This morning, writing for the Washington Post, Joseph Menn reported that “Elon Musk escalated his battle of words with previous managers of Twitter into risky new territory over the weekend, allying himself with far-right crusaders against a purported epidemic of child sex abuse and implying that the company’s former head of trust and safety had a permissive view of sexual activity by minors. Musk told more than 30,000 listeners in a live Twitter Spaces audio session Friday night that he recently discovered that child sex abuse material was a severe problem on Twitter and that fighting it would be his top priority. In follow-up tweets Saturday, he misrepresented a section of a graduate thesis from recently departed safety chief Yoel Roth. ‘Looks like Yoel is arguing in favor of children being able to access adult Internet services in his PhD thesis,’ he wrote. The attached snippet instead showed Roth suggesting that since teenagers were accessing apps and websites that they were not supposed to use, as they always have, those services should consider offering toned-down content alongside adult fare… Several internet safety experts said that Musk’s comments put Roth at grave risk. Roth, who is openly gay, worked past Musk’s October takeover. He then resigned and said Musk’s hands-off approach to moderation was increasing danger to users. ‘He’s putting Yoel’s life in danger and he knows it,’ tweeted Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School.”
“And he knows it,” was what scared me. I applied for membership at Post today, a few moments after reading it. “In the past year,” continued Menn, “right-wing activists have harnessed some of the fervor of that theory to tar drag queens, transgender people, gay teachers, and others as ‘groomers,’ or adults bent on seducing children. This has fed into threats and real-world violence: A recent five-fatality shooting at a gay bar in Colorado with transgender victims is being charged as a hate crime… Three members of Twitter’s long-standing Trust and Safety Council advisory board resigned last week, citing a rise in tweets with hate speech against Black Americans, gay men and Jews. Over the weekend, Musk fans accused the three of responsibility for child exploitation.”
This morning, historian Steven Beschloss wrote about how Musk is destroying Twitter and turning it into a far right website for neo-fascist crackpots (like himself). It was a followup to this weekend Tweet:
I made the mistake of scouring the nearly 6,000 replies to this Sunday morning before breakfast. While I don’t have a precise calculation, it was exhausting to realize how many were determined to bombard me with their hostility. Many asked, what hate, what abuse? This reminded me of the frequent comments about Trump: What crimes? they ask. Name one.
Of course, there were many more abusive comments, which I won’t detail here, except to note that they frequently try to justify their jeers as “free speech” and that any criticism of them represents the liberal refusal to listen to “differing opinions.” (No, claiming I’m a pedophile or a “libtard” doesn’t represent “reasonable discourse.”) But this swarm of ugliness explains why many have chosen to exit the platform, including high-profile people like Elton John and Jim Carrey with millions of followers who have tired of what Twitter has become.
Remember what happened on Nov. 7, 2020, four nervous days after election night? That was the Saturday when the major TV networks announced that Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election, spurring a liberated celebration around the country— complete with dancing in the streets, honking horns, fireworks, banging on pots and pans on balconies, waving American flags, and a sense of joy and relief among the majority of Americans. Biden’s victory and the promise of Trump’s departure were unlike any in modern history.
How many millions savored that day with champagne, laughter and exhalations, then began counting— with bated breath— the number of days until Donald J. Trump would be evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I was among those who wondered and worried what new trouble he might cause before he was gone…or if he would really leave.
It didn’t take news coverage of that day to raise doubts. Assertions by Trump that the election was rigged started months before Tuesday, Nov. 3. Lies by Trump that he had won the election were televised well before the final returns were confirmed.
But to take one example, the closing paragraphs of a Reuters news story from that Saturday of celebration ended with ominous suggestions of what the future held. “Hundreds gathered on the steps of the state capitol building in Lansing, Michigan, waving Trump-Pence flags to shouts of ‘This is not over’ and ‘We will be here forever,’” the story noted, adding that Trump supporters near the Arizona state capitol, some brandishing guns, were chanting “Trump won.” The last line: “‘The media is part of the coup,’ one shouted.”
…Trump’s dinner at his retirement home with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes has spurred more antisemitic hate both online and in the real world. But it may be the determination of Elon Musk to grab attention and turn Twitter into a playground for right-wing haters excited by his removal of content moderation and abusively glorying in his faux claims that this is all about free speech.
Over the last month, he has invited and begged Trump to get back on the platform, posted images of guns purported to be on his bedside table, shared a cartoon meme of Pepe the Frog which is a symbol used by white supremacists to spread their racist and pro-Nazi views, and just yesterday tweeted a not amusing jokey comment stating “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” This followed an announcement by Twitter several weeks ago that it was “no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a policy that was intended to limit the spread of misinformation that helped cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
As you might recall, in the days before the midterms, the world’s richest man who spent $44 billion to purchase the platform urged his 121 million followers to vote for Republicans— and since then he and various journalist types have been sharing behind-the-scenes “Twitter files” from the former content moderation team in a clumsy effort to claim election fraud and to insist this was a denial of free speech rather than a good-faith goal to limit the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
While all this “anti-woke,” “own-the-libs” cozying up to right-wing extremists is delivered in his amoral, amused tone and conveying the impression that it’s only about expanding the platform— “Twitter is now serving almost 90 billion tweet impressions per day!,” he tweeted 10 days ago— the reality and the effect is far more nefarious. As Robert Reich noted yesterday, “Elon Musk and his enablers have turned this website into a torrent of ad hominem attacks, lies floated as jokes, and blatant misinformation. This isn’t freedom of speech. It’s just dangerous.”
While Musk continues to claim a decline in hate on the platform, The New York Times reported on Dec. 2 that “slurs” against Black Americans have tripled since Musk took over, and slurs targeting gay men and antisemitic attacks have also been on the rise. “Elon Musk sent up the Bat Signal to every kind of racist, misogynist and homophobe that Twitter was open for business,” Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told the Times. “They have reacted accordingly.”
Disingenuously, Musk recently tweeted, “You know Twitter is being fair when extremists on far right and far left are simultaneously upset! Twitter aims to serve center 80% of people, who wish to learn, laugh & engage in reasoned debate.”
If only he took that goal seriously. Instead, it looks like Musk wants to out-Trump Trump for his own narcissistic needs or worse, an effort to curry favor with Putin and Saudis who would be more than happy to see a further decline of democracy.
But this changing reality has led me to more deeply appreciate the growing community here. I’ve sought to focus on democracy and justice and the challenges facing America in my writing, and I’m grateful for the readership and the thoughtful and respectful replies that populate the comments section. I want to thank all of you for helping to build this publication as at least one oasis from the madness. Much work is still to be done to repair the metastasizing toxicity that was not stemmed by the eviction of Donald Trump.