Elon Musk’s Libertarian ‘Information Flow’ Ideology is Going to Drown Us All

Morgan Weiland

(Originally published by the San Francisco Chronicle on December 6, 2022) 

Rather, Musk is remaking Twitter in the “free flow of information” image of free speech that is pervasive in tech culture and ascendant at the Supreme Court. This hyper-libertarian view has roots in engineering and values content quantity over quality, prioritizes information over ideas and drops accountability entirely from the equation. And it departs dramatically from the historical metaphor about free expression — Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “marketplace of ideas” — which envisions competition among ideas, supported by a responsible press, where truth usually wins out.

Instead, Musk is letting information flow, and we are drowning in it.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on the San Francisco Chronicle’s page here.)

Read Weiland’s related article in SSRN