Elon Musk could wreak havoc for Twitter
Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. She was spokeswoman for international affairs in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. Follow her on Twitter @karaalaimo. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion at CNN.
(CNN)On Sunday night, Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, tweeted that Elon Musk won’t join the company’s board after all. Last week, Agrawal had tweeted that Musk would be joining the board, after Musk bought 9.2% of the company’s stock, making him its largest investor.
As I said at the time, it was scary to contemplate Musk being on Twitter’s board because he has been responsible for the kind of toxic content that the company urgently needs to crack down on. But now there’s something even more worrisome: the idea that Musk, as the owner of such a large stake in Twitter, may exert influence over the company without the kinds of legal constraints he would be subject to as a member of the board.
This is precisely the wrong person to hold sway over Twitter. Now that Musk won’t be sitting on its board, the company’s leaders should do something simple: Refuse to give credence to Musk’s opinions and ideas.
It won’t be easy. As Agrawal tweeted on Sunday, “Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.” But now that he won’t be a board member, Musk can’t be held accountable for whatever control or pressure he may attempt to wield over the company — and is free to buy even more of its stock.
As Agrawal noted in his tweet, he “believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward.”
Agrawal also made clear that Twitter did offer Musk a board seat — which he has now declined. This leaves me wondering whether Musk simply wasn’t willing to be held accountable for acting responsibly as a member of the board. As a private individual, he can advocate for whatever he wants — even if it would be disastrous for the company.
That’s exactly what Musk has been doing of late. For example, last month, he tweeted his belief that “free speech is essential to a functioning democracy” and polled users on whether Twitter “rigorously adheres to this principle.”
This was an outrageous manipulation. What’s essential to a functioning democracy is accurate information so that people can make informed decisions about how to cast their ballots and protect their health — not the kinds of potentially deadly disinformation about Covid-19 and elections that have been circulating widely on the platform (and, of course, other social networks, as well).
It’s also essential for Twitter to take steps against online abuse and harassment, which a report released by Amnesty International in December found is rampant against Twitter users — particularly against women and members of marginalized communities.
Astonishingly, just this past weekend, after it was announced that Musk would join the board, he polled users on whether Twitter should change its name to “t*tter.” At its most charitable interpretation, this word evokes an infantilizing giggle. At worst (and his recent history discourages giving him the benefit of the doubt here), it’s a coarse allusion to women’s bodies and bald-faced misogyny from a man who knows full well that Twitter is too often a space for sexist, abusive content — lobbed against, among many others, women who have dared to question him.
The bigger problem is that he also has no place providing “input” to the company at all.
In addition to putting forth these kinds of anti-social ideas, Musk has used the platform recklessly in the past. In 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of misleading the market in a tweet about his company, Tesla. As part of a settlement, he now has to have lawyers approve his tweets about many aspects of the company before posting them.
Musk described the SEC’s oversight system as “broken” and said he did “not respect” it. But it’s staggering to think that a man who can’t even be trusted with his own tweets will now have the ear of the company’s leadership as it determines how to handle the tweets of others.
What’s more, as a member of the board, Musk would also have been precluded from buying more than 14.9% of the company’s shares. Now, he will be able to purchase even more of Twitter’s stock if he chooses, which could conceivably give him even greater informal influence over the company or even a controlling share.
Instead of Musk, Twitter should be looking for guidance from people such as former President Barack Obama, who is making the problem of disinformation a central focus of his post-presidency.
Obama has been carefully studying misinformation, convening experts on the subject, and starting to propose smart solutions — such as greater openness about how social media algorithms work and holding social networks more accountable for the content on their sites. He is the kind of outside expert who could provide Agrawal and his colleagues with valuable “input.”
Explaining why social networks shouldn’t be able to say their algorithms are proprietary and therefore not subject to outside review, for example, Obama said, “I don’t know exactly how the inspections on meat are done. And if somebody says we have a proprietary technique to keep our meat clean, that’s fine, take it up with the meat inspector.” But, he said, “This notion that we have to preserve this because somehow we have proprietary interests, that is wrong.”
For advice on how to fix the huge problems facing the platform, the company needs to look to people such as Obama who are focused on solving, rather than practicing, bad behavior on Twitter.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/12/opinions/twitter-elon-musk-barack-obama-misinformation-alaimo/index.html
