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Yishan Wong, the former CEO of Reddit, said Elon Musk will “enter a world of pain” if he buys Twitter.
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In a viral Twitter thread, he explained why Musk “shouldn’t be wasting his time” on the platform.
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Musk doesn’t quite understand the challenges of enforcing free speech on the internet, Wong argued.
Yishan Wong, former CEO of Reddit, said Elon Musk “will face a world of pain” if he buys Twitter, arguing that the Tesla CEO does not fully understand the challenges of content moderation and enforcing free speech on the Internet.
“Elon is not going to solve some problems. I am absolutely sure of that. He has no idea where he stands,” Wong said in the now viral Twitter thread†
At the heart of the thread is Wong’s belief that Musk will not be able to uphold the free speech ideals of the “old internet” because of the way the internet works today. As the modern web has grown to allow anyone to post anything at any time, platforms as big as Twitter are eventually being forced into censorship, Wong argued.
“Censorship is inevitable on major social networking platforms. If you run one big enough, you’re FORCED to censor things,” he said. “Not by governments, or even by ‘users’, but by the emerging dynamics of the social network itself.”
According to Wong, it’s not politics that determines those dynamics, although that’s what both sides of the aisle are inclined to believe. Instead, he said it’s because ideas are “powerful and dangerous” by nature, and major social media platforms have a responsibility to keep people from getting completely out of hand.
“And it’s not because certain ideas are good or bad, or true or false. It’s purely because of operational issues that arise with people disagreeing in large numbers on digital platforms,” Wong continued.
Regardless of the exact reasoning behind Wong’s free speech debate, the bottom line is that running a social media network is hard—much harder than Musk may currently think.
To illustrate this point, Wong went on to say that Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey’s extreme lifestyle is likely a result of the trauma and chronic stress associated with such a position.
“And the worst part, the part that will hurt ALL OF HUMANITY, is that this will distract from its mission at SpaceX and Tesla, because it will not only take up his time and attention, IT WILL DAMAG HIS PSYCHE.” he continued.
Musk’s response to the “novel of a thread,” as he called it, was that Twitter was “way overdue” for a lengthy tweet feature.
Read the original article on Business Insider
