Elon Musk doesn’t know what it takes to make a digital town square

This is just one of many possibilities in the era of Musk. After years of slow improvements to the site, many users are concerned that the billionaire's purchase will lead to its degradation.

Musk has said that under his leadership there will be sweeping policy changes. The ability of users to remain anonymous could be challenged, as well as a loosened up of the platform's speech rules, if this were to happen. He has made a number of conflicting statements about how he thinks the site should moderate content, among them being that it should and will remove only speech that is illegal.

There are moves that we don't have to think about. While Musk recently walked back claims that he planned to lay off one third of the company's workforce, it was reported late on Thursday that top executives had been fired and "hastily escorted" from the company's headquarters. The company's head of legal policy, trust, and safety was also included.

Under her leadership, the legal team made significant policy strides, many of which were aimed at protecting the most vulnerable users. The company worked with the government of New Zealand to develop tools to facilitate independent research on the effects of user interactions with algorithmic systems, as well as banning political ads in the run-up to 2020.

In the early days of the free speech wing of the free speech party, just about anything, including terrorist content, harassment, and hate speech, could be found on social media. Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated, according to Musk. It seems clear that the new chief intends to roll back some of the rules that were put in place.

Musk stated that he would cut back on the fight against misinformation. This wouldn't be a good idea. Prompts that encourage users to actually read what they're sharing, and labels that give additional context to potential misinformation are some of the policies and tools that Twitter has crafted. With major elections approaching in dozens of countries in the coming two years, these tools are essential.