Can Elon Musk take on the tech censors?

After three centuries of failing to assert power over the printed press, the House of Commons is finding the digital world easier to conquer. The Online Safety Bill now going through parliament will give ministers the power to decide what can and can’t be said online by banning what they regard as ‘harmful’. The word is not very well defined – which, of course, gives sweeping powers to the government regulators who will define it. It will be one of the most ambitious censorship laws that the world has ever seen.

Enter Elon Musk. His $44 billion takeover of Twitter is intended, he says, not to make money but to defend free speech. His rationale – combined with his criticisms of ‘woke’ films on Netflix – has caused horror in certain quarters in America about Twitter lurching to the right. No. 10 is nervous too, reminding Musk that new UK laws will oblige him to ‘protect users from harm’ – by which they mean ‘protecting’ them from reading the wrong kind of tweets.