Elon Musk is making a lot of noise about buying twitter, but he hasn't yet.
He is also not a champion of free speech particularly. Mainly because he doesn't like criticism himself and hasn't thought through the complexities of free speech internationally, when it comes to international politics and law.
The main problem is having so much power in one perhaps hands and how that effectively means he is a global policy maker because twitter policies then dictate how people are influenced.
If for example, Musk decides that all Indiana twitter users must follow the government laws in India, does this mean free speech is cut by the government, or does Musk somehow intend to bypass the government and force tweets which break Indian law. And how does he then keep twitter open in India if he goes against the government.
My main issue with Musk is he said he wanted to verify everyone. Now we've had that debate on MN about why that disadvantages women and takes then OUT of public debate, because they are then at risk of doxing or data leaks that may endanger their safety. So if you think verifying everyone is compatible with free speech, you don't understand the problem.
Equally verifying everyone means you can trace political opinions and various bits of data. This is EXTREMELY valuable, especially to a billionaire. It means you can potentially control the population as a whole. Thats not exactly compatible with free speech either.
One of the big debates over Mega Corporations with incomes bigger than nations and billionaires who have international ownership over social media is how this undermines democracy on a national level and how much power nations have to stop the political and economic agendas of such individuals and groups. This undermines democratic principles of free speech through the ballot box, because nations are almost over ruled by these global individuals and organisations.
Equally the flip is true, where a government is authoritarian, if Musk goes down the route of siding with the government rather than considering principles of free speech are only allowed in democracies. By giving the power to authoritirian governments the people lose, not gain their free speech.
I PERSONALLY think that twitter isn't balanced in its political makeup internally. I think its exceedingly anti-free speech. However, part of free speech in a democracy is ensuring the quality of speech and that people aren't harassed / intimidated into silence too. You need to ensure that minority voices aren't silenced by the abuse of others.
However, how you achieve a more balanced makeup is near impossible, because views differ on who and how you should protect from country to country. The UK offers legal protection to women on the basis of sex under the Equality Act but this isn't true in other countries.
Musk effectively could take away our freedom of speech by deciding the world by imposing his own morality on everyone else and deciding who was worthy of protections and who was not.
Otherwise you end up with people saying that its ok to post porn, violence, pro-anna, guides to suicide etc etc all in the name of free speech.
The problem I see is that twitter has an issue with freedom of speech.But it can't be fixed by a individual imposing his will. You have to think about things in terms of empowering those who are quiet and need more protections just as much as those who are more vocal.
Without going into a situation where people can express views via some sort of international democracy, you don't build an international consensus. But you can't this goes back to the pitfalls of one country dominating others and minorities being disadvantaged and individual disenfranchisement through a verification system.
I therefore think the REAL problem with twitter as it stands, isn't actually freedom of speech at all. It then comes down to how existing rules are enforced and how threats and abuse and racism isn't treated consistantly. Its less about free speech and more about implimentation of the existing rules really. And how it deals with and tackles disinformation. Who is a 'trusted source' and uses journalistic practice to a certain standard and who is just spouting opinion. There is a difference and making this clear by having a quality mark or standard, where certain accounts are highlighted in this way, would be better.
But then wtf do I know? I'm not a billionaire with an ego.