For a while he threatened to set up a kind of alternative competitor to Twitter, but now he is buying it. Critics fear not so much censorship, but – rather the reverse – that Musk will release all the brakes that Twitter has put on “fake news” in recent years and that the channel would become a torrent of disinformation and confusion. A group of Republicans in the US Congress hope Musk would allow Donald Trump to use Twitter again, but the ex-president himself wouldn’t be interested in that.
Many users are not satisfied with Musk’s “grab of power”, but starting an alternative “from scratch” is obviously not so simple and expensive. Facebook, that other big social network, has always been in the hands of that other big billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, and that too is not a bigwig when it comes to privacy and misinformation.
A remarkably lukewarm response came from the White House. That won’t comment, but does remind that “President Biden has always been very concerned about the great influence of social media”.
–
