Town square

In Saudi Arabia, where a relatively closed culture leaves citizens few public forums to discuss news and politics, Twitter has become a kind of town square, the place where citizens meet to swap information and debate the latest issues.

Mr. Musk has frequently expressed concern that Twitter’s content moderators go too far and intervene too much on the platform, which he sees as the internet’s “de facto town square.”

Mr. Musk went on to say that the reason he was buying Twitter was “because it is important to the future of the civilization to have a common digital town square,” where a “wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner without resorting to violence.”