Twitter: True Free Speech or Theater?
Will Twitter become the beacon of free speech that conservatives have been asking for?
Conservatives have been lamenting the death of the First Amendment in America, especially since the 2016 election that put Donald Trump into office. Social media has been the fuel for this complaint, and for good reason. These corporations with millions of users every single day are banning speech that they deem to be incorrect. This is clearly to prevent certain ideas from spreading, at the behest of liberals that need “safe spaces”. Conservatives have also pointed out that sites like Twitter are essentially the public square in which we disseminate information, and thus, they need to be subjected to the First Amendment. Even though there have been alternatives that have come along like Parler (which fell apart after Amazon pulled their servers from their company and they were kicked off of app stores) and Gab (which has actually survived after they were kicked off of app stores and Amazon pulled their servers from them as well), they will never have the reach of Twitter and Instagram. These situations put many conservatives in a despotic state of mind, and I, unfortunately, fall privy to this as well.
Enter Elon Musk.
Musk has, as everyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows, bought Twitter for about $43 billion dollars. He has shocked the world with this purchase. What people assumed to be just normal Elon trolling actually came to pass. I have tried to not get my hopes up though. We are talking about an elite class of people that has, for the longest time, had control over the national conversation. They will attack Musk in every way that they can, especially when it comes to advertisers. It’s cool that many of the formerly banned people will be allowed back on the site, but if most of the rules on Twitter stay the same, then what would be the point of it all? Honestly, this can only be answered in time. I remain skeptical of Musk because of his billionaire status. However, I will be the first to give Musk credit for any true progress he makes with his Twitter endeavors. Free speech has been dead for a long time, and Musk might be its savior.
