When news broke that Twitter’s board of directors approved its sale to Elon Musk, a weird thing happened. People expressed their passionate beliefs that this mattered to them. From the usual suspects spewing their usual inanities to a priest with an ill-advised wealth commentary to the ACLU and Amnesty International fearful of the dangers of free speech.
Musk says that he’s going to promote free speech on Twitter.
🚀💫♥️ Yesss!!! ♥️💫🚀 pic.twitter.com/0T9HzUHuh6
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
Not too long ago, this might have been considered a good thing, perhaps even the sort of thing that the ACLU would support. Times have changed.
Twitter has a disinformation problem — fake news about Covid vaccines, climate and more running buck wild across the platform. Mr. Musk has shown himself to be a highly capable peddler of dubious claims, whether putting out misleading financial information or calling the British diver who helped rescue trapped schoolboys in Thailand a “pedo guy.”
Twitter has a racism problem. Time and again, it has failed to consequentially answer the pleas of users of color to address the bigotry and harassment that are endemic for them. Tesla, the carmaker that Mr. Musk runs, has its own racism problem, with many workers complaining to the press and California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing suing the company over an allegedly pervasive problem of racialized degradation. The agency recently described one of Tesla’s plants as “a racially segregated workplace” rife with slurs as well as discrimination “in job assignments, discipline, pay and promotion.”
Twitter has a bullying and harassment problem, and the subtler but related challenge of bringing out the worst, not the best, in all of us. Mr. Musk is the incarnation of these problems, too. Though you might think that having more than $250 billion, according to Forbes, and wanting to solve the problems of Earth and space would fully occupy someone, he seems to have a compulsive need to belittle people and burp out his least-considered impulses and stoke bullying by his legions of admirers in a way that both reflects and shapes how Twitter is.
Putting aside whether Anand Giridharadas’ characterizations, whether of Twitter or Musk, are accurate, his points aren’t really about either Twitter or Musk, but about the good free speech and the bad free speech. Musk, he argues, represents the bad free speech.
Mr. Musk operates from a flawed, if widespread, misapprehension of the free speech issue facing the country. In his vision, what we may, with help from the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, call negative freedom of speech, the freedom to speak without restraint by powerful authorities, is the only freedom of speech. And so freeing Nazis to Nazi, misogynists to bully and harass and doxx and brigade women, even former president Donald Trump to possibly get his Twitter account back — this cutting of restraints becomes the whole of the project.
In contrast, Giridharadas offers the good free speech.
But there is also what we may call positive freedom of speech: affirmative steps to create conditions that allow all people to feel and be free to say what they think.
How, you ask, can “all people” feel free to say what they think if people who say negative things must be silenced? The answer, of course, is that “all people” isn’t really all people, but all people who say things Giridharadas and people like him believe to be appropriate.
Legally speaking, all American women or people of color or both who were ever talked over in a meeting or denied a book contract or not hired to give their opinion on television enjoy the protections of the First Amendment. The constitutional protection of speech does not, on its own, engender a society in which the chance to be heard is truly abundant and free and equitably distributed.
Legally speaking, the First Amendment doesn’t protect anyone from being talked over, denied a book contract or not hired to give their opinion on television, even if Joy Reid is to blame. You would think someone at the New York Times would have noticed this rather glaring error and urged Giridharadas to correct it. But even though it’s nonsensical, legally speaking, he may have known that and chosen to say it anyway, because such conflations are permissible when they serve the cause.
The “censorship” that Mr. Musk performatively deplores consists of efforts to rectify these very real problems of harassment and abuse. Twitter has taken modest but wildly inadequate steps to improve safety on the platform. It has acknowledged it has a problem. It has recognized positive freedom of speech — the creation of a safe and non-life-ruining environment for the airing of thoughts. And it is this that Mr. Musk and his ilk seem to loathe.
It’s unclear who Musk’s “ilk” are. Billionaires? Plutocrats? Supporters of free speech? But what is clear is that Giridharadas and his ilk believe their speech is the good speech and contrary speech is bad. They want “the creation of a safe and non-life-ruining environment for the airing of thoughts” as long as the thoughts are only their thoughts. As for other thoughts, they deserve what happens to them. It’s not “cancel culture,” but consequences for being bad and evil.
