The controversial billionaire may find that buying the platform exposes him to a whole new world of legal problems
The deal, which is backed by the board but must be approved by shareholders, has also raised concerns about one person controlling such a major platform. Twitter is significant even though the majority of its 217 million daily users get their news elsewhere. In Europe only 9% of people use Twitter for news, rising to 12% in North America, 14% in the UK and 35% in Africa, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University.
In another post-agreement tweet last week, Musk acknowledged that individual states’ conception of freedom of speech would trump his own. He wrote: “By ‘free speech’, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.” But the law – in the UK and the EU – is about to change., which imposes a duty of care on tech companies to protect users from harmful content.
At the same time, the EU is implementing the Digital Services Act , which requires the major social media platforms to do more to tackle illegal content. This includes forcing them to allow users to flag such content in an “easy and effective way” so that it can be swiftly removed. “Twitter, even owned by Mr Musk, needs to moderate content to comply with EU rules. If he wants to do business in EU, that’s a fact,” says Christel Schaldemose, a Danish MEP and the chief negotiator on the DSA.
But campaigners say reforming or repealing section 230 could do more harm than good: it could prompt companies to delete wide swaths of posts, even if they are not harmful, for fear of running foul of the law – perhaps in the process denying oppressed groups one of their most powerful platforms.