Free Speech Opportunist: Elon Musk’s Degradation of the Town Square
Whose Ideas End Up in Social Media?
Sunday afternoon July 27th, 2025, via Zoom at 2:30 pm
Social media is often considered to be a democratic space. The platforms make it easy for nearly anyone to say nearly anything to seemingly everyone, and many people hail the results as the purest form of free speech. Elon Musk latched onto that notion as one of the reasons he decided to buy Twitter (which is known simply as XÂ now) and promote it as the world’s town square. But as the platform faced criticism from users and advertisers, Musk’s attempt to enshrine it as a marketplace of ideas has been challenged by the marketplace of commerce. One of his first reactions: Restrict speech.
Professor Stephen Wolgast, Knight Chair in Audience and Community Engagement for News and Professor of the Practice of Journalism at the University of Kansas, will: 1) demonstrate how the man who calls himself a free-speech absolutist places a higher value on the dollar than others’ ideas; and will then, 2) show how the notion that X is a town square fails on a number of counts.
Register for this presentation here: https://tinyurl.com/3uecx4mv.
Theodore Talks take place via Zoom on the fourth Sunday of each month at 2:30 pm Central Time. Can’t attend this Theodore Talk? Go ahead and register anyway; a link to the recording will be sent to you once the talk is over. All Theodore Talks have closed captioning enabled.
Remember, Theodore Talks are always offered FREE for Mensa members in an effort to provide more value to your Mensa membership.
A list of future Theodore Talks can be found on the Mensa National Events Calendar, by visiting the American Mensa homepage, or by viewing the article on 2025 Theodore Talks in the January issue of the Mensa Bulletin.
Questions? For more information, contact Brad Lucht.
