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How Elon Musk Should Shape Twitter–Sans the Sink — Jonathan Turley

Summary:
While the First Amendment does not bind private corporations, there is nothing preventing one — like Twitter — voluntarily assuming such protections for free speech. Even with some adjustments for a private forum, what I call the First Amendment Option would create a default in favor of free speech that doesn’t exist on these platforms.There’d be narrow exceptions for threatening, unlawful and a few other proscribed categories of speech. Twitter can tap into a long line of First Amendment jurisprudence limiting the scope of such speech regulations. Even with a private company’s greater flexibility, a First Amendment-based policy would establish much better protections for free speech.In other words, Musk could show up at Twitter with precisely the standard long dismissed by censorship

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While the First Amendment does not bind private corporations, there is nothing preventing one — like Twitter — voluntarily assuming such protections for free speech. Even with some adjustments for a private forum, what I call the First Amendment Option would create a default in favor of free speech that doesn’t exist on these platforms.

There’d be narrow exceptions for threatening, unlawful and a few other proscribed categories of speech. Twitter can tap into a long line of First Amendment jurisprudence limiting the scope of such speech regulations. Even with a private company’s greater flexibility, a First Amendment-based policy would establish much better protections for free speech.

In other words, Musk could show up at Twitter with precisely the standard long dismissed by censorship advocates — and then let that sink in.…

One problem with Twitter "independence" is that Elon Musk is a large-scale US government contractor

JonathanTurley.com
Jonathan Turley | Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University

See also

Business Today (India)
Elon Musk fires entire Twitter board to become the sole director
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Scott Ritter, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, serving in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, on General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector
Mike Norman
Mike Norman is an economist and veteran trader whose career has spanned over 30 years on Wall Street. He is a former member and trader on the CME, NYMEX, COMEX and NYFE and he managed money for one of the largest hedge funds and ran a prop trading desk for Credit Suisse.

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