Elon Musk is shaking things up at social media group Twitter. While he could face some legal and business challenges, he is unlikely to face pushback in Congress through legislative changes that could open up Twitter and other social media platforms to judge for their user’s world ads.
On Friday, Twitter closed its offices as it began laying off workers, according to Reuters. The move follows Musk firing Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and other top executives last week after the $44 billion deal closed. Musk’s actions caused the company to suffer when employees took to Twitter in recent generations.
“I seem useless to you all,” wrote Simon Balmain, who has been working as a senior community manager at Twitter since November 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile. “Just left my work laptop and got rid of Slack… So sad it had to end like this.”
A handful of employees sued Musk Thursday in San Francisco federal court, saying they weren’t given enough notice before they lost their jobs.
It’s not necessarily a legal or business problem facing Musk, but experts don’t think these challenges will be enough to change the laws governing social media.
Moderate content
With Musk’s resignation, Twitter’s future content editing policies are among the biggest concerns for users and marketers.
Musk tweeted On October 28 the company will form a content moderation council with “dissenting opinions” and will not change Twitter’s policies before the group meets. He also assured the promoters of his plans to create a popular billboard.
But that didn’t sit well with some advertisers, as companies like General Mills, Audi, Pfizer and Volkswagen this week suspended ads on the platform, according to reports.
Since the 2016 US election and numerous misinformation on social media, following the COVID-19 pandemic and the continued spread of medical malpractice, policymakers have debated bound to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects companies from liability for content posted on their platforms.
However, Musk’s takeover of Twitter is unlikely to act as a catalyst for reforming Section 230, said Kristian Stout, director of policy innovation at the International Center for Law and Economics.
It would be very difficult to come up with an alternative to Section 230 that would not cause serious problems for the media.
Gautam HansAssociate clinical professor of law, Cornell Law School
Section 230 “provides the entire legal framework necessary for user-generated content to exist,” Stout said.
Content moderation is a challenging task from a technical perspective. Algorithms can identify words or phrases that violate the guidelines, but often not the context around the word or sentence. These content-editing challenges are part of the reason Section 230 gives protection to platforms, said Gautam Hans, associate clinical professor of law at Cornell Law School.
“It’s very difficult to come up with an alternative to Section 230 that doesn’t cause serious problems for the platforms,” Hans said.
While there is controversy over Section 230 reform, Harold Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, doesn’t think policymakers will agree on Section 230 reform anytime soon. “The federal government is very divided on how they want to interpret section 230,” he said.
Instead, he said the biggest impact on content-editing policies will come from states, especially a new state law in Texas that was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The law would ban social media platforms from removing content based on users’ political beliefs, which could end up in the Supreme Court.
“That’s a big legal challenge that affects all social media,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
Buying Twitter will fall under SEC scrutiny
The process by which Musk acquired Twitter could be investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Furchtgott-Roth said.
Furchtgott-Roth said there were reasons for the announcement when Musk received the 10% threshold to buy the company. Musk ended up selling shares of his company Tesla as part of his efforts to acquire Twitter.
The SEC is paying close attention to the process, especially after Musk threatened to take down the space accounts earlier this year.
“There may be some legal security issues with Twitter,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
Paying users
Musk has also announced plans to charge Twitter users $8 per month to become verified users and receive a blue check in their account.
Platforms that want to curate better content should find ways to block spam accounts and user accounts that remain anonymous to platform administrators, Stout said, holding those users accountable for information they share on the platform.
“The low cost, even $1, to get on these platforms I believe will have an exciting and positive impact on the conversational ecosystem,” Stout said.
Makenzie Holland is a journalist covering major technology trends and government regulations. Before joining TechTarget, he was a general reporter for the Wilmington StarNews and a crime and intelligence reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer.
