"Must" might be.
No one has figured out a way to monetize a social network without advertising, at least not at the scale Twitter has to operate.
I think the statement probably is more like "no one has figured out an easier way to monetize a social network"...
A "de facto public square" would be public in conception, construction, and support from the start, which is one of the ways we know that Twitter is no such thing. Though it would likely also have some rules for how speech is/isn't conducted.
And all things considered, advertiser-friendliness is a sort of low-resolution but approximate passable democratic mechanism for marking boundaries of civilized discourse.
This reminds me that progressives have historically always supported corporations as complex hierarchies, scientific enterprises, run (ideally) by “experts.”
[citation needed]
CNN's ratings were never better than under Trump. He's fantastic for advertising. So is Musk. All controversial figures are. That, oddly, isn't controversial in advertising.
>on a whim!
He created a public poll, and when people voted for Trump to be allowed back won, he unbanned him, tweeting "vox populi, vox dei" ("the will of the people is the will of god"). Had he unbanned him despite the poll saying "no" you could argue it was a whim, but that isn't the reality we're in. He also refused to unban Alex Jones, citing exploitation of child deaths and a personal story. Not unbanning Alex Jones was more whimsical than unbanning Trump was, factually speaking. Why do people always misrepresent his actions? And why is it always upvoted and not flagged here?
