Social media industry security professionals and outside experts who have spent years trying to slow down the rise of tyrants and violent mobs from Facebook and other platforms are surprised that a second large company can be brought under the control of just one person – especially one who complains that Twitter sets too many limits on what can be posted on his site. In tweets and a conversation at TED following his surprise attempt last week to make Twitter private, billionaire Elon Musk denounced decisions to ban some users as censorship and said moderation was slowing its spread. legal but offensive content as excessive. “If it’s a gray area, let the tweet be,” Musk said Thursday. Such comments worry those who have experience that unlimited speech makes social media platforms useless and that lightly controlled speech favors those who can direct thousands to make versions of the same point, which is then reinforced by algorithms designed to therefore advertise dollars. “This is a disaster, and it’s not just about Elon Musk, but it’s kind of like steroids,” said Shoshana Zuboff, a retired Harvard Business School professor and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. come from the collection of data on human behavior is the source of life of a new and therefore almost uncontrollable era. Zuboff’s work argues that Facebook, Twitter, and others extract as much user data as possible and then try to maximize their time on the site because it saves them money. But platforms, he argues, are not neutral – driving users’ online interests changes not only conversations but also beliefs and even physical actions, encouraging people to do what they would not otherwise do, such as engaging in demonstrations in the real world. Billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and founder of SpaceX, offered to buy Twitter on April 13 for $ 54.20 a share. (Video: Reuters) Putting so much power in the hands of a company is bad enough – but putting it in the hands of one person, as is largely the case with Facebook shareholder Mark Zuckerberg, and would happen with a Twitter owned by Musk – would to be, he says, incompatible with democracy. “There is simply no control and balance by any internal or external force,” Zuboff said in an interview. He would leave Musk, like Zuckerberg, for a sum gathered data about people and the ability to use them to manipulate them “that can not be compared to anything that has ever existed and allow interference with the integrity of individual behavior and also the integrity of collective behavior”. “Zuckerberg is sitting at his celestial keyboard and can decide day by day, hour by hour whether people will be more angry or less, whether the posts will live or die,” he said. “With anti-vax, we saw that the same power of Mr. Zuckerberg can be applied to life and death. “ Facebook did not respond to a request for comment. Musk did not respond to emails. Zuckerberg, at least, has a board of directors and the Hellenic Capital Market Commission to look after the interests of shareholders. A private Twitter would not have that either. Zuboff believes that completely new institutions must come to life in the next decade to govern information spaces. Behind the controversy over Musk’s bid lies a long-running debate over whether tech executives already have too much control over online speech. If Musk takes control of Twitter, it could put pressure on US politicians to regulate social networking companies, former officials he told The Post. A person with “almost monopoly control” over a social network could only raise these concerns among policymakers, said Bill Baer, ​​a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution who has previously led antitrust measures in both Federal Trade Commission and the Ministry of Justice. “Having a person who is an unpredictable commodity – to put it mildly – in control of such an important communication platform is likely to make many people nervous,” Baer said. In interviews, former Democrat regulators and anti-monopoly supporters said Musk’s attempt on Twitter underscores the need for Congress to pass Internet-governing legislation. Tom Wheeler, a former Democratic chairman of the Federal Communications Committee, said Musk’s moves underscore the need for a new regulator to oversee the tech industry. “What we need is a process that respects the First Amendment, in which the government does not dictate the content, but causes an acceptable code of conduct,” he said. Even professionals who believe that social media is a pure asset say that Twitter, as Musk envisions, would be terrifying to users and investors alike. The last few years have seen a lot of divergence on Twitter targeting those who feel gagged by the original, including Gab and Parler, but none have taken off in the mainstream. This is not an accident, said Alicia Wanless, director of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace’s Partnership for Countering Influence Operations. People want basic rules in the same way that they would avoid a nightclub that turns a blind eye to occasional violence. “Musk can buy Twitter and try to bring it back to some nostalgic lost Eden of the early days of the Internet, but platforms with less community standards, like Gab, are hard to rank because it’s not a good business,” Wanless said. Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who helped protect global rights activists from government hacking and ordinary people from domestic persecution, said: “I’m particularly concerned about the impact of full ownership on a person who has repeatedly demonstrated that he does not understand the reality of content-based surveillance.” Citing Musk’s support for allowing anything legal, he added: “Twitter’s content control practices leave a lot of room, but they tried the policies that Musk seems to have favored more than a decade ago and did not work.” A moderate retreat would disproportionately harm women, minorities and anyone unfavorable to the status quo, civil rights activists said. “Without road rules, we’re in danger,” said Rashad Robinson, chairman of the Color of Change tribal justice group. “Our protection cannot meet the whims of billionaires.” Alex Stamos, the former Facebook security official who sparked Russian misinformation on the platform during the 2016 election, said Musk’s idea of ​​Twitter as a public square for free expression was disconnected from the reality of many people and failed to recognize that he would give more. power to the most powerful. Without restraint, Stamos said, “anyone who expresses an opinion ends up with any form of occasional insult ranging from death to threats of rape. This is the basic line of the Network. “If you want people to be able to interact, you have to have basic rules.” “When you talk about a public square, it’s a bad analogy. In this case, Twitter City Square includes hundreds of millions of people who can interact anonymously anonymously from hundreds of miles away. “A Russian troll farm could invent hundreds of people to appear in the town square.” “The algorithm can decide who will be heard,” said Claire Wardle, a professor at Brown University who studies social media misinformation and moderation policies. For Wardle, Musk sounds like he was talking before 2016, when the scale of foreign misinformation campaigns shocked users and experts and accelerated more sophisticated moderation efforts that are still far behind their goals. “We were so naive because we did not understand how these platforms are armed,” Wardle said. “The idea of ​​going back to where we were is a disaster.” But it fits in well with the unfortunate businessman’s well-documented contempt for regulations and regulatory authorities, whether in work, car insurance or the stock market, critics said. Some Republicans hailed Musk as part of their argument that Twitter, which was the first platform to ban Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, was unfair to conservatives. However, a successful takeover could make the new arrangement more likely by Washington in the midst of a wider effort. to curb the big tech companies. “Consolidating control is not the way to protect democracy and enhance free expression,” said Samir Jain, policy director at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It will only exacerbate people’s concerns about the extent to which these companies have an impact on our speech.” If Twitter became private, its policies and decisions would become less transparent to policymakers and the general public – creating additional challenges to address the role of technology companies, Baer said. Last year, Facebook whistleblowers filed a complaint with the SEC alleging that the company had misled investors about its efforts to tackle misinformation and accounts linked to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. However, such challenges would not be possible on Twitter if the platform were privately controlled. “There would be less public disclosure, there would be less independent oversight,” Baer said. “There would be no ability for independent directors on the board or individual shareholders to challenge or shape Twitter behavior if it is owned solely by one person.”