Musk touts free speech — but devil is in details

Everyone loves free speech. Especially their own.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest human and a prolific Twitter user, proudly calls himself a zealot for “free speech,” which takes on special meaning now that he apparently has sealed a $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter and take the company private. His famously flamboyant fascination with the social network’s power is facing mounting questions about what he really has in mind — and how it will square with the social, political and legal realities of a world that already likes to think of Twitter as if it belonged to them — or should.

Issue one: “Free speech” is a virtue with about as many definitions as people who claim to believe in it.

Many of those on the right who cheer his rise hope he will sweep out the liberal bias they discern on such platforms. Many others on the left fear he will rescind all restraints on hate speech and unleash harassment, disinformation (pandemic and otherwise) and impolite tweeters who have been suspended or banished from the site.

Exhibit A is the unofficial former tweeter-in-chief, former President Donald Trump, who has been banned permanently from the network since January 2021.

As is his fashion, Musk has been mum about the details of his outlook, except for such intriguing tidbits as this tweet on April 26: “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.”

Ah, if only the matter was that simple. For one thing, the law as spelled out in the First Amendment bars government, literally Congress, from intruding on free press or free speech, among other rights. It does not apply to judgments made by a private editor, moderator or publisher.

Censorship by common definition occurs when the government imposes limits on the speech of people under its power. Free speech is your ability to say what you want without worrying about government intrusion except for such harmful and/or criminal examples as libel, slander, hate speech, harassment, intimidation or other special cases under constant court review.

Basically, once ownership is transferred to him, Musk is free to say or allow what he wants on the site, until he gets sued.

If he lets Twitter’s content degrade into a digital cesspool that no one wants to use, that would be a bad business development, not a constitutional crisis.

While it is hard to say what Musk will do until he does it, his fans have high hopes and his detractors are looking for ways to clip his wings.

Musk hasn’t said whether he will allow Trump’s return, and Trump, who started a social network of his own called TruthSocial, has claimed that he doesn’t want to return anyway.

But Musk himself was outspoken on another justifiable bone of GOP contention: Twitter’s limiting, along with Facebook, of the distribution of a New York Post story shortly before the 2020 election that claimed to show “smoking gun” emails about then-Democratic nominee Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

At the time, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, apologized for Twitter’s action, calling its treatment of the New York Post story “unacceptable.” The Federal Election Commission latter ruled that Twitter acted lawfully and made a valid decision based on commercial, not political reasons.

We’ll be watching Musk with interest.