Elon Musk doesn’t understand free speech – or Twitter – at all | Siva Vaidhyanathan

Twitter is less like a town square' and more like any Starbucks, McDonalds, or shopping center. It has other obligations and interests that are at odds with completely unfettered speech

On Tuesday, as Elon Musk just started to learn how difficult his new part-time job as owner of Twitter would be, he thought to tweet out a policy pronouncement about his new toy.

The extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all," Musk declared, either amused or annoyed by those of us who consider him dangerous or unworthy of running a major global communication platform that has been a tool for harassment, disinformation and conspiracy-theory promotion since its inception in 2006.

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy