Wthe haters become of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s exploratory move to buy Twitter, the movie surrounding his bid tells us something about the problems the social media giant faces — and possibly about dysfunctional relationship of many journalists to it.
For one thing, conservative complaint about Twitter censorship usually met with progress react that the social media site is not a real “public square” with equal access, but a private company that can write and enforce its own rules and enforce them. that rule to their liking, like a company would do in one’s living room. Yes, from a legal standpoint. And many liberals and progressives are expressing frustration about Musk’s offer to acquire Twitter confirm that they do in fact view the company as playing a hugely important role in the community in determining the scope of the mainstream conversation.
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, lament that Musk is seeking to “control one of the most important ways the public receives news today” and “become the wizard behind the curtain” that determines what is projected onto the world’s computer screens. gender. Max Boot, a one-time conservative pundit now affiliated with Democrats due to his opposition to Donald Trump, even suggest on Twitter that there is reason to worry about the future of democracy if Musk wants to buy the platform.
If Twitter is of such importance, it’s less of a living room than a “town square” (as Musk recently put it). assertive in a TED talk). Of course, this does not mean that Twitter management should be legally bound by First Amendment speech protections. That means those worried about preserving a truly liberal social and political culture have good reason to push back if Twitter’s policies restrict legal speech or the laying of fingers. the ideological thing on the scale.
Are they not? I have no doubt that a lot of right-wing complaints about oppression on Twitter are grievance politics. In a recent learn For example, led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two-thirds of Twitter users who are “strongly Republican” say the suspension of accounts promotes QAnon’s conspiracy theories about pedophilia on the internet. globally is “anti-conservative”. The same study found that in the six months after the 2020 election, pro-Trump accounts were nearly 5 times more likely to be suspended on Twitter than pro-Joe Biden accounts — but the trend of pro-Trump accounts as spreading disinformation, judged as such by a politically balanced panel, could explain much of this disparity.
However, the lack of transparency in Twitter’s enforcement of rules, including bans and removals of tweets — as well as in the workings of Twitter’s algorithms that help drive some stories and hashtags, and hide other stories — prone to biased claims.
One might think the story of the Hunter Biden laptop is just a laptop and still believe that Twitter’s decision to block incoming links New York Post its story in the fall of 2020 is driven less by concerns about the integrity of the information than by worries that it will be weaponized by the right. It is still unclear whether Twitter at one point blocked content mentioning a “laboratory leak theory” about the origins of COVID-19. (The Daily Beast has asked Twitter for clarification, but has yet to receive a response.)
Another controversial area where bias has been accused – and not just by conservatives, but by radical feminists – is transgenderism. User has banned, suspended and otherwise censored not only to attack specific transgender women, but to make general statements such as: “All rapists are men. Under UK law, a person with a penis is allowed to commit rape”. Meanwhile, the tweets seem to call for violent rape by a mainstream, center-left journalist who has been accused of phobias for writing about the intricacies of transgenderism for minors allowed to stay.
This is not about intentional discrimination but about the instinctive progressive bias of many top employees at Twitter. Del Harvey, a Twitter veteran who served as the company’s vice president for trust and safety to the end Octoberwas quite open about her belief that preventing “harm” to “disadvantaged” users — women, racial minorities, LGBT people, etc. — should be a priority. However, at best, this is the best prescription for nannyism (especially since radical discourse defines “harm” so broadly) and at worst, political bias.
“… a lack of transparency in Twitter’s enforcement of rules, including bans and deletions of tweets — and in the workings of Twitter’s algorithms that help drive certain stories and hashtags and hide other stories — prone to claims of bias.”
Where did Musk come from? His politics cannot be easily trapped (he was against the “fascist” COVID-19 lockdown, but left Trump’s business council after the administration pulled out of the Paris climate accord). However, his broad liberalism and criticism of Twitter for “fact bias” has stoked fears that he will make Twitter a free organization for all neo-Nazis, Holocausts, people QAnon fanatics and those against the dissidents.
In his TED talk, Musk confirmed that he would be wrong to say more as long as it is not prohibited by law. Whether or not Musk’s Twitter will allow all constitutionally protected speech (i.e. almost anything but threats and defamation) remains unclear. However, a few of his suggestions — making the algorithm Twitter uses to promote and remove content transparent, and rely more on “timeouts” than permanent bans — seem constructive.
Some concerns regarding Musk’s personal volatility, such as 2018 trouble in which he quarrels with a British cave explorer who is working on rescuing teenagers trapped in a cave in Thailand and calls him a “pedo guy”. But perhaps, Musk as Twitter CEO will still rely on advisors and employees to run it. And if he runs it erratically, sane users will skip it in bulk – which many people can speak would be the best thing to happen to our democracy.
I won’t go that far. However, I think a potentially good lesson from the Musk/Twitter story would be a reminder to rethink the extent to which we’ve made Twitter our “town square”—keep that only one in five Americans use it, and 10 percent of users provide 80 percent of the content. (Notably, Twitter’s censorship of anti-vaxx and voter fraud conspiracy theories hasn’t stopped a large section of the population from embracing them.)
Part of Twitter’s overwhelming importance is that it is the game of choice for the media and political activists. It can be a useful tool for news gathering and discussion, but it can also create pseudo-consensus that is increasingly remote from the real world. Too many journalists are married to Twitter.
If the prospect that this marriage could lead them to work with Musk is a sobering or even frightening thought, it may be time to consciously address it.
