Elon Musk wants a social network without limits to freedom of expression: Is it possible? | Technology

Elon Musk, the businessman at the helm of Space X and Tesla, has hinted that he could launch a new social network. It all started with some polls on Twitter last Friday: Musk asked if this platform respects freedom of expression and the “no” took more than 70% of the votes. “The consequences of this survey will be important,” Musk warned. Please vote carefully.” The next day, the businessman asked what can be done and if another platform is needed. When student (and fan) Pranay Pathole approached him about creating a new social network, Musk replied that he was serious about it.

Musk, known for tweeting too much, should not be trusted: in November last year he put a vote on Twitter to sell 10% of his shares in Tesla. But then it was learned that he had already sold part of those shares before publishing the survey. In any case, selling shares is much easier than setting up a social network that prioritizes freedom of expression. Among other things, because it is not even clear how something as basic as that is done.

There are two clear extremes:

First, the one that would be most comfortable for many platforms: allow everything. They are not means of communication, but tools for their users to express themselves. If it’s legal, it can be done. And if it’s not legal, let a judge come and close accounts or delete tweets.

But it is not that easy: the law may take time to act in the face of plagiarism or a slander campaign, for example. In addition, these platforms also do not want to be identified as hostile pages for their users or as centers for spreading hoaxes, especially if we are talking about sensitive issues such as the pandemic or the war in Ukraine. It should also be borne in mind that platforms are not neutral: if their algorithms give more presence to some messages than others, shouldn’t they have at least some responsibility for the content they promote?

The other extreme is to remember that social networks are private companies and can set the rules they want. Just as I can’t go to a restaurant with a camping gas and cook my dinner, Twitter can ban hate speech, Facebook can label misleading news, and Instagram can censor female nipples.

But, again, it’s not that easy either: given that these companies operate as an oligopoly with hardly any alternatives, they now have far greater power over our freedom of expression than anyone probably imagined ten years ago. In addition, they are also called for greater transparency and consistency in the drafting and application of these rules, which often seem arbitrary and changing.

How many social networks have already died?

Other alternative platforms have already tried to fix the problems of Twitter, Facebook and others. But, on the one hand, they have not reached the impact of these networks, not even remotely. And, on the other hand, even those that present themselves as a refuge for freedom of expression also have their rules.

For example, Gab, whose Twitter account replied to Musk assuring that this network was the answer to your problem. Gab was born in 2016 as an alternative to Twitter after several far-right stalkers lost his account. It has about four million users, 100,000 of them active. For comparison, Twitter has 330 million active users per month.

Gab has been presented as a space where one can say anything that the First Amendment to the US Constitution allows. But this actually means that it also acts without consulting any judge and decides whether a post counts as slander or attempted scam, for example. And it actually goes a bit further than it promises: nudity and pornography are legal in the United States, but Gab does not allow the publication of such content on its platform (you can on Twitter, like it or not). That is to say, Gab also moderates, although it is less. Other networks, such as Parler and Gettr (also similar to Twitter) do not even deny this moderation, but assure that it is not based on political or partisan criteria.

And what has happened to these networks? Well, they have been filled with bounced Twitter users wanting to defend racist and extremist theories. For example, violent messages were posted on these platforms before the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. And before that, in 2018, Robert Bowers murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue after announcing it on Gab. Those responsible for Gettr and Parler recently spoke of their desire to create a platform that would attract everyone, but the truth is that they always attract the same people, supremacists who want to share their ideas without exposing themselves to criticism. Perhaps the ideas to the left of white supremacism are allowed, but for practical purposes let’s see who gets in there to share them.

On the other hand, we must remember that almost all politicians and journalists on the right (and beyond the right) are doing very well on conventional networks, no matter how much they complain. They have no intention of leaving Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and as soon as they can they will get into TikTok, despite being one of the networks with the most control over what is published. In fact, accounts on alternative platforms like Gab are often abandoned after a short time or are only used to repeat messages that have already been shared on other sites.

And what about Truth Social, the platform that Donald Trump created in response to the alleged censorship of Twitter and Facebook? Well, at the moment it is only available for US users, but the country’s media have already collected examples of messages and closed accounts… for laughing at Donald Trump. According to its rules, content that belittles or denigrates, “in our opinion”, the platform is prohibited. For Trump, the limits to freedom of expression are on Trump.

More than Nazis

There are alternatives to the big social networks that don’t have the problem of being filled with neo-Nazis. Like Mastodon. Originally, Mastodon wanted to be an alternative to the unpleasant climate of Twitter. It has “instances” or small decentralized subnetworks connected to each other. This means that each instance can set its own rules, which are more easily enforced as they are comparatively small, and if one instance is filled with Nazis or conspiracy theories it ends up being isolated by the rest, as has happened to Gab, who hosted on this network since 2019, being open source.

But we are talking about a relatively small platform: Mastodon has about three million users. When Twitter had three million users, it didn’t suffer from the problems it does now. And, in any case, there is moderation here too, even if it is decentralized. That yes, the experience can be useful: Twitter itself announced in 2019 a project in this line, Bluesky.

Can Elon Musk solve all these problems and create a social network that attracts tens of millions of people, without any limits on freedom of expression and that is friendly to its users? I will not be the one to say no, but others have tried it before and, so far, it has been regular.

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