 Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, could have ended homelessness in the United States unilaterally. He could have tackled the issue of global hunger, world poverty. But instead, he chose to use his wealth to buy Twitter, one of the largest social media platforms. Yeah. Now it's clear that he was unhappy with the way that Twitter was managed. But rather than talking to the manager of Twitter, when you're a billionaire and you're a Karen, you just straight up buy the company itself. So as the Verge explains, Twitter has accepted Elon Musk's offer to purchase the company for $44 billion the company announced in a press release today. Musk purchased the company at $54.20 a share, the same price named in his initial offer on April 14. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Said Musk in a statement included with the release, I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans. Now soon after people began to react to the headlines, he specifically took to Twitter with a message for his critics. Stay on the platform. Don't go anywhere. I love free speech. So I welcome you as well. He said, I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means. So in other words, Elon Musk will graciously allow us to continue to post this image right here. So really appreciate him letting us do that. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's one of my favorite images of Elon Musk personally. He looks very happy in this particular photo with his friend. Don't know what her name is there. Perhaps he knows. Either way, thank you so much, Elon, for allowing us to have free speech on Twitter. Now look, let me tell you my opinion on this. I personally in terms of the way that I use Twitter, I don't know what to expect. Maybe he'll make some improvements. Maybe the platform overall will get worse. I don't necessarily know, but I don't really like Twitter as it is. It's a very toxic environment. And the less that I use Twitter, the happier I am, the more stable my mental health is. So I mean, I already kind of don't use Twitter. But overall, this is important specifically because of how influential Twitter is and how many people use Twitter. I don't necessarily anticipate a huge exodus from Twitter unless he really makes fundamental changes. But overall, it's so bizarre that the right and some media outlets are trying to frame this as, oh, this is a victory for freedom of speech because he's pro free speech. And therefore, since he now has taken over the company, then free speech will be the norm on Twitter. Now, it doesn't make sense to me. When I visualize freedom of speech, I don't instinctively think about a billionaire purchasing a company and saying, hey, everyone, you have free speech. That's not really what a free speech is. Or at least if that's what free speech is in the modern era, then I really cringe at that because someone who's trying to pretend to be this benevolent dictator isn't the way that you actually achieve freedom of speech. If you wanted to get freedom of speech on Twitter more so than it already is, then what you do is you opt to nationalize it and democratize it, not put it in the sole hands of one billionaire who has proven before that he doesn't actually believe that freedom of speech, that is the First Amendment, is going to apply to a private company because he's proven that he doesn't do that with his own companies. I mean, busting up unions is not necessarily a very pro free speech thing to do. He also has canceled Tesla orders for bloggers who criticize him. So even if it were possible to find some benevolent dictator to take control of Twitter for purposes of making it a more free and open platform, I think that's not really the way that you institute freedom of speech. Again, if you want freedom of speech, you nationalize it and democratize it, not give one person control of Twitter who can basically purge the website of anyone who criticizes him. And now he's saying currently that I welcome my critics on the website, but we'll see if he lifts up to that principle. But either way, this whole conversation about freedom of speech is a red herring because this isn't actually about freedom of speech. Conservatives are celebrating this because they think this is a victory for free speech, but they don't care about freedom of speech, right? They don't care at all about freedom of speech. If they did, they would be speaking out with leftists such as myself against these anti-BDS laws, which are an explicit violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. They would be speaking out against the book banning that we're seeing in Florida, crackdowns on gender expression. These don't say gay bills, which curtail the freedom of speech of teachers. So I mean, if they actually were consistent, they would be actually defending the free speech of their political opponents, but they're not really what this comes down to, not to oversimplify the situation, but this is true. What this comes down to is they want to be able to spread misinformation on the platform. They want to be able to lie, commit defamation. They want to do targeted harassment, and they don't want there to be any repercussions. I mean, Twitter, sure, I've seen some arbitrary bans before, but the platform is no worse than any other social media website. I mean, I think that for the most part, Twitter does okay, but there's certainly areas for improvement with regard to the way that they regulate the platform. But overall, it's not like free speech is being curtailed. There is a terms of service on Twitter, and if you don't follow it, then you do get banned. See, I've never been banned for Twitter. I've seen people who have been banned for dumb reasons, but I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, I was quote tweeted by J.K. Rowling, the author who wrote Harry Potter, and she basically sicked all of her fans on me, and I was mass reported. But guess what? I didn't get banned, even though a lot of people brigade in my account and tried to get me banned for targeted harassment against J.K. Rowling. And it's because they have a terms of service, and I did not break TOS by going after J.K. Rowling and calling her a repulsive bigot and transphobic trash. So for the most part, I don't think that the website is regulated