To Kill a Tweeting Bird
In a meeting this Wednesday, Elon Musk, the new owner of twitter and self-declared “free speech absolutist”, told the advertisers he wanted Twitter to “be a force that moves civilization in a positive direction.” It seems that Must still wants people to believe he is the messiah that would save twitter and maybe the internet by bringing back free speech. In reality, he is becoming one of the largest threats to free speech on the internet.
For years, Musk has been vocal against online content moderation. When he finally took control over twitter in late October, he acted quickly to enforce “absolute free speech” by limiting access to content moderation tools from some employees and restoring the account of Kanye West whose antisemitic statements resulted in freeze of his accounts on multiple platforms. On paper, Musk’s approach of minimum moderation looks like a good way to expand the user base by promoting diverse opinions and open discussions. However, in practice, lack of effective moderation can only result in the opposite.
Whatever draws the most attention dominates the internet and hateful contents is the champion on that front. If they are allowed to roam free on twitter, hateful-speech and misinformation would drown out all other voices with users either busy spreading them or busy refuting them while unintentionally spreading them in the process. At that point even though some sensible voices would still be present on twitter, they simply won’t draw any views with more exciting or enraging contents being in the center of the spotlight. As a result, Twitter, already riddled with problems of toxicity, will become an even more one-sided environment where alt-right contents dominate all conversations.
This shift in content will be accompanied by a shift in user base. With higher tolerance for extremist contents, twitter would no doubt draw more creators and audiences of such contents since they have very few online outlets for their views. At the same time, for casual users, the terrible experiences from coming across hateful tweets or getting involved in heated arguments will out-weight the positive experiences. Traffic from these users will melt away as the toxicity level rises higher than they can withstand. After all, for most people, twitter can be easily replaced by TikTok, Instagram, or reddit, but for those who come for the lack of moderation, there are very few alternatives.
What is happening or would happen to twitter is hardly unique. Radicalization of unmoderated platforms has happened over and over again on the internet. One infamous example is 4chan, a website that enforces free speech to the extreme. 4chan was originally founded as a forum to discuss anime, manga for western fans. Contents on 4chan are moderated under a very relaxed set of rules, mostly forbidding users from breaking laws in the U.S. As the site grew popular, its fundamentalist approach to free speech attracted the online alt-right community who turned it into a center for right wing extremism. The suspect of the Buffalo shooting this May even claims that he drew inspiration from racist and hateful threads and weapons forums.
What makes Elon Musk especially dangerous is his lack of concern over the potential rise of toxic contents. After all, he is a devoted audience and spreader of them. Just last week, he made a tweet, which he later deleted, sharing a conspiracy theory about the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Creating space for hate content may even be the fundamental purpose of his purchase of twitter. Just like Parler and Trump’s Truth Social, free speech is just a banner Musk used to advance his own political beliefs. As bad as it all sounds, recent withdrawals of advertisers does provide us a glimmer of hope. Without a targeted advertising system, advertisements on twitter are mostly used for raising brand awareness for companies. Association with radical content is the last thing these advertisers wanted. This prospect does concern Musk. He tweeted on November the 4th that “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue” which he attributed to “activist groups pressuring advertisers”. However, this doesn’t seem to change his mind on his “free speech absolutist” approach, blaming the activist groups for “trying to destroy free speech in America”.
What truly is destroying free speech in America is the system that allows billionaires like him to easily take over a popular online platform and change its rules as he likes. It is absurd that the communities themself have so little say in what the community rules should be. Hopefully, the massive drop in revenue would force Musk to reverse his position on absolute free speech or bankrupt twitter, killing the site forever. We should not need to see more such examples before taking actions to protect our online space.