Your Actions Should Be in Sync with Your Goals
Elon Musk acquired Twitter to safeguard free speech. That’s a worthwhile, noble goal. We need more free speech, not less.
To achieve the goal, you should be able to host your own instance of Twitter on your domain, which Twitter engineers won’t have access to1. For example, IIT Bombay could run twitter.iitb.ac.in that only IIT admins have access to. Likewise the Congress should be able to host their own version at twitter.inc.in, which the BJP can’t censor via their control of government machinery. You should be able to audit the code and ensure that Twitter engineers have no access. You should be able to turn off any censorship features in it. If Twitter releases a new version of the product with features you believe are antithetical to free speech, you should be able to choose not to adopt it. Others should be able to enhance the product to promote free speech. You should be able to fork it if you believe the current developers are not going a good job. It should be open-source. The multiple instances of Twitter should be federated2.
In addition to being able to host your own Twitter, Twitter should host a second instance uncensored-twitter.com that takes down content only if it’s illegal3 and not to please advertisers or for other reasons like violence. After all, society already has a way to decide what content should be allowed and what should not — it’s called the law. Uncensored Twitter would just follow that, rather than trying to impose its own subjective opinions, or the opinions of whoever is in charge. Ads would not be shown on Uncensored Twitter4, because advertisers advertise only next to brand-safe content. So, Uncensored Twitter could require payment to offset the costs of running it. Don’t try to make a profit by charging (say) $9.99 a month — that will price out many believers in free speech. Charge as little as possible just to recoup the marginal cost of each user. Every tweet that appears on twitter.com would also appear on uncensored-twitter.com.
If one truly believes in free speech, the above is what is required to achieve that goal. If someone says that X is his goal, he should commit to whatever actions are necessary to achieve X. Otherwise, it shows he’s confused about his true goals, or lying to us.
Imagine I bought a scooter. You ask me why. I say, “Oh, that’s because I don’t want to get wet in the rain!” That’s laughable. The action and the goal are not in sync. The action — buying a scooter — is not wrong by itself. The goal — staying dry in rain — is not wrong by itself. They just don’t go together. So, either keep the goal (staying dry) and change the action to match the goal (buy a car), or keep the action (buy a scooter) and acknowledge that your actual goal is different (like wanting to reach your destination faster in traffic). Either way, get your actions and goals back in sync.
Not just direct access like SSH but also indirect ones like features that phone home or that allow Twitter to remotely disable your entire instance. In other words, not just write access (to delete a tweet) but also read access (to see what IP address a tweet was posted from).
Or, more precisely, each instance of Twitter should be able to choose which other instances to federate with.
After all, society already has a way to decide what content should not be allowed. This is codified in the form of law. One could argue that private companies don’t need to reinvent the wheel by having their own opinions of what to permit.
The exception is certain limited types of content we can all agree we don’t want, like spam or malware distribution.
Except perhaps for advertisers who opt in, with careful filtering to select what the advertiser is okay with and what not. For example, the BJP might be okay with their ads appearing next to anti-Muslim content, but not Maruti. So, each advertiser with tick or un-tick specific categories.