- Elon Musk is still trying to buy Twitter despite the company board remaining silent on the offer.
- Ripple CTO David Schwartz believes he is pursuing his own personal goals.
Ripple CTO David Schwartz commented on Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter. Schwartz is sure that Musk’s real motive is to try to buy Twitter in order to gain control over the political discourse. Schwartz also believes that owning Twitter will help Musk promote ideas and public opinion where he sees fit, as well as on the contrary, make people feel worse about political speech that he does not support.
He’s not trying to make Twitter a better place for freedom of speech though. He’s trying push Twitter’s moderation policy to give better treatment to political speech he favors and to give worse treatment to political speech he disfavors. – said Schwartz.
It should be noted that while trying to buy Twitter, Elon Musk said he wanted to do it to restore freedom of speech, which, in his opinion, has not existed on Twitter for a long time. While Musk’s army of fans and many ordinary users support the motive, there is also a community of opponents who believe that the richest man should not be allowed to control one of the main tools of social influence. Among those who criticized Musk for his attempt to take over Twitter was Dogecoin co-founder Jackson Palmer, who said that the Tesla boss is the last person who should own Twitter. In contrast, another founder of the original meme coin, Billy Marcus, supports the attempt and Ilon’s goals.
Responding to Musk’s tweet that social media platform policies are good “if the most extreme 10% on the left and right are equally dissatisfied,” Schwartz said that such policies would only benefit “unreasonable people” while punishing reasonable social media users.
This is an incredibly bad policy that works absurdly poorly. It rewards unreasonable people and punishes reasonable people. And if there’s one lesson to learn from economics, it’s that people respond to incentives.
Also, Schwartz stated that Elon Musk has low competence in terms of content moderation.
It really looks like Musk has literally never spoken to anyone who has tangled with social media moderation problems at all and is just listing off the top of his head all the policies that sounds good to someone who does not understand the problem at all.
For now, the real motives of the head of Tesla and SpaceX are unknown. Perhaps he really wants to take over Twitter to carry his position, but a more altruistic outcome is also possible.
Also Read: Cardano’s Charles Hoskinson ready to develop a decentralized social media platform with Elon Musk
