The bird is the word: free speech under Elon Musk’s Twitter

By Bradley Edington ‘23

Courtesy of ERP Today - Elon Musk, Twitter’s CEO

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has left liberals worried about an uncensored platform and employees without jobs.

On Thursday, October 27, Musk fulfilled his quest in acquiring the social media app Twitter, in a $44 billion deal. After the company was officially purchased, Musk tweeted “The bird is freed.” This tweet is a metaphor for his primary reason to acquire the company, promoting freedom of speech.

In April of 2022, Musk made an offer to buy Twitter, however, he attempted to back out of negotiations because of the tanking economy and Twitter’s plummeting stock. Twitter sued Musk for not completing the deal. Musk, realizing that he would likely lose the trial, decided the best possible course of action was to go through with the purchase of the company.

Twitter was founded in San Francisco in 2006 as a social media site that wasn’t taken very seriously for the first couple of years. The site was seen as a place where geeky individuals engaged in non-important dialogue about the mundane aspects of their life. Musk himself joined Twitter in 2009 and for the first couple of years of his tweeting, he followed the archetype of the Twitter nerd. In 2014 he tweeted, “Was going to work out this morning. Went to IHOP instead.” In 2012, he said “Just returned from a trip to London and Oxford where I met with many interesting people. I really like Britain.”

Around 2011, the platform began to change as activists realized that Twitter was a great forum to raise awareness and organize protests for their specific movements. For example, Twitter played a massive role in the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests in the Middle East where protesters used the platform to organize and gather.

During this period, the social dynamics of Twitter changed; Twitter had become an increasingly unruly place. Online trolls who bullied, harassed, and abused had become more prevalent, and outrageous content had become the standard way to become viral. Headed into the late 2010s, Elon Musk’s style of tweeting changed with the platform. Musk’s tweets became more outlandish as they brought more attention to him and his companies.

In response to this movement towards outrageous, unkind, and untrue content, Twitter started to lay out new rules and regulations for its users. They began suspending and banning people for hate speech or anything else that didn’t follow their community guidelines. 

Though some individuals were happy about this change, others began to accuse Twitter of being authoritarian and overstepping people's right to free speech. One of the most well-known examples of this is the Twitter ban placed on former President Donald Trump, which sparked outrage from many of his supporters. 

One of the people bothered by Twitter's actions was Musk. It wasn’t until Twitter banned Musk’s favorite satirical account, The Babylon Bee, a conservative version of The Onion, that he began to discuss the acquisition of the company. 

When he purchased the company, one of Musk’s first tweets read “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”

This change in Musk’s tone gives great insight into why he purchased the company. First, Musk hopes to return Twitter to the pre-community guidelines ways, where users have complete freedom of speech. 

In a tweet on April 26, Musk clarified his position on free speech, saying “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.”

Musk furthered his attempts to frame his stance on free speech in a more neutral political light when he released a plea to Twitter advertisers, saying that Twitter is not going to become what he called a “free-for-all hellscape.” 

Despite this, critics of Musk fear that this drive to roll back Twitter’s censorship will result in the continued spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, as well as continued bullying and harassment; all potential consequences of complete freedom of speech. 

In a statement about how Musk’s desire for free speech will result in right-wing extremism, Angelo Carusone, the president of the Liberal Media Matters for America, said that "Elon Musk's acquisition and subsequent running of Twitter will radically transform the current information landscape in much the same way that the emergence of Fox News changed the information landscape back in the late '90s — and we will all be worse off for it."

Along with Musk’s desire to promote free speech is his goal of making a profit from the company. However, making money off the company may be more difficult than just altering community guidelines. 

Twitter’s current economic status does not look much better than it did in April. As a result, Musk has set a goal to cut $1 billion in annual infrastructure cost savings by eliminating jobs and expenditures. Musk has already laid off multiple higher-ups, including Twitter’s CEO and CFO, and according to an employee who talked to Musk’s family office, the company was “told to expect somewhere around 50 percent of people will be laid off.”

The company was $13 billion in debt when Musk acquired it in late October. According to Musk, eliminating expenses, such as personnel, seems to be the only option on the table for him. This strategy has had a positive effect on Twitter’s stock. As of November 30, weeks after the largescale layoffs, Twitter’s stock was the highest its been all year. 

On November 4, Musk addressed the layoffs to come, tweeting “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately, there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”

A large portion of Twitter’s future is undecided, with Trump's account recently unbanned and censorship guidelines being drastically altered. Though some on the left predict a dystopian platform and those on the right predict a Twitter which gives everyone the right to speak their mind, nothing is concrete until Musk implements the changes on the platform.