“We need democratic checks and balances”


Florence G’sell, professor of law at the University of Lorraine and director of the Digital, Governance and Sovereignty chair at Sciences-Po, returns for Paris Match to the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk.

Paris Match. Elon Musk said he was in favor of reopening Donald Trump’s Twitter account, despite the former US president’s multiple legal setbacks. Who could win?
Florence G’sell. In any case, and this is what I find a little regrettable, Elon Musk’s opinion takes precedence. If he manages to take control of Twitter, which still requires taking a few steps, Elon Musk will decide and he has made no secret that his general intention is to have a platform that perhaps practices moderation a little less but above all presents less of what he calls bias: he accuses Twitter of being run by people on the left who make biased decisions. Donald Trump’s appeals that were rejected were largely motivated by the fact that, in the United States, it is up to the platforms to decide.

Do you think that this takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, if successful, is a change without return for social networks as we know them?
It’s very difficult to say! I think that shows the extreme polarization of the debate in the United States, the fact that they cannot get out of a rather sterile opposition between conservatives who say they are discriminated against by the most widespread platforms and the other side of people more on the left, considered as progressives, who are extremely favorable to a significant moderation of the platforms, which they have demanded. Initially, Twitter or Facebook were platforms where we did not particularly want to moderate. But they have been led to adopt increasingly important moderation policies after many calls to do so.
What happens in recent years is very important, whether it’s the time of Trump’s election and the allegations of the impact of this lack of moderation on the outcome of the vote, to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to events on Capitol Hill and then to the Covid pandemic: we have seen platforms intervene more and more on content, going so far as to prohibit anti-vaccine speech. We got there because many specialists and politicians called for moderation.
But on the other side, people like Elon Musk, even more radical than him, think that we must let the speeches spread and that everyone can express their point of view. I have the impression that we are in an unsurpassable opposition and that we will remain in this debate with a situation where the platforms have control and the risk, as with Twitter, that someone takes control of the platform and radically changes the moderation policy.
Will this change permanently? I’m not sure. The leaders of the other platforms will follow very carefully what Elon Musk is doing and I don’t know how far the program he has assigned himself will be applied.

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“Platforms are very imperfectly effective against content that is not illegal”

On the one hand, conservatives and Elon Musk believe that there is too much moderation and interventionism on the platforms. However, as users of social networks, we see that a lot of hateful, racist speech, misinformation persists. Where are we really? Is there over-intervention?
Over-intervention, no. But what is interesting in the current debate is the question of whether moderation practices should align with the law and the definition of illegal content or not. Social networks sometimes go far beyond legal requirements, this is true for nudity and climate-skeptical content. But at the same time, these platforms are failing a lot in their fight against the content they ban: they are not sufficiently effective against illegal content and sometimes they are also very imperfectly effective against content that is not illegal but which they have decided to outlaw. We can understand the discourse which consists in saying that we are going to ensure that we no longer see illegal discourse, but once we have done that, we will have reached a milestone. I think Elon Musk is on that line, which explains why he told Thierry Breton that he completely agreed with him, that he was going to respect the Digital Services Act so that the fight against illegal content is effective.
Today, moderation practices are not at all adapted to the desire not to allow hate speech and calls for violence to pass. I’m not sure Elon Musk realizes that this goal of enforcing the law and eliminating illegal speech online is going to take a lot of effort.

Elon Musk therefore said he was ready to respect European regulations. What is the difference between the laws in Europe and the United States? Is it compatible with his displayed project?
I don’t know to what extent Elon Musk correctly represents European legislation. He understood that the Digital Services Act was going to oblige him to fight against illegal content, but the text leaves it up to national legislation to define this illegal content. Our European laws, which vary from country to country, generally go beyond what exists in the United States, where constitutional provisions prevent tight regulation of online speech. Hate speech is not, as such, prohibited in the United States whereas we have, in French law, texts of incrimination sanctioning incitement to hatred, violence or discrimination. It’s going to be blatant on everything that comes under disinformation: the doctrine in the United States is the “market of ideas”, we all have the right to have our opinions. The principle that prevails in the United States is to let people speak and if words are false, the best policy is to respond with arguments and not to prevent them from speaking. But for many, the evolution of social networks and platforms since 2016 has shown that this does not work: we have mass disinformation and calls for violence.

“There is a fairly political side to his approach”

Among the investors alongside Elon Musk for the acquisition of Twitter are a Saudi prince and the Qatari sovereign fund, two countries with very repressive legislation on freedom of expression. Some already fear interventionism by such investors to silence dissenting voices…
I don’t know to what extent these people are involved in the operation and we should know what their motivations are. But it’s true that some see the takeover of Twitter as a way to take control of a media outlet to influence it for its own interests.
It seems delicate to me to impugn Elon Musk at this stage, but what I find very worrying is to have someone who is already at the head of several strategic companies, who puts a foot in a type of activity whose impact on the general public no longer needs to be demonstrated. There are questions to ask, and which are valid for Mark Zuckerberg, about these emblematic figures who emerge, have all the power and make decisions in a completely unilateral way for a platform which concerns millions of people. It’s a global issue: the power these people have seems out of proportion. We need democratic checks and balances. Regardless of the people, it is a for-profit company that informs people and allows them to communicate: these platforms must correspond to our democratic practices, with checks and balances. This power is excessive for one man.

Richest man in the world that he is, Elon Musk buys Twitter for 44 billion dollars. Is it too expensive, especially with the massive investments that the fight against illegal speech would require?
Many say that his idea is clearly not financial and that he has a project in mind. It’s complicated to make assumptions and to go beyond what he announced but we see that he wanted to make a point, saying “I’m tired of these people on the left who decide everything while I like this platform, I have ideas to make it work”. He is very critical of the decisions taken in California, there is a rather political side to his approach. The financial aspect seems to take second place. But he still has to manage to complete his operation and, in my opinion, it’s not done yet.



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