November 9, 2022 at 4:07 p.m.
The Twitter, it is a-Changin'
The Twitter, it is a-Changin'
That is exactly the case as America last week was treated to the sometimes hilarious goings on at Twitter after Elon Musk acquired complete control of the company.
Prior to his acquisition, Twitter had imposed a rigid censorship scheme that suppressed and prohibited narratives contrary to government thinking, but it was evident last week that Twitter was changing and changing fast.
Not everybody was banned in the old regime, of course, just the influencers who could, well, influence people. The justification was that Twitter was being publicly responsible by suppressing dangerous disinformation that would harm the American public, never mind that no one really ever explained why Twitter social engineers were in any position to make such judgments.
As it turned out, now that ongoing communications between Twitter and the government are coming out thanks to Freedom of Information requests and to lawsuits filed against the government, Twitter engineers were not really making those decisions but instead were being directed by officials in the Biden administration.
Of course, no one is explaining why Democratic Party social engineers were any more qualified than anyone else to make judgments about what citizens can see on Twitter.
And that is the point. No doubt a substantial amount of what goes on Twitter is misinformation, but the free speech principle has always been that the counter to bad speech is simply more speech, not less, that the true disinfectant to an infected dialogue is sunshine.
It doesn't work perfectly, but it's better than the alternative. For when "experts" and "thought leaders" deem from the heavens what is accurate and what is not, they often codify what turns out to be wrong, while persecuting those who were right.
The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story is the perfect example. So were those who dared to oppose school closures, or vaccine mandates. Alex Berenson was suspended for simply citing the results from a clinical trial by Pfizer and raising questions about vaccine mandates.
Meanwhile, the CDC got to post anything it wanted, including disinformation about vaccines stopping transmission, when it knew just the opposite. The CDC also knowingly released flawed diagnostic tests, and recommended temperature screening methods that simply didn't work.
Musk is expected to change all that, but it's important to understand that so far Twitter's core content moderation - that is to say, its censorship - policies haven't changed. These things take time, but, while we wait, the hilarity has ensued as the left has freaked out about what has happened and what they know is about to happen.
First, Musk condemned Twitter's "blue check" system - celebrities, "experts," politicians, and other privileged souls get blue checks to show they are elite and to be bowed to - as a system of overlords and peasants and deemed that anyone could buy a blue check tag for $8 a month. The blue checks were horrified, not that they had to pay but that the unwashed could join their ranks.
Then Musk's Twitter issued new rules of service for using the platform, and it included standard bans on illegal activities, as well as for glorifying violence, or promoting terrorism and child sexual exploitation and targeted harassment. They also seek to limit users from impersonating others and from publishing other people's private information.
Indeed, Twitter banned the comedian Kathy Griffin for impersonating Musk, though he joked that her real sin was impersonating a comedian.
But the new rules also eliminated policies the old Twitter had in place, such as prohibiting "misinformation" about COVID-19 or prohibiting "misinformation" about the Ukraine war.
Perhaps more important, Twitter has begun appending some tweets with "community notes" that add "context" to the tweet. In other words, rather than censor anybody, Musk is letting tweets stand but allowing opposing points of view into the discussion.
This has infuriated liberals who have had the platform to themselves, and it infuriated liberals when it was immediately applied to them, most notably to President Joe Biden.
First, the White House tweeted out that seniors receiving Social Security would be getting "the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden's leadership." An appended note pointed out that the cost-of-living adjustment is tied to the rate of inflation, which is out of this world. The White House deleted the tweet.
In another tweet, Biden's staff tweeted that "in 2020, 55 corporations made $40 billion. And they paid zero in federal taxes. My Inflation Reduction Act puts an end to this."
Well, not exactly. Twitter added context: "The Inflation Reduction Act imposed a minimum tax on corporations with average pre-tax earnings greater than $1 billion. Out of the 55 corporations the tweet references, only 14 had earnings greater than $1 billion and would be eligible under Biden's tax law."
Then Biden tweeted out that "right now, the most common price at gas stations across the country is $3.19 per gallon. That's progress." But Twitter added "context" there, too, pointing out that "Biden is referring to the 'most common gas price' as opposed to the average gas price of $3.800 (11/6/22). The most common is the 'mode' gas price. Neither are wrong and politicians tend to reference the one that is lower. The mode diminishes high gas states from the equation."
So the shoe is on the other foot and suddenly the left isn't liking it. But mind you, in this new Twitterverse people are not being banned (except for fraudulent impersonation) or censored; instead the company is adding the disinfectant of opposing viewpoints and interpretations - the very essence of free speech.
Perhaps the final straw for the left came on election eve, as Musk tweeted that he advised people to vote Republican in the election. This caused the Associated Press, after recovering from its panic attack, to skewer Musk for daring to endanger the neutrality of the public square.
In the story, AP absurdly asserted that over the years Twitter had taken "great pains to appear politically neutral."
The AP went on to say that "Musk's tweets could also stir up trouble in global politics outside of the U.S. elections." The evidence? Musk indicated that he might be willing to unblock the accounts of right-wing Brazilian lawmakers who complained about election fraud in that country. As it turns out, some of those lawmakers are the most popular political figures in the country, garnering more total more votes than anyone else.
The question is, is any of this important? Is Twitter even relevant? After all, only about 6 percent of Americans even use it.
To be sure, the Biden administration thinks it's relevant. That's why Biden keeps attacking it in speeches, as he did last week, accusing the platform of "spewing lies all across the world."
Never mind that many of those lies originated in his own administration. And, as open records requests and discovery in ongoing lawsuits make clear, the administration has been organizing a broad and deep censorship scheme with the social media platform.
The truth is, Twitter is very important, and it's important for three reasons.
The first is, it's the preferred platform of political influencers. Those influencers use it to shape the political preferences of the donor class and of public policy and economic experts. In the world of public policy, it has an outsized impact.
Second, the media uses it as news. It is still the case that breaking news hits Twitter long before it hits the airwaves - people who witness an event in real time just start tweeting about it - and in recent years even news websites have made what is the day's hot topic on Twitter their lead news stories. What's trending on Twitter is thus also trending on the TV in your living room.
Finally, and most important, Twitter is the political grassroots. Only 6 percent of Americans may use it, but what they see and post there becomes talk around office water coolers, or at the post office, or in millions of texts between people. It helps decide the narrative.
And that's why the Democrats are apoplectic over its return as a free speech platform. The party these days is radical, too extreme for most Americans. It simply cannot win elections without a rigid censorship scheme that effectively controls the national and social media.
The existence of Fox - and its spectacular success - irks Democrats who would love to see the network banned. But a Freebird like Twitter is even more dangerous to the censorial would-be dictators.
The loss of Twitter could lead to a collapse of the Democratic Party's entire censorship apparatus, and, kicked from their Twitter nest high in the trees, there is nowhere for that party to go but down.
And the landing won't be pretty.
Comments:
You must login to comment.