The takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk heralds a head-on collision between the libertarian values that have shaped the Internet since its birth and the democratic values undermined by laissez-faire. This is a unique opportunity to reframe the elastic concept of “net neutrality” so that digital environments find the right balance between freedom of expression and safeguarding human dignity.
Our columnist Pierre Trudel recounted in February, in his text entitled “The high cost of the libertarian Internet”, the excesses caused by the misguided decision of democratic States to limit the regulation of the Internet. In the name of innovation, the free flow of ideas, accessibility for consumers, digital platforms have been able to decide for themselves the rules governing their activities.
The co-founders of Twitter, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, caressed the ambition to make the social network the democratic agora par excellence with 140 characters at a time, a tool for emancipation and public conversation free of shackles and borders . There are still tweets on Twitter representative of these ideals. But they cohabit with a desperate mess of hatred, intimidation and infox. The founders gradually understood that their agora would lose its luster without increased vigilance on content moderation. In recent years, Twitter has sought, not without difficulty, to cleanse the platform of its most vulgar croaking.
On the contrary, Elon Musk runs on libertarian ethics. Absolutist in his definition of freedom of expression, he has often criticized Twitter’s moderation policies aimed at sanitizing the quality of debate. On a personal level, he has repeatedly put on the troll’s beggar’s clothes, demonizing those who do not think like him.
The whimsical billionaire promises to increase the space of freedom on Twitter, much to the delight of Republicans sold on Trumpism, who now live in an alternate reality. In the same vein, he also put forward two highly desirable proposals to improve the transparency of algorithms and authenticate human users. We still face the same problem. Can one man dictate the limits (or rather the absence of limits) to freedom of expression on a social network?
Musk’s takeover of Twitter offers elected governments an opportunity to revisit the concept of “net neutrality” and force digital commerce giants to be more accountable for the content they put online. The European Union has just embarked on this path with its regulation on digital markets.
Neither media nor technology companies, these platforms require a separate framework, under which the circulation of ideas and critical thinking will always be encouraged, but within the limits that apply to all citizens and businesses. In democratic societies, there is no place for hatred or detestation of the other.