform owned by Elon Musk open the door again for speech that is being taken down and seen as dangerous?

KLONICK: It could potentially do that if he is able to go through with this. But this is something that, for those of us who have studied this for a while and for people who have worked in this industry for the last 15 or 20 years that there has always been these issues that have been lurking¹³. I just think that they've been mostly invisible to the public. And so moments like Donald Trump being deplatformed or taken off Facebook and Twitter and moments like this finally kind of expose to people that there are - like, who is empowered to speak as freely as they think they can or not speak, how fragile those rights are online.

FADEL: You know, again, the idea of banning people on Twitter...

KLONICK: Yep.

FADEL: ...It's seen as censorship. On the other hand, we've seen people complain that hateful, problematic speech needs to be removed because it can lead to really dangerous moments. Is there a better way for Twitter and other platforms to moderate content and still respect democracy and free speech?

KLONICK: I think that these platforms - I know that people don't typically want to hear this. But a lot of these platforms are doing the best they can to try to splice¹⁴ that decision, which is a decision that is one of the hardest decisions for courts to make. And it is one of the hardest decisions for these platforms to make. And so I think that this line between censorship and hate speech is much, much more difficult to assess at scale than people understand. And so this is also kind of one of these moments that exposes that. I think it's naive¹⁵ of Musk to kind of go in and think that he can just wave a wand and turn Twitter into the platform that he wants it to be because the curation of these platforms is incredibly, incredibly complicated.

FADEL: The former CEO of Reddit, Ellen Pao, recently wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post criticizing how Musk might exercise his influence on the platform. And Musk tweeted about Jeff Bezos using his wealth to buy The Washington Post. Is this potential takeover of Twitter by Musk the same thing?

KLONICK: Yeah. That's a great comparison because it's just absolutely not. There's very strong kind of professionalized norms in journalism¹⁶ that split business and editorial. And Bezos' ownership of The Washington Post has almost nothing to do with the editorial side of the content. And the other part of this is that what Musk is trying to do with Twitter is to control users' speech and individual's speech. And that's not something that The Washington Post does.

FADEL: Assistant law professor Kate Klonick. Thank you for your time.

KLONICK: Thank you.

1 musk   

n.麝香, 能发出麝香的各种各样的植物，香猫

参考例句：

• Musk is used for perfume and stimulant.麝香可以用作香料和兴奋剂。
• She scented her clothes with musk.她用麝香使衣服充满了香味。

2 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

3 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

4 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

5 susceptible   

adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的

参考例句：

• Children are more susceptible than adults.孩子比成人易受感动。
• We are all susceptible to advertising.我们都易受广告的影响。

6 capitalism   

n.资本主义

参考例句：

• The essence of his argument is that capitalism cannot succeed.他的论点的核心是资本主义不能成功。
• Capitalism began to develop in Russia in the 19th century.十九世纪资本主义在俄国开始发展。

7 jurisdictions   

司法权( jurisdiction的名词复数 )； 裁判权； 管辖区域； 管辖范围

参考例句：

• Butler entreated him to remember the act abolishing the heritable jurisdictions. 巴特勒提醒他注意废除世袭审判权的国会法令。
• James I personally adjudicated between the two jurisdictions. 詹姆士一世亲自裁定双方纠纷。

8 amendment   

n.改正，修正，改善，修正案

参考例句：

• The amendment was rejected by 207 voters to 143.这项修正案以207票对143票被否决。
• The Opposition has tabled an amendment to the bill.反对党已经就该议案提交了一项修正条款。

9 functionally   

adv.机能上地，官能地

参考例句：

• Objective To explore occlusion reconstruction by computer aided design (CAD) with functionally-generated pathway (FGP). 目的探索借助功能性？记录(functionally-generated pathway,FGP)技术进行口腔固定修复体计算机辅助设计(Computer aided Design,CAD)生理性建？的方法。 来自互联网
• In this respect, the proceeding was functionally similar to a comparative licensing adjudication. 在这一点上，手续在作用上即类似于比较许可证发放的裁断。 来自英汉非文学 - 行政法

10 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

11 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

12 glorifying   

赞美( glorify的现在分词 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣

参考例句：

• I had no intention of either glorifying or belittling Christianity, merely the desire to understand it. 我并没有赞扬基督教或蔑视它的立意，我所想的只是了解它。
• You are glorifying a rather mediocre building. 你正在美化一栋普普通通的建筑。

13 lurking   

潜在

参考例句：

• Why are you lurking around outside my house? 你在我房子外面鬼鬼祟祟的，想干什么？
• There is a suspicious man lurking in the shadows. 有一可疑的人躲在阴暗中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

14 splice   

v.接合，衔接；n.胶接处，粘接处

参考例句：

• He taught me to edit and splice film.他教我剪辑和粘接胶片。
• The film will be spliced with footage of Cypress Hill to be filmed in America.这部电影要和将在美国拍摄的柏树山乐队的音乐片段粘接在一起。

15 naive   

adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的

参考例句：

• It's naive of you to believe he'll do what he says.相信他会言行一致，你未免太单纯了。
• Don't be naive.The matter is not so simple.你别傻乎乎的。事情没有那么简单。

16 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。