Musk takes over Twitter and faces social media crash course

Twitter's newly minted owner, the self-described “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk, is about to get a crash course on global content moderation.

Among his first moves after completing his $44 billion takeover Thursday was to fire the social media platform's top executives, including the woman in charge of trust and safety at the platform, Vijaya Gadde.

He also posted a conciliatory note to wary advertisers, assuring them he won't allow Twitter to devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape.”

The problem is, not even the world's richest man can have it both ways.

Lightly moderated “free speech” sites such as Gab and Parler serve as cautionary tales of what can happen when the guardrails are lowered. These small, niche sites are popular with conservatives and libertarians fed up with what they see as censorship of their viewpoints on mainstream platforms like Facebook. They are also full of Nazi imagery, racist slurs and other extreme content, including calls to violence.

Some conservative personalities jumped on Twitter Friday after Musk's takeover to recirculate long-debunked conspiracy theories in an apparent attempt to see if the site's policies on misinformation were still being enforced.

Advertisers don't want to promote their products next to disturbing, racist and hateful posts — and most people don't want to spend time on chaotic online spaces where they are barraged by racist and sexist trolls.

On Friday, GM announced it would be pausing advertising on Twitter while it figures out the direction of the platform under Musk. But Lou Paskalis, former head of media for Bank of America, said Twitter’s most loyal advertisers, many Fortune 100 companies, believe in the platform and probably won’t leave unless “some really untoward things” happen.

But it's not just ads...