I think you’re somewhat misrepresenting the argument against Elon Musk acquiring Twitter.
My general view on the subject: I am against e.g. government intervention to prevent Musk from taking over Twitter. However, I think there is room for things that the government should not ban to still be bad. Overall I think Musk acquiring Twitter is more likely to be good than bad. However, this is in part because I think that Twitter currently is horrendous, and that if Musk on his first day accidentally unplugs all Twitter’s servers and takes the site down that would be good for the world, so his high-variance approach has nowhere to go but up.
Some more realistic reasons why you might not want Musk taking over Twitter include:
Musk appears in his Twitter usage to be somewhat thin-skinned. Among other things, he seems to have the (somewhat common among CEOs) belief that short-selling his company is equivalent to sabotaging it, and to think that Tesla short-sellers are attempting to spread malicious lies in order to drive his company’s stock down.
Will criticism of Tesla be banned on Musk’s new Twitter?
Will criticism of Musk be banned on Musk’s new Twitter?
While neither of those things would be a First Amendment violation, and neither of those things would be bad enough I’d be happy to see the government intervene to prevent them, I still do not think those things would be good.
Musk’s view on what free speech should involve includes him being able to say several categories of thing that are unambiguously not constitutionally protected:
It is not constitutionally protected for the CEO of a company to publicly make a false claim that he has secured funding to take it private at a price well above its stock price at the time.
It is not unconstitutional for a settlement with the government to constrain your ability to make public statements on certain matters, and it is not constitutionally protected for you to violate such a settlement.
Even if you disagree with these points and think that those things should be covered by the First Amendment, they currently aren’t, and it’s not clear that ‘Elon Musk buying Twitter’ is good for that.
(Everything I know about Elon Musk’s Twitter I learned from reading Matt Levine. If I’m wrong about any questions of fact here, blame him).
I think you’re somewhat misrepresenting the argument against Elon Musk acquiring Twitter.
My general view on the subject: I am against e.g. government intervention to prevent Musk from taking over Twitter. However, I think there is room for things that the government should not ban to still be bad. Overall I think Musk acquiring Twitter is more likely to be good than bad. However, this is in part because I think that Twitter currently is horrendous, and that if Musk on his first day accidentally unplugs all Twitter’s servers and takes the site down that would be good for the world, so his high-variance approach has nowhere to go but up.
Some more realistic reasons why you might not want Musk taking over Twitter include:
Musk appears in his Twitter usage to be somewhat thin-skinned. Among other things, he seems to have the (somewhat common among CEOs) belief that short-selling his company is equivalent to sabotaging it, and to think that Tesla short-sellers are attempting to spread malicious lies in order to drive his company’s stock down.
Will criticism of Tesla be banned on Musk’s new Twitter?
Will criticism of Musk be banned on Musk’s new Twitter?
While neither of those things would be a First Amendment violation, and neither of those things would be bad enough I’d be happy to see the government intervene to prevent them, I still do not think those things would be good.
Musk’s view on what free speech should involve includes him being able to say several categories of thing that are unambiguously not constitutionally protected:
It is not constitutionally protected for the CEO of a company to publicly make a false claim that he has secured funding to take it private at a price well above its stock price at the time.
It is not unconstitutional for a settlement with the government to constrain your ability to make public statements on certain matters, and it is not constitutionally protected for you to violate such a settlement.
Even if you disagree with these points and think that those things should be covered by the First Amendment, they currently aren’t, and it’s not clear that ‘Elon Musk buying Twitter’ is good for that.
(Everything I know about Elon Musk’s Twitter I learned from reading Matt Levine. If I’m wrong about any questions of fact here, blame him).