Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1483254
5.12.19 12 03.11.2022 Alexei Dingli Prof. Alexiei Dingli is Professor of Artificial Intelligence 12 OPINION Freeing Twitter A few months back, the world was surprised by the news that Elon Musk, the tech mogul (found- er of companies like PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, to name a few), decided to pur- chase Twitter. e company has been hoovering on his radar since 2017, when he bought the initial 5%. At the time, Musk was pondering Twitter's com- mitment to freedom of speech, and at one point, he even float- ed the idea of creating a rival platform to Twitter. However, it seems that it was easier to pur- chase the majority of shares in the company (if you have the money), which is what he did when he submitted a bid for $44 billion. Today, he is the majority shareholder of Twitter, and the rest is history. But what does this move means for the rest of us? Musk's motives might be cryptic at times, but if we try to dig into them, we find that, according to him, Twitter is a sort of town square where peo- ple go to talk about anything happening under the sun. Be- cause of this, he believes that it is essential to guarantee users, the faculty, to speak freely but within the bounds of the law. He believes that Twitter can become a space where millions of users that use the platform can debate a different range of beliefs healthily and without resorting to violence. One of the things that trig- gered this belief seems to be the permanent ban on former president Donald Trump. Af- ter years of posting contro- versial tweets, in 2021, Trump tweeted about the people who stormed the US Capitol and called them "patriots". eir actions not only threatened democracy but also caused the physical death of at least four civilians. After being tempo- rarily banned for 12 hours and reinstated with a warning, he continued tweeting, suggesting that the US Presidential elec- tion of 2021 was illegitimate and indicating that he would not support an orderly transi- tion for the new government. is message was the straw that broke the camel's back, and Twitter decided to ban Trump permanently. Musk believes such actions might lead to further polar- ization and plans to take ac- tion. Even though it's still early days, many are concerned that Twitter's change in ownership might relax the moderation guidelines that affect the use of violence, hate speech, or other offensive content on the plat- form. His online interventions are somewhat contrasting, in- dicating that anything should be allowed as long as they don't break the law, but he also states that Twitter should not be- come a "free-for-all hellscape". Of course, while his ideas may be noble, achieving such a feat is easier said than done. e problems associated with social media cannot be avoid- ed by simply allowing any: Tom, Dick, and Harry to ex- press their views freely. First of all, not all views are equal, and as such, they shouldn't be on the same lev- el. e opinions of a seasoned virologist speaking about the pandemic should be worth more than those of someone who spends his days surfing the web. e virologist passed through years of study and probably has decades of expe- rience, so his views must have a higher weight. Second, the algorithm is not interested in who has the au- thority to express particular views and who doesn't. So if an uninformed individual starts spreading fake news on a spe- cific topic, the simple fact that he has more followers than an expert will result in a broader distribution of his views. ird, not everything is a matter of opinion. Placing pineapple on a pizza might be debatable for most people, and it's fine to debate it. But wheth- er or not the vaccines work is not a matter of opinion. e results are based on rigorous scientific experiments and can only be refuted by performing other counter-experiments. Fourth, various studies have shown that polarisation seems to be a side effect of social net- working algorithms. If we look at the business models behind these applications, they try to keep people online as much as possible, expose them to adverts and make money the more adverts they watch. e result of this is that the prior- ity of the algorithm is not to show good quality content but to show content that keeps the user on the platform. In fact, the scope behind social net- works is not really to inform but to entertain. at is why the death of Grumpy Cat gets more prominence than the thousands of people who died in the war in Ukraine. e al- gorithms also learned that po- larization and conflicts make people interact more. If a per- son is interested in a topic, ex- posing him to posts supporting that stance or those rejecting it makes him likelier to like or comment on it. So even though Elon's inten- tions might be noble, the ways in which these algorithms work makes it highly unlikely that he will succeed. e problems we are having are not just related to freedom of speech but more to the fact that anyone can use such social networks to am- plify his opinions even though they might not be valid. We are giving a platform to all sorts of noise, and by doing so, we are doing a disservice to humanity. Elon Musk should strive to turn Twitter into a source of good, where opinions are weighted and whose primary aim should not be to entertain but rather to inform people. Only then can we hope to have the first Social Network work- ing for good and not to fill the pockets of its investors!