Twitter has continued to create rules and invest in staff and technology that detect violent threats, harassment and misinformation that violate its policies. After evidence emerged that Russia used its platforms to try to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, social media companies also stepped up their efforts against political disinformation
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is spending 44 billion dollars to buy the social network Twitter with the aim of turning it into a safe place of "free speech". But the problem is that the social platform has tried this before and failed.
"Party of free speech"
A decade ago, a Twitter executive called the company "the free speech wing of the party of free speech" to underscore its commitment to pristine freedom of expression. In the United States of America, an article published by journalist Amanda Hess exposed the constant and low-level harassment that many women face simply because they posted on Twitter or other online forums.
In the years since, Twitter has learned the consequences of running a large social platform unmonitored. "Musk's stance on free speech, to let people say what they want on Twitter — that would be bad," said Paul Barrett, associate director of the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University. York. "If a site like Twitter is not moderated, then in a short period of time it would turn into a garbage dump."
Barrett noted that Google learned this lesson the hard way, when in 2015 major companies such as Toyota and Anheuser-Busch pulled their ads after they appeared before videos created by terrorists posted on YouTube.
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After it became clear how unhealthy the language used on Twitter had become, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey spent years trying to improve what he called the "health" of language on the platform.
Twitter had already used the "report abuse" button after UK MP Stella Creasy received a number of death and rape threats on the platform. The online abuse followed a positive post in support of feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez, who had advocated for novelist Jane Austen to be featured on a banknote. The person who harassed Creasy online was jailed for 18 weeks.
The great commitment
Twitter has continued to create rules and invest in staff and technology that detect violent threats, harassment and misinformation that violate its policies. After evidence emerged that Russia used its platforms to try to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election, social media companies also stepped up their efforts against political disinformation.
The big question now is to what extent Musk, who describes himself as a "free speech absolutist," wants to bring these systems back, and whether users and advertisers will continue to use the platform if he does. .
Even now, Americans say they are more likely to be harassed on social media than in any other online forum, with women, people of color, and the LGBT community reporting a large number of such abuses. Approximately 80% of users believe that companies are still not doing a good job of dealing with these harassments, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the US last year.
Musk has criticized President Donald Trump's permanent suspension from Twitter last year over messages the company says helped fuel the January 6 uprising at the US Capitol last year. "A lot of people are going to be super unhappy with West Coast high tech," Musk tweeted days after Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter.
Trump's allies
Trump's allies, including his son, Donald Trump Jr., have urged Musk to buy the company. "If Elon Musk can privately send people into space, I'm sure he can create a social network that's not one-sided," Trump Jr. said. in the caption of a video posted on Instagram last April.
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Kirsten Martin, professor of technology ethics at the University of Notre Dames, said Twitter has consistently worked to be a "responsible" social media company through its moderation system. That Musk wants to change that suggests he's focused on "irresponsible social media."
Twitter declined to comment for this story, and a representative for Elon Musk did not return a message for comment.
New social media apps, including Trump's "Truth Social" app, have not even come close to the success of Facebook or Twitter. This is in part because Republican politicians already attract large audiences on existing platforms. It's also partly due to floods of fake or violent posts.
For example, last year the right-wing social networking site Parler was almost wiped from the internet when it became clear that protesters had used the app to promote violent messages and stage a siege of the US Capitol. of January 6. Apple and Google removed the app from their online stores, while Amazon stopped providing web-hosting services for the site.
Censorship of Musk
Musk himself regularly blocks social media users who have criticized him and sometimes harasses journalists who have written articles critical of him or his company Tesla. He regularly responds on Twitter to journalists who write about the company, sometimes calling their work "fake" or "fraudulent."
Due to Musk's famous retorts to journalists, a large number of his fans learn the journalists' Twitter accounts and harass them for hours or days.
"I only block people when I want to directly insult them," Musk tweeted in 2020, responding to a journalist's post.
Evan Greer, a political activist with Fight for the Future, has said Musk's lack of experience moderating a social media platform will be a problem if he successfully takes over the company.
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"If we want to protect free speech on the Internet, we can't live in a place where the richest man in the world can just buy the platform that millions of people depend on and then change the rules of the platform to his heart's content." , Greer added.
Translated by: Marigona Avdimetaj
