Pittsburgh area experts have mixed reactions to Elon Musk's Twitter purchase

It was Remington shaver spokesman Victor Kiam who famously said, “I like it so much, I bought the company.”

For Elon Musk, the opposite is true.

The world’s richest man, according to Forbes Magazine, Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion on Monday and then said he wants to own and privatize Twitter because it’s not living up to its potential as a platform for free speech.

“It’s almost as if we’re seeing kind of a version of (the movie) ‘Wall Street’ being played out,” said University of Pittsburgh law professor Peter Oh. “Elon Musk originally wanted to join the board of Twitter. And the board imposed a condition on him that if he was going to be a part of the board, he could not criticize the company.

“So, Musk’s conclusion was: If you can’t beat the board, you might as well just buy the company.”

The board has approved the transaction. But the sale still needs to be approved by the shareholders who may well have some legitimate concerns about the deal.

For starters, Oh says some financial analysts think Twitter is worth more than what Musk is offering.

And then there are concerns some watchdog organizations have about Musk potentially dismantling protections put in place by Twitter in recent years against disinformation, harassment and abuse.

For his part, Musk, who also owns electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, said he merely intends to promote free speech on Twitter.

“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,” Musk said in a Monday statement.

Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America, sees Musk’s strategy as something far more insidious, “effectively opening the floodgates of hate and lies and using Twitter’s position as a market leader to pressure other social media companies to backslide.

“Musk may claim that this is about freedom of speech, but don’t be fooled — this is about ideology.”

Andrew Conte, founding director of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University, said Musk’s purchase of Twitter definitely raises concerns.

“Any time you take somebody who’s already the richest person in the world and give them a megaphone that they can control to say whatever, raises all kinds of concerns,” Conte said.

And what is the impact on shareholders if disinformation or hate speech is allowed?

“They all have different levels of liability,” Oh said. “So when it comes to the shareholders, none of them would be able to be sued in connection with the actual company and its business model for allowing whatever kinds of free speech would be allowed on Twitter.

“The much more likely scenario is that Elon Musk, as the CEO of the corporation, could be sued for whatever particular policies that they decide to go with.”

One of Musk’s proposed policies getting a resoundingly positive reaction is his idea to make Twitter’s algorithms public. In other words, the rules that computers follow to determine what you see in your Twitter feed should be made known to you.

“That, I think is great,” said Kathleen Carley, a professor in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. “Right now, a lot of the social media companies have various algorithms that they use to do things like decide which material to promote or decide who to recommend to you to follow – or decide which of your messages will go to which of your followers.”

At present, Carly said, it’s kind of a guessing game as to what’s going on.

“But by making the algorithms public, you make them also accountable because you can then say, aha, here is the bias in this algorithm,” she said. “And now you can go in and actually fix it and make the algorithms better.”

Conte said Musk’s purchase of Twitter also might have a positive influence on other social media, such as Facebook and TikTok, which skews to a younger demographic.

“Hopefully, Musk’s leadership of the company will drive innovation and also force other companies like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and the folks at TikTok to think about how to make their platforms more engaging,” Conte said.

For now, though, it seems that it’s Twitter that needs to make itself more appealing.

Its user base of more than 200 million is much smaller than those of Facebook and TikTok. And while Twitter is more of a destination for celebrities, journalists, influencers and world leaders, Conte calls it an “echo chamber.”

He said Twitter needs more “can’t miss” conversations.

“I’m hoping (Musk’s purchase) will rejuvenate Twitter so it’s not just journalists talking to each other, but really does become something that the average person turns to on a regular basis,” Conte said. “A lot of people don’t turn to Twitter first. I know, for a lot of my students, it’s an afterthought compared to Instagram or TikTok. Twitter’s gotten a little bit staid and boring.”

One of the criticisms Musk has had about Twitter is that a lot of the people who have the most followers, such as President Obama, for example, don’t use the platform frequently.

Conte believes Musk will maximize the number of people who want to use Twitter

“One thing we know about Musk is that he’s truly an innovator, and he’ll push the boundaries. He didn’t put all the money into it to lose the money,” Conte said. “He put the money into it because he thinks he can make more money, right? I think that’s the thing to look forward to.”