Sunny Hostin is not a fan of billionaire Elon Musk purchasing the social media platform Twitter.
Last Monday, Twitter announced it had accepted Musk’s $44 billion offer to take the company private—a platform used by more than 200 million people every day.
“Twitter can be a really horrible place, and I think people are excited because he is going to unleash the trolls. He is saying, ‘You get to say whatever you want. I’m going to take away the guardrails,'” she said.
Twitter currently prohibits harassment, abuse and posts that wish physical harm to someone. Tweets spreading misinformation regarding COVID-19 and elections are flagged.
Musk thinks Twitter has gone to far, calling himself a “free speech absolutionist.”
Musk said of his acquisition: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
However, Hostin believes Musk’s “free speech” claims are just a ruse and believes that women, in particular, should be concerned.
“38% of women around the world have said that they have been on the receiving end of a lot of abuse on Twitter. 85% of women have said that they have seen the abuse.” Hostin added, “Twitter is not the real world. In fact, on Twitter it is predominantly straight, white men. So when Elon Musk says, ‘Wow, this is about free speech,’ it seems to me that it’s about free speech of straight, white men.”
Onlookers are anxious to see what changes Musk will implement.
