NOT SO FREE TO TWEET
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
A popular topic lately in the tech/stock market-sphere has been focused on the Musk buying Twitter transaction and whether telling the truth about his motivation for buying Twitter is all about free speech. If true, fine, but I think his bankers providing the US$44.0 billion are probably looking at a business plan that enhances revenue …
And where is the shortage of free speech?
Whether it’s Twitter as it is now or all the other social media sites, we all have our proverbial soap-box in the public square. We can sing, dance, shout, write, photograph anything we want and publish it to the world. We are only restricted by the laws of the lands we live in – which don’t seem to stifle anyone unless you are infringing on someone else’s rights, committing fraud or doing something lewd which defies a law or the boundaries of good taste.
Freedom of speech, enabled by technology, is more widespread and accessible than ever.
Freedom of stupidity seems to follow in tandem, freedom to spout the most ridiculous of notions, unsupported by facts, freedom to be right or wrong or half-right or half-wrong.
The only part that troubles me is the half-truth which can be dangerous. Intelligence, artificial or human, has never been more free and available.
So what I’m looking to see from Mr. Musk is truth – not the half-true kind, but the whole truth. For that, I expect, we’ll need someone at one of the banks financing the deal to leak the business plan.
Yes, whistleblowing is freedom too.
But with all this abundant freedom, do we feel we are more free or less free than we used to be?
The more like the case is, that Mr. Musk has seen dire predictions of what is happening in the financial markets, and he’s got two reasons to question his bravado: the US$44.0 billion price tag is likely way too high, and the Twitter brand has less credibility now that he is validating his critique of it. In August the Twitter board will decide to take his offer, or not … tic toc … we’ll see.