Elon Musk’s paradoxical vision of running Twitter: Less democracy, more freedom

Some sceptically noted that buying Twitter is one way to ensure Musk’s own voice is always reaching the public, akin to a captain of industry buying a newspaper to control the editorial pages. — AFP/Getty Images/TNS

There’s a common critique of Big Tech that goes like this: In the 21st century, social media platforms are the new public square, and it matters a great deal who sets the rules. Instead of allowing true free speech, unaccountable Silicon Valley elites like Mark Zuckerberg decide what can and can’t be said.

Twitter, like any other private publisher, controls what’s published on its platform. But the popular micro-blogging service governs itself more pluralistically than many other tech companies. When Twitter filed to become a publicly traded company in 2013, the company stuck out because it did not create a second, supercharged class of shares that would allow its founders, including its founder Jack Dorsey, to maintain power over the company as Zuckerberg did at Facebook.