Killing Twitter
Elon Musk claims that he bought the social-media platform to “help humanity” by investing in a public good: the world’s digital town square. But he fails to see that it’s the people, not the pavement, that make the town square, and that his “free-speech absolutism” is replacing townspeople with tourists and trolls.
CAMBRIDGE – In April 2022, the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, asked, “Is Twitter dying?” Five days later, he launched an apparently whimsical bid to buy the social-media platform. It took months of legal wrangling to complete the deal, but on October 27, Musk honored his $44 billion offer, acquiring a new toy: free speech.