Illustration by Alex Castro
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated” is how Elon Musk explained why he spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter.
♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️ pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
That phrase — “digital town square” — has a long and messy history in social networking. Facebook and others have proven that throwing millions or billions of people into a single unfettered space is a mostly impossible and mostly terrible idea. But maybe we’ve just been defining it wrong. In reality, a town square isn’t a place where everyone stands in a crowd and yells at each other while advertisers throw things at them….