Does this mean that Musk’s purchase of Twitter is a win for free speech, despite the spin of the censors? Probably not. As Mike Masnick has explained many times over, moderation at scale is impossible, there being just too many twits and algos being too imprecise a tool. The value of Twitter is the people, that it’s where people have chosen to be. But what Musk’s purchase is more likely to do is stem the progressive tide of silencing speech that doesn’t conform to its orthodoxy.
This is why his deal to purchase Twitter is so dangerous. In recent years, there has been progress toward positive freedom of speech — real work to give everyone, truly everyone, more meaningful occasion to speak. Mr. Musk apparently wants to shut that down. Instead, in a moment of proto-fascism on the political right, his priority seems to be to undam the flood of bile and bigotry and bullying and disinformation.
If Elon Musk can stop the “progress toward positive freedom of speech” on Twitter, it will be a significant accomplishment. Beyond that, there is little likelihood that Musk’s purchase of Twitter is going to change your life. Maybe he’ll finally add an “edit” button, but that’s about it. And if someone on Twitter says something that offends you, you can always block them or, as I do, shrug.
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I’m not speaking from experience here, but they say it’s not good to go shopping post blunt.
“‘Twitter has a disinformation/racism/bullying and harassment problem'”
“‘the flood of bile and bigotry and bullying and disinformation'”
It’s hard to trust anyone who says these are problems when their criteria for when it’s a problem is the identity of the person who is doing it. Some people are capable of saying they are problems regardless of identity. Their solutions to the problems are likely to be much better than the people who just want a monopoly on these things, and who cheerlead it when their tribe does it.
This isn’t even about picking “sides” (unless good faith liberality vs. bad faith authoritarianism are the sides). It can be applied on a case-by-case basis, and let the hit dogs howl for the public to see wherever they are found. Musk may not be a solution but he is helping smoke out the real illiberal problem.
What causes such harsh criticism of Musk? Is there something particularly awful about him?
I mean, there are a few things that cause concern/worry.
For starters, we know he has exceedingly thin skin – he once literally canceled a journalist’s Tesla order (and IIRC barred them from ever purchasing a new car from Tesla) because the journalist wrote something that was critical/not 100% in praise of a certain model.
He also, not too long ago, tried to bully the Big Law firm that represents him into firing a new associate, or else Musk would fire the firm. The new associate’s sin? He had worked for the SEC during the time that the SEC was glaring hard at Musk. As I recall, the associate had not been involved in that investigation while at the SEC, and was not working on the Musk account. Amazingly, the firm basically said “lol no” and Musk did not (I don’t believe) actually fire the firm.
Then there is the fact that he’s… Not great on speech himself. The whole “dude is a pedo” comments about the guy that rescued those kids that got trapped in a cave.
Elon just seems to be one of those figures, the kind that tends to cause one of two reactions in people – love and devotion, or loathing and revulsion. It appears to be the minority (online, at least) that just don’t give a toss about the guy.
Personally, I think the only possible change to Twitter will be a few accounts get to come back that had been banned, and possibly a edit feature so we can finally fix typos. Other than that, I really don’t think anyone will see any change of any actual note.
Petty complaints, the sort that get traction only among the unduly passionate on twitter.
No, I am certain the majority doesn’t feel strongly about Musk at all. The only ones that care are among the Twitterati, and only recently.
My only notice of Musk, is this recent Twitter business, and only because it’s comedy that writes itself, as the Washington Post tells us that a billionaire controlling a communication channel is dangerous to democracy (um, Bezos, Post??) and the ACLU tells us that Musk’s desire for free speech is bad; clearly we are edging ever closer to peak clown world if our once vaunted institutions are churning out nonsense.
The only way Twitter will change is if Musk cleans house from the top down. The “Truth and Safety” division should be the first to go. Then perhaps I would consider getting back on the platform after a two year hiatus.
