Enough about Elon Musk’s Twitter deal. It’s time to talk about social media reform
Analysis by David Zurawik, CNN Business
Updated 7:22 AM EDT, Tue May 17, 2022
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/media/elo...al-media-reform


While calls for coverage focused more on policy and less on personality are sounded often in media critiques, rarely has the need been so apparent as in the coverage the last month of Elon Musk’s move to buy Twitter (TWTR).

While those of us in the media have been chasing Musk’s mercurial tweets, we have been distracted from the burning need for a serious, thoughtful, society-wide, grownup discussion about reform of social media, particularly as it involves government regulation and the First Amendment.

Reformers, citizens, academics and politicians have been warning for years about the dangers of unregulated social media. From documentation of Facebook’s role as a prime platform for Russian disinformation in the 2016 presidential election, to shocking whistleblower revelations about Instagram’s supposed effects on teen self-image, the list of complaints has only grown. Most recently, the call for social media accountability came from New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who spoke about it at a news conference after a racist shooter posted to platforms a hate-filled screed with minute-by-minute plans to shoot up a supermarket in Buffalo.

Yet almost nothing has been done about it.

In fact even as tech executives like Microsoft President Brad Smith and political leaders like former President Barack Obama have voiced a need for some form of oversight in recent weeks, more vigorous content moderation on one of the world’s largest platforms seems more uncertain than ever with Elon Musk saying that if he gains control of Twitter, he will move it to a more “absolutist” notion of free speech. One idea he floated last week to much media attention: letting former President Donald Trump, who was banned in the wake of the January 6 insurrection, back on. That was before his Friday tweet that the $44 billion deal was now on hold over how many of the platform’s accounts were spam or fake.

Musk’s arrival last month at centerstage in the debate about social media regulation has mainly led to more heat and volume and far less light and clarity as his tweets and personality became the focus of media coverage and social media conversation rather than the issue of how we as a nation are going to make social media serve democracy rather than become part of a force that could destroy it.

Even as Musk pledged a far more hands-off policy on enforcement when it comes to banning figures like Trump, he asserted last week that he is “on the same page” with the European Union’s new code of content moderation, which aims for stricter policing of disinformation. Really? It is hard to know where he really stands — when he is being serious or when he is trolling. Or when, perhaps, it seems as if he might just want to see how huge a reaction one of his tweets can get, like the one on Friday that initially sent the price of Twitter shares tumbling 13 percent.

In recent weeks, Musk has largely controlled the conversation about social media with his tweets and public comments, siphoning off attention from a deeper discussion about reform, moderation and the First Amendment.

Serious reform proposals are being offered.

“The idea that a handful of platforms can continue to make their own behavioral rules even when those decisions harm the public interest is no longer sustainable,” Tom Wheeler wrote on Tech Tank at the Brookings Institution where he is a visiting fellow. -- excerpt, rest at link above --


Uh huh, now that someone is seriously threatening freedom of speech, they're all concerned about this issue.