Elon Musk’s Twitter buy is bigger than an edit button

Millions of dollars and the endorsement of former president Donald Trump haven’t been enough to turn the right’s dream of social media without rules or restrictions into reality.

Now conservatives are coming full circle — embracing billionaire Elon Musk’s ascension to Twitter’s board of directors as a chance to strike down policies on hate speech and defamation that have led to the banishment of Trump and other top figures on the right.

Mere weeks ago, Musk was publicly musing about creating his own social media platform, tweeting that he was giving it “serious thought” after claiming Twitter did not allow free speech. Now he is the company’s largest shareholder and is taking a role in its governance. The move underlines the inability of free speech maximalists and their right-wing affiliates to build viable and attractive social media alternatives.

“Audiences are already on existing platforms,” said Shannon McGregor, a senior researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Twitter is especially important in the political space because it is also where journalists are. No one is writing stories about what Ted Cruz posts on Parler.”

Musk, who has more than 80 million Twitter followers, has ridden his no-holds-barred posting style to controversy and condemnation. In February, for example, Musk tweeted out a meme comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. (He later deleted the post.) A few years earlier, in 2018, the billionaire agreed to have a lawyer review any of his tweets about Tesla, the electric-car company where he serves as chief executive, before posting them. Musk submitted to the conditions set forth by the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle fraud charges related to previous tweets. He also paid a $40 million fine.

The middling alternatives

Building new social media companies is a challenge. Dominant platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Instagram already exist and have massive audiences. People often also have their preferred platform and means of communication. Younger people, for example, tend to be drawn to TikTok.

Apps such as Gab, Parler and Gettr have marketed themselves as social media platforms for the right and bastions of free speech and conservatism. But as their trajectories demonstrate, there is seemingly a limited market for both.

Downloads for right-wing social media apps surged briefly after the Jan. 6 insurrection, when Twitter and Facebook banned Trump. But these newer platforms have seen little to no growth since, and in some cases their user bases even declined.

“The platforms that are the status quo continue to be monumentally more influential than anything that has challenged them,” said Jesse Lehrich, a co-founder of Accountable Tech, a civil-society organization working to bring about long-term structural reform regarding surveillance and social-media companies.

There has been little incentive for top social media personalities to make the switch to these upstart apps, or if they switch, to stay. The Washington Post analyzed the social media following of 47 right-wing influencers, whose audiences grew steadily on Twitter but tapered off and declined when these influencers moved to niche platforms such as Parler. Data from mobile-intelligence provider Sensor Tower also showed a burst in adoption and downloads immediately after Jan. 6 with a decline soon after, Axios reported.

One of these apps, Parler, was removed from the Apple and Google app stores for a period after Jan. 6. Soon after, the service suffered a data breach, enabled by a simple bug, that allowed anyone to take all of Parler’s public user data. The app, which claims to have over 16 million downloads, still managed to raise $20 million earlier this year, according to an SEC filing that was signed and submitted on Jan. 6, 2022, the anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol.

Then there is Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform. He spun it up to conservative fanfare, framing it as an alternative to Twitter. Despite Trump’s continued popularity on the right, and de facto leadership of the Republican Party, the app has failed to catch on. It’s not for lack of case: The Truth Social shell company, Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC.O), claimed to have raised over $1 billion.

The platform’s launch was pushed back months before it finally debuted on Feb. 21. About 170,000 people downloaded the app the day it launched. Hundreds of thousands of others were placed on a waiting list, and many are still unable to access the platform. Truth Social is still available only for iOS, not Android, and downloads have fallen to 8,000 a day, according to data from Apptopia — 95 percent from their peak. Digital World Acquisition Corp.’s stock has slumped 31 percent, and two top executives left the company this week.

Enter Elon Musk

The big question now is what Musk’s stock purchase and subsequent appointment to Twitter’s board will mean for the app.

Days before his purchase of large amounts of Twitter stock became public, Musk took aim at the company on its own platform. “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy,” he wrote. “Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?” The tweet included a poll for readers.

After news of his seat on Twitter’s board became public, Musk tweeted that he looks forward to working with the board to “make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months.” Two days later, he took a more lighthearted approach:

Conservative figures are already celebrating the possibility that Musk could somehow pressure Twitter to reinstate Trump’s accounts and relax the service’s rules.

“Now that @ElonMusk is Twitter’s largest shareholder, it’s time to lift the political censorship,” tweeted Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). “Oh… and BRING BACK TRUMP!”

QAnon booster Jordan Sather also expressed excitement over the Musk purchase to his followers on Telegram.

“Now all he needs to do is delete the app and the circle is complete,” Sather wrote. “Or let us all back on the platform. He’s a self described free speech absolutist, right?”

When asked about the potential for Musk to curb moderation policies, Twitter said in a statement that it is committed to impartiality in the development and enforcement of its policies and rules. The company added that its policy decisions are not determined by the board or shareholders.

Twitter’s decision to give Musk a seat on its board has riled employees, the Washington Post reported Friday, prompting the company to organize an unusual question-and-answer session for Musk and Twitter staff.

The company’s founder and former CEO, Jack Dorsey, stepped down last year after a nearly two-year-long struggle to oust him by the activist hedge fund Elliott Management, a major Twitter stakeholder. The company used a seat on Twitter’s board to help maneuver Dorsey to the exit, raising questions about what Musk could do from his new perch. “Elon and Jack I think are aligned on almost all of these sorts of philosophical points,” said a source familiar with Twitter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the company’s internal workings, referring to issues such as free speech and decentralization. “I would assume that Jack is happy about this. I think Jack doesn’t like seeing power on the board shift to people who are only interested in profit,” referring to Elliott Management.

This time, the battle could be over much more than the bottom line.

So far, Twitter seems to be taking steps to keep Musk’s purchasing power in check. In an SEC filing, the company said that Musk cannot own more than 14.9 percent of Twitter common stock while he is on the board and for 90 days after that.

But that may not be enough. Musk, unlike other Twitter board members, has not signed an agreement to not attempt to influence the company’s policies, according to the New York Times.

Lehrich said he’s worried that Musk could push Twitter to make changes to its moderation policies that have broad repercussions across the social media landscape.

“When Twitter makes those kinds of decisions, it often puts a lot of pressure on Facebook and YouTube to follow suit,” Lehrich said. “Were he to actually to push changing the trajectory of the platform to be unlimited free speech, without any constraints on truly harmful disinformation and targeted harassment, that could have a very real effect.”

Only time will tell how Musk’s board seat will play out. But his embrace of establishment social media is yet another nail in the coffin of attempts to build a vibrant right-wing social media ecosystem with little to no moderation. The richest man in the world chose to pursue a role steering a mainstream platform rather than building his own.

“When you’re throwing around billions of dollars to take the largest stake in one of the most powerful global social media platforms in the world, and you are a self-proclaimed ‘free speech absolutist,’ it’s legitimately concerning,” said Lehrich.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.