We have nothing to fear but free speech. Free speech and inclusiveness. Two things, free speech and inclusiveness.

The third example of mainstream media bias is from Elon Musk’s Twitter Will Be a Wild Ride by Kevin Roose.  It is subheaded His deal to buy the company is back on. Here are six predictions about Twitter under Musk’s control, if it happens.

There is no doubt that this is a story with twists, turns, and surprises.  

In this instance, it is not straight reporting of an event and therefore there are slightly different considerations to take into account.  Roose is forecasting a future rather than reporting the present or past.  Forecasts are inherently . . . uncertain.

However, there are still standards.  Every good forecast includes What is going to happen, When it is going to happen, Where it is going to happen and To What degree it is going to happen.  A hurricane will strike Tampa at 3am Tuesday morning with 125 mph winds and a four foot tidal surge is a usefully specific forecast.  Useful because, if accurate, you can plan accordingly.  Useful also because it has sufficient specificity to be accountable for post facto assessment.  A hurricane will likely hit the southeast this week is a far less useful forecast.  

Roose make six forecasts

He’s going to clean house, starting with firing Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal.

Employees will revolt.

Donald Trump will return to Twitter, along with a swarm of other right-wing culture warriors.

It probably won’t change the midterms, but 2024 could be the Elon Election.

Twitter will kill unpopular features, go after bots and introduce new subscription products.

Musk will remain the center of attention.

I'd say there are two high probability forecasts.

Twitter will kill unpopular features, go after bots and introduce new subscription products.

He’s going to clean house, starting with firing Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal.

That is what you usually do with a flagging business or brand.  You focus on the financials, the customers, the market and the team.  Get rid of non-contributing elements and focus on growth, profitability, and effectiveness.

One forecast is unquantified and therefore of little use.

Employees will revolt.

Unplanned employee turnover will rise from 8% to 25% in the first year is a usefully specific forecast.  Some employees will leave is useless.  Employees in general flee from change and uncertainty.  This forecast is only meaningful if the number leaving is greater than currently expected in the industry or greater than the unplanned turnover rate of any merging or revitalizing technology corporation.  

In his commentary, Roose hedges as commentators usually do.  There will be an "enormous backlash" among employees.  But also "a “large silent majority” of Twitter employees supported Mr. Musk’s vision."  Further, "It’s also worth noting that Mr. Musk may not mind if thousands of Twitter employees show themselves the door. He has implied that the company’s staff is bloated."  Roose is covering all the bases.  If a lot leave it could be a bad thing or it could be a good thing.  And maybe not so many people leave at all.  This particular forecast is not much of a forecast at all.  It comes down to 'Some employees might be upset and leave.'  Well, yes.  That is usually what we see happen in these instances.

Three forecasts are empty and meaningless.

Donald Trump will return to Twitter, along with a swarm of other right-wing culture warriors.

It probably won’t change the midterms, but 2024 could be the Elon Election.

Musk will remain the center of attention.

On the first point Roose is making a curious and interesting argument.  Roose is concerned that Musk will make Twitter a more open and inclusive social media platform.  Roose is happy for Twitter to be a refuge and instrument of the left.  He doesn't want it to be more open.  

The reason he is concerned that Twitter might become more representative the nation is due to his implied belief that Twitter swings elections.  If Twitter quits suppressing voices on the right, then Roose is concerned that without that repression, Democrats will electorally do worse in 2024.  Perhaps.  But those are assumptions that would be worth documenting in greater detail.  Especially since the implication, if they are true, are not good.

It was not worth reading.  A fluffy piece with no real substance and driven by political angst, not national relevance.  

What struck me was Roose's use of attack adjectives to signal intent instead of making an argument one way or another along with a tendency to offer unsupported assertions for his forecast.  

"Mr. Musk is famously subject to 11th-hour mood shifts" - signals that Musk is capricious and unreliable.  Is this assertion true?  I have the impression of someone who is driven both by hyper-rationalism yoked to a strong vision of what could be.  Not much room there for someone prone to mood swings.  This seems like an unsupported assetion.

"The mercurial billionaire has made only the vaguest of public statements about his plans for the company and its products."

"A juicy set of text messages" - implies something unseemly.

Finally, there is Roose's deep aversion to free and inclusive speech.  

Mr. Musk, who has framed his bid for Twitter as an attempt to preserve free speech on the platform, has long said that, if successful, he would allow former President Donald J. Trump to reclaim his Twitter account, which was permanently suspended last year after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

That will happen almost immediately, I predict. (And, yes, Mr. Trump will come back to Twitter if he’s invited, no matter how much fun he’s having on Truth Social.)

But Mr. Musk’s “replatforming” will extend far beyond the former president. A host of right-wing culture warriors could come back to the service with Mr. Musk’s blessing, including those who were barred for expressing hateful views, spreading false conspiracy theories and harassing other users. (In his text messages, Mr. Musk told Mr. Agrawal that he wanted to reverse all permanent Twitter bans “except for spam accounts and those that explicitly advocate violence.”)

Mr. Musk, who styles himself a centrist but often crusades against the “woke left,” has made no secret of his plans to make Twitter a friendlier platform for right-wing voices. He has expressed support for The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire site whose Twitter account was suspended after it published a transphobic humor piece about a Biden administration official. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account was suspended this year for repeatedly sharing misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, has urged Mr. Musk to reinstate her along with other right-wing commentators, including Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars.

Along with one-off reversals of high-profile bans, I’d also expect that Mr. Musk would tear up Twitter’s existing rules and rewrite new ones, and that he might dismantle Twitter’s content-policy and trust-and-safety teams, which are responsible for enforcing the platform’s rules as they currently exist. (That is, if those teams don’t quit en masse first.)

Roose never engages with the well documented unrepresentativeness of Twitter's users and how biased has been its imposition of rules against one side of the aisle but not the other.  All his examples are of people rejoining Twitter with whom he disagrees politically.  "Right-Wing", "Culture warriors", "Hateful views", "Spreading false conspiracy theories", "Harassing other users", etc.  Roose does not want to participate in a marketplace of ideas.  

Reversing all bans except for bots and explicitly advocating violence is actually pretty much the norm for everyone else in the America where our First Amendment concerns freedom of speech.  

It is hard not to feel like Roose's view is shaped primarily by his fear of a platform committed to free speech and equal and inclusive participation.