Elon Musk tries to convince us that he is working tirelessly to improve the well-being of humanity. Its jewel, Tesla, is in the process of successfully freeing us from oil -related mobility. Space X promises us the colonization of March, if however we needed a planet B. Its new start-up, Neuralink, opens, meanwhile, new transhumanist perspectives, the first stage of which will be to give the floor and the mobility to paralyzed people. “Bigger than life”, as the Americans say.
Now is that the Promethean ambitions of Elon Musk take a new step. With the repurchase of Twitter for $ 44 billion (41.7 billion euros), he now sets himself up as a protector of freedom of expression and by guaranteeing the “future of civilization”. Amen.
The brilliant entrepreneur gets his hands on the microblogging site as he has practiced so far as a user, that is to say with provocations, targeted insults, manipulations in manipulations All kinds and a mixture of cynicism and demagoguery that belongs only to him. The billionaire is one of the most active trolls on the web.
But what could distract or annoy takes a completely different look today because Twitter is not a business like any other. Agora virtual where the main opinion leaders debate in the middle of millions of Internet users, the social network influences the political climate of the moment, whether we like it or not.
Troll, Elon Musk is when he tries to make us believe that the buyout of Twitter would have no other goal than to restore freedom of expression in Western societies eaten away by political polarization. The initiative quickly found a favorable echo with a whole section of the American conservative right, especially in its most extremist and conspirator. This current considers itself victim of a form of censorship which would only protect progressive ideas and politically correct.
is good for business
The “good camp”, as the libertarian billionaire names with irony, started in the quarter turn, alerting the backwards that would constitute a lesser moderation of Twitter content. Where does freedom of expression stop? Who controls it? Should it be total, as Mr. Musk claims, or should it be filtered to remove hateful content, harassment and false news? So many fundamental questions that will hardly find definitive answers in a context of exacerbated cleavage, largely shaped by the social networks themselves.
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