WHILE READING CHRISTMAS newspapers and scrolling through Threads, I can verify that Elon Musk's X is failing to sustain a platform where free speech can thrive. The platform is dying.
From The Sunday Business Post:
One of the main differences is that it no longer appears to have a functioning business model, with scores of advertisers deserting it due to the policies enacted by one of the world's most successful businessmen.As our investigation reveals today, X's new rules allow users to post violent speech and lies related to the Israel-Hamas war, without any enforcement being taken against their accounts.We also show how users were able to spew hate during the Dublin riots, and how X advised its content moderators not to suspend them.The revelations help explain what many X users have been complaining about since Musk acquired the company that the platform is, now more than ever, a place where hateful and abusive people can go without fear of sanction.They also bring to life the behind-the-scenes decisions that have prompted many advertisers to flee X - something Musk himself has admitted could kill the company outright.Musk, a freespeech absolutist, is ultimately the owner of a company funded by advertisers.From a commercial perspective, then, Musk's policies and his personal behaviour on the platform have clearly damaged X's ability to perform its main commercial function.But the questions raised by the Business Post's investigation are more substantial than the efficacy of the company's business model.X is a platform with an enormous global impact and the way it polices content can have ramifications for the fabric of society.The European Commission, with its Digital Services Act, wants to make this clear to organisations like X - which is why it has launched formal proceedings against the company.Social media platforms - as well as governments and regulators - have been grappling with how and where to define the limits on free speech, and how to translate this into healthy digital spaces, for more than 20 years.If you allow people to post lies that can go halfway around the world in minutes, then you are going to create a space where people who want to propagate hate and falsehoods feel emboldened.Ahead of a year of crucial elections around the world, it's urgent that we have a conversation about why so much false and foul material is appearing on social media - and why X, one of the world's most important online platforms, is allowing it to spread.
Source: "We need to talk about X and the damage it is doing", The Sunday Business Post in Ireland, December 24, 2023. Image from Ann Handler.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches digital transformation for the Technological University of the Shannon.]
