Gatekeepers Very Afraid That Elon Musk Will Remove the Gates From Twitter

“For somebody with a lot of money to just come in and say, ‘Look, I’m going to buy a part of this company, and therefore my voice as to how your rules are adopted and enforced is going to have more power than anybody else’s’ I think that’s regressive after years of [Twitter] trying to make sensible rules,” University of California, Irvine, law professor and former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression David Kaye was quoted in Vox on Tuesday. “Twitter has stepped away from this idea of it being the free speech wing of the free speech party, and being a more realistic custodian of speech on the platform.”

via reason.com

Well, it may be “regressive,” Professor Kaye, but that is exactly how it works. Where do law schools find these people? You’re not rewarded property by the state if you adopt “sensible” rules for free speech. But cheer up. I don’t think Elon will be able to take twitter in the end (though he might if he’s determined enough). That’s in part because now twitter has adopted a poison pill, a near miraculous device the protects the shareholders from the threat (horrors!) of being offered a price for their shares that the Board thinks is not enough. (Of course, this doesn’t mean the Board has to offer them more.) I have thought pills should be banned or strictly regulated since 1985 or so, but we lost a long time ago. Sad. . . . You can, if you’re willing to fight long enough and spend enough money, overcome a pill, but it’s not easy. So you could say somewhere under the mountain of BS, we still have a free market, if you’re rich enough.