Aspiring Twitter owner and current Tesla CEO Elon Musk has indicated that if he succeeds in buying the social media platform, its content moderation policies will reflect the bounds of the law. Human Risk Limited founder Christian Hunt writes that while Musk’s tweet shows an apparent lack of understanding for ethics or compliance, it inadvertently provides some interesting insights in the field.
This content has been adapted from Hunt’s own social media post. View the post and associated comments on LinkedIn.
Here’s why I think it is of interest. Musk intends to use the law as the guard rail for running his business. In simple terms, if it’s legal, he’ll do it. If it’s not, he won’t. While that might sound appealing, it’s also a recipe for disaster.
Ethics
We all know that the law is not always a good guide to what’s right. This is true in part because the law, like regulation, tends to operate on a backward-looking basis, focusing on preventing yesterday’s bad outcomes from reoccurring rather than preventing tomorrow’s.
Perhaps that’s not surprising, given some of the lawmakers we’ve managed to elect in recent years. Remember the digital illiteracy on display when Zuckerberg went in front of U.S. legislators?
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