Elon Musk’s $44bn education on free speech

He has had a crash course in the trade-offs in protecting free expression

FILE - SpaceX's Elon Musk waves while providing an update on Starship, on Feb. 10, 2022, near Brownsville, Texas. Twitter on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022, suspended the accounts of journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, including reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and other publications (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald via AP, File) — Image: AP

Dec 19th 2022

Elon Musk’s two months running Twitter has been an unhappy experiment. The social network’s 250m users have endured a wearying saga in which Mr Musk is the central character. Advertisers have fled. Twitter, which lost $221m in 2021, is now on track to lose $4bn a year, by one estimate. The damage has spread to Tesla, Mr Musk’s carmaker, part of the reason it has lost half a trillion dollars in market value since early September, costing Mr Musk the title of the world’s richest man.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “A $44bn education”