A victory for free speech or for disinformation? That's the $44 billion question after Elon Musk's swoop on Twitter. Does it matter any more than Amazon's Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post or all the French captains of industry whose often money-losing media purchases buy them a platform to voice their views?
Twitter is certainly a bullhorn and the boss of Tesla and SpaceX certainly has opinions: a free speech absolutist, Musk lets loose in his tweets, for instance once calling Canada's prime minister a Nazi over Covid-19 restrictions. Who decides whether someone like Donald Trump stays banned or gets restored to the platform?
More broadly, is it up to Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube to regulate themselves? The European Union thinks not, but how far will leaders here go with plans to police content that incites hate and undermines democracy, amid stiff opposition from across the Atlantic?
Produced by Charles Wente, Elise Marné, Juliette Laurain and Imen Mellaz.