Is it “truth and safety” or “trust and safety”?
I can’t imagine most of that crowd hasn’t already quit in a fit of pique.
As many have noted elsewhere, in the long term things aren’t likely to change much, and if there are significant long term changes then Twitter will lose a lot of it’s users and thus it’s value. Musk has no idea what he’s talking about, and the goals he’s set are self-contradictory. As our esteemed host knows, content moderation is difficult and time-consuming, moreso on the scale of something like Twitter.
Content moderation is tough at that scale. What it means now, is that Twitter has banned hundreds of feminists for asserting women’s rights and folks on the right. An odd “pairing” if you will. It comes from the political orthodoxy inside Twitter and indeed in much of the social media — check out the trustednerd who has been found to harass poor, minority, ignorant women – but remains on Twitter. Or the hundreds of accounts urging “kill,” “burn,” “punch,” feminists who don’t agree with genderists and others.
It would be easier simply to create programs and monitoring for illegal speech – stuff the government could prosecute or ban. If Musk does that, content moderation will remain difficult, but it won’t be as judgmental, whether that judgment is woke or corporatist.
An interesting note: people in favor of “moderating” or checking bad speech always use the same excuses. For example, in the pro slavery south: anti-slavery speech will cause violence at least indirectly. It will undermine confidence in the philosophy of slavery. It may have abolitionists convincing people of “obviously wrong” views.
Or, antiwar speech: might cause dissent. Undermine morale and national will. Make patriots feel bad. Interfere with the war. Undermine confidence in leaders who have decided it is time to go to war.
Anti-discrimination speech: Might cause people who support Jim Crow to feel bad. Undermine’s the trust in pro-Jim Crow public officials. Cause violence.
You can find it in Germany, defending anti-Jewish speech and defending suppressing dissenting voices.
You can find it in the Soviet Union, sending those who dare speak out to the Gulag. You can find it anywhere that autocrats want to keep power and stop dissent. For the public good is what the self appointed moral arbiters like. Always. Even if it destroys everyone else and their freedom to think. Remember: from a certain point of view, slavery is freedom, war is peace. And lies are truth.
I will see how this actually goes, and perhaps reconsider Twitter. For the passionate, I suppose this presents the threat of so many Internet wrongposters the Outrage Mob will be unable to smite them all. It should be fun to watch.
Everyone on twitter has been waiting for you to come back.
I see this as a positive. Ideas can battle it out.
Do masks work? How effective is social distancing? We know there was fraud in the last election, but to what extent and on which side? How many black men are murdered in the streets by the police? How effective are the vaccines?
All valid questions but under the current rules only the approved answers are allowed. Let the free market of ideas flow.
Of course, Sturgeon’s law will apply.
You had to go there, didn’t you?
I am really getting my lulz reading the embedded link where the ACLU is treating Musk like a naughty card carrying member.
Hopefully he’ll troll them too by writing them another check for $4.20 million.
They take venmo now. Who still uses checks?
Me and my local GoP. Musk inspired me to donate $420 by check dated 4/20/22.
This burn never gets old. At least if you’re spectrumy like him.
Hard to get a photo op with a giant novelty Venmo transfer.
Even if I successfully avoid Musk news, other people seem to tell me what he’s up to anyway. That gets annoying because I don’t see Musk as particularly special in any regard. He’s an outspoken oligarch and thinks very highly of himself. Great. Electric cars and rockets are awesome, Musk is just Musk. The people that work for him are brilliant; he’s just another billionaire and not even all that interesting compared to the others.
It’s his class I have issues with, but then I make everything about class, so that’s not new or interesting or illuminating either. Twitter is long in the tooth anyway. I wonder what’s next more than who owns what’s old.
The hysteria shows how vapid and awful our media is. Would any of them give up their speech to content moderation? Hell no.
You know who has great content moderation? North Korea. China. The Russians are doing a fine job of moderating content related to Ukraine.
The Soviets were fabulous content moderators for decades. The point at which they lost their touch is when Eastern Europe became free. Why can’t our so called elite understand this?
Who says they dont?