Elon Musk just bought Twitter and is promising to make it a haven for free speech online.

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: So, it has been an exciting week. This is, I told somebody the other day that I think this week was one of the most important weeks in his, in modern history, and I think it was a much-needed win for those of us that love, liberty and free speech. So, and you know, we’re recording this before you hear it, but we might have to bump this up cause I think this is a really important current event, but Elon Musk bought Twitter or not today, but two days ago, and I am just so excited about it. So I know a lot of you are probably too young to use social media and be very thankful cuz social media is terrible. Sometimes.

Emma: It’s not that great.

Brittany: It’s not that great, but it’s how we get our news, right? That’s just the way things are right now. You know, back in the day people used to congregate in like general stores, like a la like local neighborhood market. Barbershops actually in a lot of communities are still a place where people congregate. They come together and they share news and that’s how people got their news. Or there’s this concept of, you know, the town square. Think about like the founding fathers days when people were writing pamphlets and all that. They’d go to the town square and they’d let people know what’s going on and probably gossip a little bit about, you know, the local news and other people in their neighborhoods. But this was a big part of society. Even like churches, stuff like that. Everyone’s had like their community place where they go and they and they get their news. Well, now it is social media even more than like Googling people look to Twitter for their news. But Twitter has become kind of a terrible place. Maybe it always has been. But Twitter was once used to kind of fight the power. Twitter was people able to tweet their opinions maybe about the government. There’s a great story back in 2008 where there was some really corrupt elections in Iran and, the young people were able, even though the internet was like turned off or stifled they were able to get on the internet and tweet things and tell people where their like activism was happening or what spots to avoid. And it was really great. It was this powerful tool in helping give people this power, but then something pretty bad happened and that was this rise of what we call, you know, like cancel culture and all this, all this where if you say an opinion someone doesn’t like you’re canceled forever or, and this one really gets me. People have invented that hate speech is a thing. You did an episode on this I think a year ago, but hate speech is basically people say you only have a right to free speech unless it hurts my feelings. That is essentially what hate speech is saying. So there’s become this big thing of like, okay, if you bully online, if you’re mean to someone on Twitter, you should be banned because you are, you know, you’re making, you know, you’re offending us, you’re making us cry on this stuff. And it’s so crazy to me. And so Twitter is a private company. We’ll get into more of this, this private, government-owned, free speech issue in the next episode. But now Twitter’s a private company. They’re absolutely allowed to kick off whoever they want from their platform. That’s their right. But should they is a really good question. And I think no, especially when you look at why Twitter was started and that was to give people a voice, and now all of a sudden you can say it’s like the silliest things so well this, so Donald Trump was kicked off, which that’s a crazy thing cuz he was the president of the United States at the time. Twitter kicked off the president of the United States, which is just nuts. And I love or hate him, it’s just a weird think to kick off, you know, the Quote unquote, leader of the free world. But then they started, during COVID they started kicking people off for voicing their opinions on vaccines. And they would say like, you’re spreading misinformation, you’re part of the problem. And they would kick people off. People would get kicked off if they didn’t share the same views on certain social issues. They would get, you know, their accounts banned. I had a friend, she’s great. She wrote about this, her name’s Carrie. Carrie had, she used to be an independent journalist and she never used her Twitter account. It was never used. And she got banned for breaking community policies. And she’s like, she like logged on and she’s like, I haven’t logged that in like two years. Can you tell me why? And they’re basically didn’t have an answer for her. So it’s so crazy. And they have like rules where you can’t like, or you can get kicked off if you threaten violence or you do this and this and that. But here’s the really crazy part. So there is a terrorist organization known as the Taliban in the Middle East and they do terrible, horrific things. And they kill people and harm a lot of people and they’re allowed to stay on Twitter. Twitter didn’t kick them off. Yeah. So there’s just so much craziness in the world today. And Elon Musk is what I like to call an internet troll. And that’s people who, there’s that expression like poke the bear like you try to push buttons. And Elon is great at that, even if he says some absurd things. He’s in such an interesting position where he has so much money and so much power to just not care what other people think. that he’s become, to me a beacon of like, people think of these evil capitalists. Right. And I think of Elon Musk as almost the opposite. And I love Jeff Bezos, who’s the CEO or founder of Amazon. I don’t dunno if he’s CEO anymore. Yeah. Now he’s also very, he’s CEO. What is he?

Emma: I think he’s now just chair of the board if I’m remembering correctly. I don’t think he’s the CEO anymore.

