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Google and Apple, potential obstacles for Musk in his mission to restore free speech on Twitter

The former security and trust chief warned that these app stores have more power than Musk believes when it comes to controlling what the social network censors.

Libertad expresión Twitter

(Mohamed Hassan/ Stock Vault)

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

Yoel Roth, former global head of security and trust at Twitter, explained several factors why it is complicated to achieve the freedom of speech that Elon Musk wants. In an opinion article published in The New York Times, the former executive, who resigned on November 11, called Musk "the self-declared free speech absolutist" and warned that Elon Musk's pro-stance of "brand of radical transformation" could spell trouble for the social network.

According to the former manager, jobs like the one he held are not easy. As he explains it, his team was responsible for exposing "government-backed troll farms meddling in elections," they introduced "tools for contextualizing dangerous misinformation" and "banned President Donald Trump" from accessing his Twitter account. Work that he defines as "unrelenting and contentious."

Advertisers and laws complicate freedom of expression

This work has a major drawbacks: the advertisers, Roth says they play a key role in helping Twitter moderate its content and, by extension, freedom of opinion:

As long as 90 percent of the company’s revenue comes from ads (as was the case when Mr. Musk bought the company), Twitter has little choice but to operate in a way that won’t imperil the revenue streams that keep the lights on. This has already proved to be challenging.

Almost immediately upon the acquisition’s close, a wave of racist and antisemitic trolling emerged on Twitter. Wary marketers, including those at General Mills, Audi and Pfizer, slowed down or paused ad spending on the platform, kicking off a crisis within the company to protect precious ad revenue.

As Roth points out in his editorial, different laws and regulations also pose a problem for Twitter to implement the freedom of speech that Musk desires as it affects the company in all the countries in which it operates:

Amid the spike in racial slurs on Twitter in the days after the acquisition, the European Union’s chief platform regulator posted on the site to remind Mr. Musk that in Europe, an unmoderated free-for-all won’t fly. In the United States, members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have raised concerns about the company’s recent actions. And outside the United States and the European Union, the situation becomes even more complex: Mr. Musk’s principle of keying Twitter’s policies on local laws could push the company to censor speech it was loath to restrict in the past, including political dissent.

Google and Apple could control free speech on Twitter

Yoel Roth did not merely point out the problems Twitter faces in achieving the freedom of speech that Musk hopes to obtain. He also noted that both Google and Apple's app stores may have more power than we think when it comes to controlling "unrestrained speech on the mainstream internet."

Failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to get Twitter’s services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.

The former Twitter executive assured that it would not be the first time that the social network has faced problems because the content they publish does not have the approval of these app stores. He said that it had happened before and that, even then, they were at risk of disappearing from the Google and Apple Stores:

In my time at Twitter, representatives of the app stores regularly raised concerns about content available on our platform. On one occasion, a member of an app review team contacted Twitter, saying with consternation that he had searched for “#boobs” in the Twitter app and was presented with … exactly what you’d expect. Another time, on the eve of a major feature release, a reviewer sent screenshots of several days-old tweets containing an English-language racial slur, asking Twitter representatives whether they should be permitted to appear on the service.

Roth criticized for hypocrisy

Yoel Roth claims that the whole problem he sees when it comes to enforcing freedom of speech is what led him to leave Twitter. However, he does not have the support of the many who took advantage of the social network he left and who criticized him for the multiple censorships that, while he was in charge, were applied on the social network:

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