Los Angeles Times

Commentary: Elon Musk’s Twitter shows its dark side

Employees walk past a lighted Twitter logo as they leave the company's headquarters in San Francisco on Aug. 13, 2019.

For Twitter’s 200 million-plus daily active users, it’s been a long, strange week and a half. Elon Musk, billionaire, CEO and Twitter superfan, spent $44 billion on a much-contested, overvalued and at times dubious acquisition of his very favorite corner of the internet. Besides firing Twitter’s top leadership and half the rest of the staff, exactly what he plans to do with his new toy is murky at best.

Except for one thing: Among Musk’s many antics and public pronouncements since acquisition talks began in April, he has consistently cited the obliteration of content moderation on Twitter as

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