Free speech shouldn’t depend on billionaires

If you take any interest in social media, Silicon Valley, or the culture wars — which all seem to be the same thing these days — you will be aware that the world is currently ending. At least, that is the impression given by those reacting to an attempt by Elon Musk to buy Twitter. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s former labour secretary, inveighs against Musk’s ‘libertarian vision’ for the internet as ‘dangerous rubbish’ and intones that it would be ‘the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth’. (He also seems pretty peeved that Musk blocked him.)

Professor Jeff Jarvis, TV Guide reviewer turned Supreme Arbiter of Journalistic Ethics, opined: ‘Today on Twitter feels like the last evening in a Berlin nightclub at the twilight of Weimar Germany.’ The CUNY professor then tweeted a link to Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ for good measure. Industry site TechCrunch greeted the news by characterising Musk as ‘a petty man animated by a misguided notion of free speech that mostly means posting anything you want to a privately owned social network regardless of the potential harm it may cause’.