Philip Bump, The Washington Post:
Yes.
No, I think it is true that Elon Musk is making a bid to be the place where the right wing of American politics can go and have a conversation. He — when he took over Twitter, and even when he first put in his bid to buy Twitter, he made very clear that he thought Twitter had made bad decisions about who was allowed to be on the platform and who wasn't.
Twitter had been previously very assiduous about keeping off people who had been spreading information that was false, making false claims about the election or about the coronavirus pandemic. He saw those moves as being the wrong way to go. And he reinstated a number of people and, in doing so, really drew a distinction that I think was — is important to recognize between himself and, say, a FOX News.
FOX News got in huge trouble for spreading election misinformation with this lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. But Twitter doesn't have that same problem. It is a different sort of place, where people can go and get information, even false information.
And that provides a power to Musk within the right-wing conversation that FOX News can't match. And I think he's starting to wake up to the possibilities that that engenders.
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