That Was Quick
Earlier this week, the Twitter board did an about-face and agreed to accept billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company, with plans to take it private.
So many folks, almost all on the right side of the political spectrum, not only hailed the possibility of a Twitter without constraints, but gleefully restored their old accounts, the ones they said they deleted in protest of Twitter’s policies on various topics…stifling information about a Biden family laptop, suspending those who discussed COVID-19 in a way other than the prevailing narrative, and so on.
Here’s the hook…he doesn’t own it yet, and there are various federal governmental agencies who are trying to figure out how to block him from ever owning it.
The cheers about what the platform might become are fine, as are comments about how those who benefitted from the throttling of free speech in the recent past are now apoplectic at the prospect of the same thing happening to them…or that they may need to compete in the marketplace of ideas and are afraid their ideas won’t hold up to public scrutiny.
But to rush to embrace the platform that these same folks vehemently criticized a very short time ago…that seems premature.
I’ve been on Twitter, and remain there…so does this station. Are we looking forward to what might happen? Of course. But let’s tap the brakes on this newly-free Twitter…at least until the deal actually closes.
