Elon Musk claims he wants to buy Twitter to save free speech, but it is a fallacy that we should be able to say whatever we want to whomever we want, warns Annalee Newitz
DADO RUVIC/REUTERS/Alamy
LAST month, Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, was about to buy Twitter. He lined up financing for the bonkers $44 billion price tag. Then, he backed off. At the time of writing, he has whiplashed to saying the deal is “not out of the question” if the price comes down.
The whole sequence of events was corporate melodrama at its finest, but it was also an object lesson in how a myth unique to the US about free speech has shaped Silicon Valley media companies.
Twitter is an unlikely darling among techno barons who value exponential …