If Musk Completes His Twitter Takeover, His Fans Might Want To Start Supporting Section 230

At this point, it seems exceptionally likely that Elon Musk will own Twitter within a few weeks. Because nothing is predictable in this saga, you never know, but the odds are that by Halloween Twitter will be Muskville. We'll have plenty of time to talk about what that means, but in our post about Musk's abrupt about-face, we joked that the takeover might come just in time for the Supreme Court to hold Twitter liable for any terrorist organizations who use the site and then go kill people in terrorist attacks.

Musk insists he wants to make Twitter more accepting of more speech (without really understanding what that means) and if that's true, now might be a good time for him (and his fans - many of whom seem to be in the false kneejerk reactionary camp who believe that removing Section 230 will lead to more speech online) to become a very strong supporter of Section 230. Pat Hedger has a good article over at RealClearMarkets, explaining how Musk, once he owns Twitter, may be a huge beneficiary of Section 230.

Musk's problem, and indeed a problem for anyone who likes their internet and wants to keep their internet, is that the Supreme Court could very well create a scenario where platforms such as Twitter can be held liable for terrorism-related content and other damaging speech (even if it isn't obvious) by gutting Section 230 while at the same time forcing platforms to host any and all legal speech, no matter how awful or annoying, should the Justices agree with the Fifth Circuit. It's effectively damned if you do and damned if you don't on steroids for every website that hosts content it does not generate itself.

This mess has confounded many of the country's greatest minds on free speech, internet policy, and constitutional law. Now it looks like it will all become a very personal problem for the richest man in the world and potentially the stakeholders in his various other enterprises from Tesla to SpaceX.

Without the Section 230 status quo, either Musk and his fortune could be massively exposed to civil liability for the unending stream of garbage that is constantly uploaded to the web or he'll have purchased a $44 billion clunker of a website... or both.

What this should enforce, yet again, is how Section 230 is actually a huge gift to free speech. It's what allows websites, including Twitter, to experiment with different approaches without getting sued for every choice (and every non-choice).

Of course, I fully expect those who want to see much stricter moderation to continue hating on Section 230, but at the very least those who think that removing Section 230 will increase speech online should look at this and recognize how fundamentally backwards they have it.

As far as I know, Musk has yet to weigh in on Section 230, but he may have just (without recognizing it) made a multi-billion dollar bet on it.

If you think @elonmusk is going to create the Twitter of your dreams, you want Section 230 on that wall. You need it on that wall. My latest: https://t.co/d1lCcT5F71

- Patrick Hedger (@PatHedger18) October 7, 2022