In year 798, the famous scholar Alcuin of York wrote a letter to Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards, to (as was his custom) advised the mighty king on national affairs. Writing in Latin, he said to the king and his patron: Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit—“And one should not listen to those who always say that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the commotion of the crowd is always very close to insanity.”
I wonder if the old monk is pleased with the number of enthusiastic new fans he has on Twitter. So many people have cited these words as proof that Elon Musk is now infamous call of “vox populi, vox Dei” after his Twitter polls — which were supposed to guide his policy implementation on the platform — were clueless. “He was stupid for not quoting the whole phrase! It’s a warning!” they cry.
But like so many tweeters almost learned, they miss essential context. Although Alcuin is often credited with this phrase, it is clear that he is setting his sights on a popular aphorism. And his aim is resolutely anti-democratic. As early 20th century writer Rolph Barlow Page put it own book on the subject: “Therefore, Alcuin, while commanding the lords to be fair and benevolent to the people, felt that the people should obey a just ruler with a grateful heart.”
One doubts that Musk might like that interpretation. And why wouldn’t he? He is not a democrat. A more modern vox populi reference might be a better fit for Musk’s Potemkin referendum. In the 1976 movie Networka nightly messenger goes crazy and finds a goldmine of ratings by becoming a “television wave’s mad prophet”. His performance turned into a real carnival, with one of the side acts being Vox Populi, a segment showing the latest opinion polls. Screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky foresaw many of the fallout of cable news, but also with a bit of social media and thinly veiled sexual impulses and impulses. by data. Musk’s call to vox populi after his polls is almost an all-too-perfect callback to Networknightly news festival: an opinion poll where no method is seen, masquerading as a meaningful vote on the future of polity.
I do not think This condemned social media, however. If the internet has a future, then we will have to figure out how to implement democracy here in an orderly manner. Whatever else can be said about Musk’s disastrous, fascist tenure at Twitter, it serves as a reminder that other, slightly more benevolent dictatorships, social media operators don’t work either—the former incarnation of Twitter, like Facebook and others, has led us from disaster to disaster—and this accumulated resentment makes it easier for the public to exploited by a capitalist hustler using the aesthetics of democracy to disguise their own imperial power.
But before we can get to the prospect of a more sustainable solution, it’s necessary to understand why Twitter polls are such a hoax.
First, Musk polls are more like push polls—surveys designed to produce a specific outcome using manipulative or biased questions. taste. In his first two polls about unblocking certain journalists he had suspended from the site for reporting critical news about him, he questioned the question by asking: “Cancel the suspension. accounts did doxx my exact location in real time: now, tomorrow, 7 days from now, longer?” When none of the four picks received more than 50 percent, he dismissed the poll, even though “now” has won a majority with 43 percent. The next poll offers only two options: now or seven days. But the brazen question remained, clearly presenting that the journalists misled his exact location when none of them did. It should be clear why such framework is coercive and opposed by reputable statisticians and pollsters.
