In the last week of April, Twitter’s Board of Directors unanimously accepted billionaire businessman Elon Musk’s buyout offer of $44 billion. The deal is currently pending regulatory approval. But as and when it goes through, it will allow Musk to take Twitter private, giving him complete control over what he has described as a “de facto public town square”.
Will the SpaceX and Tesla CEO do a good job of managing a politically sensitive platform like Twitter? Musk has said that he is a ‘free speech absolutist’ but many have interpreted it to mean that Twitter may stop censoring hate speech and flagging disinformation the way it does now. As Twitter changes hands, what are the likely implications for users?
Guest: Apar Gupta, advocate and Executive Director at the Internet Freedom Foundation
Host: G. Sampath, Social Affairs Editor, The Hindu
Edited by Ranjani Srinivasan