Oligarchs owning media and having it run PR is not new, both locally (Orban, Babis , Berlusconi) and globally (Kochs, Murdoch, Bezos).<p>What is new is the free speech angle - but that seems to be just Musks ego. Musk is doing what every other billionaire is doing, but has to spin it as saving the world, somehow.
The solution is simple. The platforms should take full advantage of the protections granted by Section 230, while designing the platform to support pluggable 3rd party moderation. You don't want to see Nazi posts, or have them reply to your tweets? Opt for a moderator that provides that. Third party moderators could even supplement content, particularly those that go viral, with fact checking or contrary views as chosen by the user.<p>Will people still opt for no or biased moderation and be susceptible to fake news? Certainly, but with some tweaking, proper incentives, and quality trusted moderation, it would be enough to improve discourse and fact finding compared to what we have now, which is one dominating group controlling what we think and see.
I'm not defending Facebook or Twitter, but they largely follow laws serving the public. The laws are not perfect, but the goal should be improving them, not free speech absolutism. Social media should be regulated, not given absolute power. Giving a billionaire like Musk absolute power is a bad idea. There ought to be counterweights.<p>Every time there is an anti-regulation push it's always shady people trying to get away with something bad. Musk himself is keen on market manipulation. These people always portray the government as inefficient and evil, and say that we should get rid of it instead of improving it. The government is however what stops people like Musk creating the kind of dystopias only sociopaths can. They still manage, but there should be a limit how much power one man can have, because no one is infallible.