Musk, Twitter, and the balance of digital power

Why the billionaire's freewheeling approach to moderation may be the only option we have

Elon Musk.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

Exactly 90 minutes before Monday's announcement that Twitter's board had approved entrepreneur Elon Musk's bid to buy the platform, Hillary Clinton enthusiastically tweeted, "They got it done!" Accompanying her celebratory pronouncement was a link to a New York Times story about the passage of landmark legislation in the European Union that will "address social media's societal harms by requiring companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content or risk billions of dollars in fines."

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.