Tech Critic Raps Elon Musk For Bogus Talk On Democracy

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has bought Twitter. Musk says he’s trying to safeguard democracy and promote free speech — but what does a mega-billionaire with a history of silencing critics and retaliating against workers know about democracy? Paris Marx, host of Tech Won’t Save Us podcast asked in an essay for Jacobin magazine.

Photo Insert: Musk has a history of silencing his critics and retaliating against his workers, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have a material impact on how he directs Twitter’s content moderators to approach their work.

In the lead-up to his purchase of the social media platform, Musk had positioned himself as a defender of free speech.

Anyone with a good grasp of reality can see that this isn’t true, as Musk has a history of silencing his critics and retaliating against his workers, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have a material impact on how he directs Twitter’s content moderators to approach their work.

Musk wrote that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” There is some degree of truth to that, though the idea that Twitter encourages reasoned dialogue that benefits society over shitposting is a bit of a stretch.

Musk’s understanding of the concept of free speech comes from the right-wing commentators he increasingly associates himself with and who accuse social media platforms of silencing conservative voices.

They’ve founded a series of alternative social networks like Parler and Gab in recent years that claim to respect “free speech,” but are mostly about allowing people to say whatever vile things they like.

The Internet has undergone consolidation and commercialization, which allow capitalists to exert more power and extract greater returns from what we do online. Centralization has also made the Web easier to use and provided certain benefits for users.

To reverse course, or to get off a track that’s sending us toward the dystopias of a crypto-based Web3 or the metaverse, those incentives would need to be fundamentally altered — something that would require a policy response that itself takes aim at the underlying capitalist forces driving those developments.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic