The social media giant confirmed Monday that the CEO and billionaire will acquire the company. It was announced this week that Musk would be buying the company. What will this mean for freedom of speech, for a world in which online displays of vitriol are becoming more normalized, for media, academics and other platform users? Will things get worse for women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, as well as groups that have been trolled by the billionaire himself over the years? The good news is that we have a lot of information about Musk, so we can make an educated guess about what will happen at the micro-blogging site. The good news is that his less than stellar record of accusations on speech, information transparency, racism, and misogyny give him information. There is another concern for me. I'm worried about what Musk's purchase of Twitter means for a world facing a deeper class divide, and where that is leading us to as a global community. The amount of power he will have as the sole owner of the network should be of concern to us all. It is good for free speech that Musk is buying. Musk isn't the only billionaire who controls major information platforms. This is not capitalism anymore, it is worse. The rule of the ruling class of our time is no longer maintained through the ownership of means of production. The land is owned by landlords. The ruling class of our time owns and controls information. Capital is dead is a paragraph in the introduction to Mckenzie Wark's book. Is this worse than when Musk bought Twitter, as if she knew that another billionaire, now the world's richest, would buy yet another major information platform? Women will still have options if abortion is legalized in Mexico. There is nothing new about billionaires buying up newspapers. It has been happening for a while. Online information platforms are for the mega rich. According to Forbes, the 10 richest people in the world are all men, with four of them controlling access to the majority of online information available to Americans and the world. The migration of people from traditional news sources to these billionaire-owned platforms has made them even more powerful. Journalism, like law, medicine and academia, is hardly a profession of the bourgeoisie, as it has always been an elite business. In recent decades, the rich who own these portals have gotten richer and more powerful. The income inequality gap is widening. Income inequality in the United States has gone up since the 1980s. During the past two years, the fortunes of the 10 richest people grew by $821 billion dollars. 100 million more people fell into poverty during the same period, according to the United Nations. Does Sean Hannity get talking points from Trump via carrier pigeon? American families struggle with evictions, childhood poverty and other indicators that don't match up with where we should be compared with the other Group of Seven major industrialized nations while Musk dangles inconceivable amounts of money in our faces. Only a few people in the world can afford to play it. The joke is on us. We are powerless users of the information tools of the wealthy. They sell us yoga pants while we beg for health care, debt relief and a living wage. The huge wealth gap and the consolidation of control of information platforms in the hands of too powerful men is something that should worry everyone. We can't let them think we don't notice. Carli Pierson is an attorney, former professor of human rights, writer and member of the Editorial Board. You can follow her on social media. You can read opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, as well as on our daily Opinion newsletter. 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Billionaires control ... everything
Then there's the wealth gap
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