The ‘Digital Town Square’: What Might Musk’s Twitter Deal Mean?

cryptonews.com:

Jean Burgess, Professor and Associate Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, the Queensland University of Technology._____

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, seems set to purchase the social media platform Twitter for around USD 44bn. He says he’s not doing it to make money (which is good, because Twitter has rarely turned a profit), but rather because, among other things, he believes in free speech.

Twitter might seem an odd place to make a stand for free speech. The service has around 217 million daily users, only a fraction of the 2.8 billion who log in each day to one of the Meta family (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp).

But the platform plays a disproportionately large role in society. It is essential infrastructure for journalists and academics. It has been used to coordinate emergency information, to build up communities of solidarity and protest, and to share global events and media rituals – from presidential elections to mourning celebrity deaths (and unpredictable moments at the Oscars).

Twitter’s unique role is a result of the way it combines personal media use with public debate and discussion. But this is a fragile and volatile mix - and one that has become increasingly difficult for the platform to manage.

According to Musk, “Twitter is the digital town square, where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated”. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, in approving Musk’s takeover, went further, claiming “Twitter is the closest thing we have to a global consciousness”.

Are they right? Does it make sense to think of Twitter as a town square? And if so, do we want the town square to be controlled by libertarian billionaires?

As my coauthor Nancy Baym and I have detailed in