I’ll admit that over the past two weeks I’ve opened Twitter more often than usual. Not to read the news, but to watch the news itself: the most closely followed corporate takeover in years is unfolding practically live, with decisions announced in tweets, sometimes at night, sometimes as jokes. As an entrepreneur, it’s hard to look away.
On 27 October, Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter for roughly 44 billion dollars, after months of negotiations, U-turns and a lawsuit that looked like it might go all the way. Since then, things have moved very fast. The public debate quickly split into two camps: some see free speech being rescued, others see the beginning of chaos. I think both camps are oversimplifying. So here is what I see, without picking a side.
What has happened, in short
For anyone who hasn’t followed the thread, the facts known so far are roughly these:
- on day one after the takeover, the top leadership was replaced: the CEO, the CFO and the head of legal and policy were out;
- in early November, around half of the staff were laid off, with many teams finding out by email or simply because they could no longer log in;
- Musk has repeatedly called himself a “free speech absolutist” and announced a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints, to be formed before any major decisions;
- he announced that the blue verification check would become part of the Twitter Blue subscription, at around 8 dollars a month, which immediately raised concerns about impersonation;
- several large advertisers have paused their spending on the platform until the direction becomes clearer.
All of this in less than two weeks, right around the US midterm elections. The timing could hardly have been more sensitive.
Free speech versus moderation: a real dilemma
It would be dishonest to pretend the answer is simple. On one hand, there are legitimate worries about censorship: accounts suspended without clear explanations, rules applied differently depending on who you are, decisions made by people nobody knows. When a platform becomes the place where politics, public health and the economy get discussed, the power to delete a post is not a technical detail.
On the other hand, no platform can function without moderation. There is illegal content that has to come down no matter what we think about freedom. There is harassment, which drives away exactly the people who might have something interesting to say. There is organised disinformation, which is not “a different opinion” but an operation. I wrote about this during the pandemic, when I saw how easily trust breaks down and fake news spreads. A space without rules does not become freer. It belongs to whoever shouts loudest.
The truth, I think, sits in the uncomfortable middle: free speech needs rules precisely in order to exist. The question is not “moderation or no moderation”, but “which rules, enforced how, and decided by whom”.
Private platform or public square?
Musk has described Twitter as a “digital town square”. It’s a nice idea, and there is truth in it: journalists, politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs do a big part of their communicating there. But legally, Twitter remains a private company, with an owner, terms of service and commercial interests. And now, without stock-market shareholders asking awkward questions.
That’s where the tension lies. A real public square has public, stable rules that one person can’t change overnight. A private company can do what it likes on its own property. Twitter is trying to be both, and it isn’t the first. The European Union has already said, through Commissioner Thierry Breton, that on this continent the platform will follow European rules, including the new Digital Services Act. Whoever the owner is.
The business side: advertisers don’t buy ideology
Having sold advertising and built marketing tools myself, I understand the advertisers’ reaction very well. A big brand doesn’t want its ad sitting next to a violent post or a conspiracy theory. That’s called brand safety, and it isn’t a political stance, it’s risk management. When you don’t know what tomorrow’s rules will look like, the easiest move is to hit pause and wait.
The problem is that, by all public estimates, Twitter lives mostly on advertising. Hence the rush toward subscriptions: if advertisers hesitate, you need revenue directly from users, and diversifying revenue is healthy in itself.
But tying the blue check to payment changes what the check means. Until now it meant “this account really is who it claims to be”. If it comes to mean “this person paid 8 dollars”, the risk of impostors is obvious, especially for brands, institutions and public figures. Verification and subscription are two different products. Mix them and you can damage trust, and trust is the only thing a social network really sells.
What entrepreneurs can learn from a takeover like this
I don’t know whether Musk’s strategy will work. In two years we may call it a stroke of genius, or we may have a case study in how not to do an acquisition. But a few lessons are already visible:
- Speed is not the same as direction. In a turnaround, fast moves are sometimes necessary. But if nobody understands where you are heading, speed just produces noise.
- Culture doesn’t come with the shares. You buy the code, the servers and the brand. The people who know why things work can walk out the next day, taking that knowledge with them.
- Your customers aren’t only your users. On an ad-funded platform, advertisers are the customers who pay the bills. Ignoring them is an expensive luxury.
- Public communication is part of execution. When you announce decisions in tweets, every joke becomes company policy, read closely by employees, partners and regulators.
As someone who has sold companies under tough conditions and then worked alongside many startups, I believe the hardest part of an acquisition starts after the ink dries. That’s when you find out whether you bought a business or just an expensive problem.
Transparency matters more than ownership
This is really my core view. The debate has focused heavily on Musk as a person: good or bad, saviour or wrecker. I think the more important question is a different one: how transparent are the rules and the algorithms?
Three years ago I wrote about the algorithms that decide what we see online, and my conclusion still stands: the problem isn’t that there is a selection, it’s that we don’t know how it’s made. If moderation rules are public, clear and applied equally to everyone, if a suspended user learns why and can appeal, if the order in which we see posts can be explained, then it matters much less who owns the platform. If not, any owner, however well-intentioned, will be suspected of abuse.
Musk has talked about open-sourcing the algorithm. If that really happens, it would be an important step. But promises of transparency are proven by actions, not tweets. I keep coming back to an idea I described when writing about what a fair society means to an entrepreneur: predictable rules are worth more than good intentions.
Where next?
It’s too early for verdicts. Barely two weeks have passed. What I do know is that social networks have become infrastructure for democracy, for business and for relationships between people, and decisions about them can no longer be treated as mere product decisions. Whether or not you like Elon Musk, this experiment forces all of us to think about what kind of digital public space we want.
How do you see it: would you stay on a platform with looser moderation rules, or would you leave? And would you pay 8 dollars a month for a blue check?