Musk has said he wants tomake Twitter an arena for free speech.
Its not clear what that will mean, and his statements have fueled speculation among both supporters and detractors.
As a corporation, Twitter can regulate speech on its platform as it chooses.
There are bills being considered in theU.S.
Musks calls for free speech on Twitter focus on two allegations:political biasandexcessive moderation.
These claims are based on anecdotal evidence.
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People, of course, have political biases.
They could gain followers.
They acted according to an identical algorithmic behavior.
But this behavior was politically neutral, with no understanding of content seen or posted.
We tracked the bots to probe political biases emerging from how Twitter works or how users interact.
Node size is proportional to share of links to low-credibility sources.
The closely connected red clusters indicate conservative echo chambers.
On average, accounts are drawn toward the conservative side.
Referees or censors?
The other allegation that Musk seems to be making is that excessive moderation stifles free speech on Twitter.
As a result, social media users have in past years become victims of manipulation byastroturf causes,trollingandmisinformation.
Abuse is facilitated bysocial botsandcoordinated networksthat create the appearance of human crowds.
And removing anonymity mayharm vulnerable groups.
A weakening of these moderation policies may make abuse rampant again.
Manipulating Twitter
Despite Twitters recent progress, integrity is still a challenge on the platform.
These techniques enable malicious users to inflate content popularity while evading detection.
Musks plans for Twitter are unlikely to do anything about these manipulative behaviors.