any worse than Facebook. I mean, Facebook is basically an unusable hellscape where every single post that you see is either complete misinformation or hateful rhetoric. But what the right wants is they want to be able to use slurs, they want to attack people, dox people, and they want to not get banned for that. And also, I think they probably want Donald Trump to come back. Now, remind yourself, why was Donald Trump banned? He was banned for inciting a capital insurrection. Now, a lot of people claim, oh, well, that's just freedom of speech. Actually, no, not all things that you say is protected under the First Amendment. There are limits to freedom of speech, right? Inciting a riot, that's not protected speech. There are people currently who are prosecuted because they were charged with inciting riots during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. I don't see anyone speaking up for their freedom of speech, right? And that's because we all know that there are limits to freedom of speech, even in the real world. Like if Twitter is conceptually a public square, then, you know, if you're in the public square, if you're in a park, you still can't do and say anything. You can't walk up to somebody and just repeatedly scream in their face. I mean, they could call the police and have you arrested for harassment, potentially. I mean, there are limits to speech. So nobody actually wants this almost like absolutist free speech position because then anything would be permitted, permitted, even abusive things, abusive images. I mean, there's going to be limits. It's just a matter of where you draw that line. And with conservatives, they want to be able to say and do racist things. And this is what Hunter Avalon pointed out on Twitter. He says, my prediction, Elon will tout about Twitter being a free speech platform in a matter of a few weeks. He will enforce a TOS after realizing it's literally necessary for a platform to function and not be overrun by slurs. And, you know, I think that he's correct about that. Even if you look at these right wing platforms, they end up enforcing a TOS because if you just not put any standards on the platform, then it gets unusable and people want to not use the platform if they log on and they see nothing but smears and targeted harassment and doxing. So in order to make the platform a place that people want to use, you have to enforce some TOS. You have to have some standards. You have to. And even conservatives agree with this, even if they don't say this out loud, but this is what they do on their own platforms, even on Truth Social, the beacon of freedom of speech on Donald Trump's website. Apparently, on there, you can't criticize Donald Trump. People were being banned for criticizing Trump. So, yeah, Nina Turner says Elon Musk is the prime example of why unfettered capitalism is a danger to this country and the planet as a whole. He's not a genius. He's the product of generational wealth and a rigged system that sees billionaires as somehow more important than the average person. They aren't. We subsidize billionaires and their companies to the tune of billions of dollars when we should be investing in things that would improve our communities like healthcare, childcare, housing, and education. No pun intended, but this isn't rocket science. Yeah, well put. I mean, the situation here is kind of ridiculous because in a late-stage capitalist society, you know, nobody has equal speech, at least when it comes to politics, which is really important, right? I mean, in America, you have more speech. You have a louder voice if you have more money. There is a reason why in order to get elected, you know, you need lots and lots of money. So if you're rich, you can just bankroll a candidate and, you know, that's money is speech in the United States, right? But poor people who can't afford to, you know, send a million dollars to one politician's super PAC, they don't get heard. So, you know, if we really wanted to have a nuanced and robust conversation about freedom of speech, it wouldn't be about who Twitter is and isn't banning. I think that's a foolish and cartoonish interpretation of freedom of speech, but you can take issue with some elements of Twitter and the way that it's regulated. I certainly do. But if you honestly believe that one billionaire purchasing the platform is going to enhance freedom of speech, then I just, I don't know what to tell you. Your interpretation of what free speech is is pretty clownish. And I would argue that, you know, that's not going to be conducive to freedom of speech. Now, perhaps he'll make some improvements. Perhaps he will just loosen all regulations and allow people to say what they want. We'll see how many people remain on the platform if that is indeed the case. But either way, it's just really gross that a billionaire can take issue with the platform and then just buy it. That's really sick. That shows that our society, our culture is perverted that we allow things like this to exist. The mere existence of billionaires first and foremost is proof that we are a morally bankrupt society. Somebody to have that much wealth is gross when there's this much suffering going on, right? But for them to be able to have this much power, I mean, it shows you why wealth is an issue. They can purchase any platform. What's the stopping Elon Musk from buying Facebook or what's, you know, stopping Jeff Bezos from buying YouTube? All of these things that we like and cherish, you know, cultural institutions like these social media platforms, they can just be bought up by a billionaire. And you may like Elon Musk. You might be a right winger who's like, oh, I love this. But imagine if some liberal billionaire who you don't like decided to purchase one of these platforms like Warren Buffett or George Soros or someone like that, like you wouldn't like it. The implications would be bad because you don't know how that's going to impact you because you can't trust one fucking person. So I mean, overall the conversation with regard to free speech, it's not applicable to this particular situation. What's the real conversation that we should be having is why do we allow billionaires in our society to have this much power? And the answer is we shouldn't. Billionaires should not exist. Period.