This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 28th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, at least he's agreed to the challenges he may face

between maintaining a happy user base, happy

advertisers and driving profitability are significant. However, it's far from

clear that the purchase poses some unique threat to a freewheeling internet, let alone democratic institutions.

Cato's Will Duffield offers his thoughts.

All right, we have gotten through, I think, at least the initial round of the hottest takes on Elon Musk buying

Twitter.

So in general, what do you understand his goal to be?

Well, he'd like to moderate Twitter more liberally.

He's had numerous complaints as a Twitter user over the years about how the platform is run and now that he's

bought it he can do something about what he's had issue with. He's been worried about the Twitter algorithm, what it serves,

the lack of user choice in that, and more broadly that Twitter is not as supportive of free speech as it used to be or as a

raucous global open communications platform should be.

And he'd like to bring it back in that direction.

A lot of self-styled conservatives, I say that because the word conservative is currently

in flux.

But a lot of self-styled conservatives

have pointed to Hunter Biden laptop

as a key moment in Twitter history where the platform essentially fell down on allowing a generally

truthful story to move forward from a major American newspaper.

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