Musk Speaks! Gives Twitter TED Talk

CLAY: A guy who is embracing the First Amendment and trying to buy Twitter and change it — Elon Musk — is speaking right now. He is at a Vancouver, Canada, TED 2022 Conference and we had our crew, did a fantastic job. This has just happened in the last 45 minutes or so. We wanted to get a couple of cuts from Elon talking about his bid on Twitter.

Let me first play cut 23. Here’s Elon Musk.

MUSK: Well, I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech where…

WOMAN: Woo!

CROWD: (smattering of applause)

MUSK: Yeah. (chuckles) Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So it’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. And, you know, so one of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people’s tweets — if they’re emphasized or deemphasized, that action should be made apparent — so that you, anyone could see that action has been taken. So there’s no sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation either algorithmically or manually.

CLAY: Happens all the time.

BUCK: I went on a tear this morning on Twitter about this ’cause it’s so enraging what they say. They always used to say, “It’s the algorithm.” The algorithm is designed by people to do certain things.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You know, they built this system to advantage some and disadvantage others, and they’re constantly changing it and making… It’s not like this is some black box where no one knows what’s going on inside and it just dispenses, you know, Twitter justice or something. They have been doing this for years, up voting essentially from the back end certain people, down voting other people. Clay, I told you I lost 150,000 Twitter followers after the November 2020 election, and it’s just too obvious at this point. They can’t hide it anymore.

CLAY: Yeah. And what I always say is, “Anytime you hear someone argue, ‘Well, that’s not us, it’s the algorithm,’ humans designed the algorithm, and they pick which algorithm they want to use based on looking at what data that algorithm produces.” So it’s awfully convenient to blame an algorithm when humans design it.

And some of you out there may not be active on Twitter but Buck and I tried to convey to you — and I’d encourage you to go listen to the first hour — why this town square digitally is so important in influencing the trajectory of our country and social policy, and also the function of democracy itself. Here’s Elon Musk just a few minutes ago also talking about that. Listen.

MUSK: It’s important to the function of democracy, it’s important to the function of the United States as a free country and on many other countries and to help — actually to help — freedom in the world more broadly than the U.S. And so I think the civilizational risk is decreased if Twitter — the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform. And so I do think this will be somewhat painful. And I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it.

BUCK: That’s the sad part, what he says at the end. They may stand in the way and try to challenge this and stop this from happening. But there’s a lesson from all this, anyway, Clay. That’s what we’re also seeing, which is that they hate free speech, they will do anything to stop free speech from occurring, and Elon understands what the stakes are here. He understands what’s going on.

CLAY: Not only will they do anything to stop true free speech from existing on the platform, they will actually choose to turn down billions of dollars — the most money that anybody right now on the marketplace is willing to pay for Twitter — to be able to continue to artificially influence our democracy and avoid true marketplace-of-ideas principles from being implemented, which is huge. At a minimum, Elon Musk has truly exposed the artifice of the argument that they are something other than a propaganda machine.