Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter should be a cautionary tale. To prevent Reddit, Youtube, Tumblr, Instagram, Twitch etc. from suffering the same fate we need new governance structures for megaplatforms.
I’ve written about Twitter a lot this year, repeating the idea that no individual should be given the power to own what some, including Elon Musk, see as a digital town square. I still stand by that sentiment, and I think that seeing how Musk has handled Twitter has really strengthened my case. Musk has in some instances acted exactly how someone abusing their power over a digital town square would, including banning journalists’ accounts. While it is on the one hand amusing to see Musk behave childishly and in direct opposition to how he said he would, it’s also deeply sad to see how freedom of speech is curtailed on an American social media platform. This isn’t in China or Russia or some other authoritarian state, it’s in the leader of the free world’s corner of the internet.
Seeing Musk ruin the integrity of Twitter as a genuinely open space for discussion is disheartening and it also raises the thought that the same process could be repeated on other sites. After all, almost all the sites we interact with on a daily or weekly basis are privately owned. If an individual can buy Twitter, why couldn’t another individual buy Facebook, or Reddit, or Tumblr, or Twitch, or Instagram, or Youtube? The problem with Twitter isn’t that Elon Musk owns it, even though he now seems to be uniquely unqualified to run it, but that a single individual is given power over a digital town square. All the other platforms mentioned are at risk in that same way. If a change in ownership changes the rules of a platform that can have serious effects on both the ways in which users use the platform and on individual people’s lives. In a way Twitter is one of the platforms where private individual ownership presents the fewest problems as few people depend on Twitter for their livelihoods. If your Twitter account is capriciously banned by Musk you’ll lose your followers and your tweets but odds are you can transition to another platform. That is absolutely not the case if you were arbitrarily banned from say Youtube, Twitch, or Instagram where there are thousands of people who’s full time work is based on those platforms.
All of this is to say that the problem of private ownership of digital platforms is not an isolated problem unique to Twitter but a systemic problem of the internet as it currently exists. It would be better for the influencers, owners, and users if there was a transparent and decentralised system for making and communicating decisions for major platforms. If we want to keep the current system of a few centralised megaplatforms which each specialise in a particular form of media, like livestreaming, video, audio, short form text, and long form text then we should establish a model where all the relevant stakeholders have a say in how the platform is governed. In most cases running a megaplatform is prohibitively expensive which is why they tend towards functional monopolies, and due to those costs, it’s unreasonable to expect that they could be run as non-profit enterprises. But at the same time there’s a social good in having a widely used and well maintained digital platform where politics, the news, arts, and science can be discussed so running a megaplatform the same way you would a fast food franchise isn’t an option either. To be able to maintain megaplatform while also protecting them from the likes of Musk we need some sort of semi-public semi-private governance structure. After all, no one man should have all that power.
If you liked this post you can read a previous post about the war in Ukraine here or the rest of my writings here. It would mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!
I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
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