Brittany: Okay. So I love him. But here’s the difference, I think of the two of them. And that is the Elon stands for something. And I’m not saying Jeff Bezos doesn’t have his own personal convictions, but he’s not really public about them. Yeah. But one thing I love about Elon is his general want to change the world. You know, there’s a bunch of different people trying to go to space now doing private space travel, but Elon has had this in his mind for a long time. SpaceX, you know, has been his thing. This is Elon’s just like mission to change the world. He sent the, what was it, the satellite for internet to the, or Ukraine when they, when Russia turned off their internet like he does things that are that yes. Benefit him in some way, which we’re okay with, but just help the world. So Elon was sick and Elon is always trolling people on, Twitter. He’s always, triggering as they say, you know? Yeah. Leftist accounts because he just says, he says hilarious things it goes to be. So he announces about, gosh, it happened really quickly, I wanna say like two weeks ago he announces that he’s a shareholder, meaning he owns 10% of the company or almost 10% of the company. And people lost their minds guys. People were tweeting like, the internet’s over, you know, democracy as we know it is falling, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And instead of like just sticking to that, he went one step further. He’s like, okay, well guess what? I’m gonna buy Twitter. I’m gonna buy Twitter for 44 billion, which I can’t even imagine. And everyone’s internet’s crazy, right? The internet freaks out even more and everybody’s like, oh, this is gonna ruin everything. Oh no. Cyberbullies are gonna be allowed on the internet. And it’s just people lost their minds as people love to do it seems over the past several years Twitter, actually I think it was the board tried to stop him, like put this thing called a poison pill in place. And that is supposed to stop people from trying to buy it. And basically what that means is they can sell shares that’s like shares means like pieces of the company. So instead of one person owning it, you can buy shares and you can buy a teeny share. You can buy like a 1% and just own a teeny bit of that company. So they were gonna make the shares, cheaper. So the other people had access to buying more and it couldn’t all belong to Elon. And then Elon went up, he is like, or I could just give you 46 million, or I think he offered 46 originally. So I’ll be honest with you, Emma, I did not think he was gonna pull this off. I loved the troll. Right. I loved the, everybody was freaking out. And the craziest thing is, Emma, they were freaking out because they don’t want free speech. They didn’t like that people should have the right to their opinions and say what they wanted to say. People want people to be punished. It’s like the Karen thing, right? Yeah. People want people to think the way they think or be censored. So I did not think this was gonna happen. I was just prepared for everything. I was like, all right, this like made my day, but we’re not there yet. He’s not gonna buy Twitter. And then about two days ago, or Yeah, yesterday actually, was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday, no, two days ago. It was longer. I was like, what day is it? April 25th I believe was the day, I woke up and everybody was like, oh my goodness guys, Twitter agreed for Elon to buy it. And so this is really exciting. I’ve heard, but I can’t confirm this, that accounts have already been, like Unsuspended. I saw Dr. Malone is back on, and Dr. Malone, he was on Joe Rogan’s show and he came under a lot of controversy because he has very, what shouldn’t be controversial, but are controversial views about COVID. So he’s gotten back on, it’s becoming a place where people are so excited that free speech is back, that we might have free speech on the internet, that there will be a platform where we can say what we wanna say. And, sorry, I might keep like, I’m on like a no whole thing, so I’ll kick it to you in a minute. But one of my favorite things to come out of this is Elon tweeted the day that he bought it. Something to the extent, this isn’t a quote, it’s something the extent of, I hope everybody who criticizes me stays on Twitter, because that is the entire point, you know? Yes. This isn’t an echo chamber. This isn’t a place where we all come to say we agree with each other. Twitter is a place to come and disagree and debate ideas and have this town square where everyone shares different opinions. So I think to me, that was, I could not stop smiling on Monday. So I will stop talking now. I talked for like 10 minutes Great. And kick it to you for some thoughts before we wind down.

Emma: Yeah. I mean, I had kind of the same reaction that you did where I was like, wow, did this really happen? I definitely did not think that he was gonna pull it off, not for lack of him trying or being serious. But because I thought that, you know, the SCC kind of has it out for him. The SCC is the Securities Exchange Commission, and it basically oversees all sorts of financial stuff. particularly for, I believe publicly traded companies. Is that right, Brittany? I think so. That’s like their main jurisdiction, but they kind of have a bone to pick with him. And that goes way back, we don’t have to get into all of it, but I thought that basically the government or, you know, kind of the establishment media crowd was gonna get in the way of it happening. And I do think that there’s a good possibility that a lot of people tried, but at the end of the day, he made this crazy offer and he got the financing to back it up and he made it happen. And I’m, you know, I think this is such a huge moment for free speech because it’s been so discouraging to see how just blatantly people have been, you know, have lost their ability to speak on issues. And I think it’s really scary when, you know, even if it’s not the government doing it, I think it’s quite scary that you can say a certain thing or, you know, say a certain phrase or word or whatever that will just basically have you silenced. And I think that’s really scary. And we saw just how, how scary that can be during COVID when people were just saying things like, you know, Hey, vitamin D is really effective at preventing transmission and people would lose their accounts over stuff like that. And it’s, you know, it’s, I find it really ironic, especially from the like quote unquote liberal crowd, because the word liberal means that you believe in freedom and freedom of speech is, you know, for hundreds, thousands of years has been considered one of the most important parts of a, you know, a truly liberal society. Unfortunately, I think that word has kind of lost all its meaning. because now, you know, the quote-unquote conservatives are the ones calling for, you know, completely open and the quote-unquote liberals are calling to shut people down. But to me, the craziest and scariest part of it all has been seeing how many people have openly admitted, I don’t think that we should have free speech, or I think that censorship is good and that we need to for, and they say that it’s for the good of democracy. So that our country can survive. I’m like, what are you trying to preserve by not letting people speak? Like, that’s kind of scary. I don’t wanna know what kind of plans you have for our country. You think people speaking is like a threat to your, you know, your agenda. But anyway, I think it was a wonderful, occurrence. I’m really happy, and I will say my Twitter feed has been very different than it was up until the day that he bought it. Really? I have a feeling that he has been digging into some of the algorithms like, cuz you know how people talk about being shadow banned? Which is basically like, you can still tweet, but no one really says, ones it,

Brittany: No one’s gonna see your stuff.

Emma: I am seeing people in my feed that I’ve followed forever that I just never see their stuff. So maybe it kind of went back to like, there is no real algorithm. It’s just sort of like the people you follow, you see their stuff. So who knows, maybe we’ll find out in time, maybe Elon will tell us. But either way, I am very, very happy that this happened and I think it’s a great step in the right direction for you know, freedom and public discourse and all of that good stuff. So I’m hoping that they don’t find a way to sabotage him. It seems like we’re past that point, but.

Brittany: I hope so.

Emma: Yeah, pretty big week for free speech. So we will wrap it up here today, guys. Thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you all again soon.

Brittany: Talk to you soon.