Elon Musk’s Twitter at a Crossroads

The discourse on Twitter was less polite. The loudest voices often drown out softer, more nuanced takes. After all, whether the debate is about a transgender child or baseball, it’s much easier to send an angry tweet to a perceived enemy than to look for common ground.

In the chaos that has engulfed the platform, Twitter, and the company, Twitter since Elon Musk took office, it’s become clear that this isn’t going to change anytime soon. It’s likely to get worse.

Musk, along with his band of tech advocates, arrived on Twitter just over a week ago, ready to dismantle the Blue Bird’s Nest and rebuild it to his vision at breakneck speed. He quickly fired the CEO and board of directors, installed himself (for now) as the company’s sole director, and named himself “Chief Twit” and then “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator” in his bio. I declared.

On Friday, he launched mass layoffs at the San Francisco-based company, laying off about half of its employees via email and returning to staffing levels not seen since 2014.

All the while, he’s talking about vulgar memes, half-jokes, SpaceX rocket launches, and maybe—maybe not Twitter’s plans to make it look like he’s workshopping on the site in real time. ’” and after coming up with the idea of ​​charging users $20 a month for some extra features, he quickly appeared to scale it back in a Twitter exchange with writer Stephen King. I’ve become like Enron.”

“We have to pay our bills somehow. Twitter can’t be totally dependent on advertisers. How about $8?” Musk replied. On Saturday, the company announced a subscription service for $7.99 per month. The service allows anyone on Twitter to pay for checks “just like the celebrities, businesses, and politicians they already follow” with his mark, and some premium features are also available, but not yet. You can not use it. – It’s more like boosting tweets than tweets from accounts without blue checks. It’s not clear when paid verification tags will be available. This replaces what was thought to be a safety feature designed to discourage counterfeit accounts.

The billionaire Tesla CEO has repeatedly been involved with right-wing figures calling for deregulation of hate and misinformation. He received congratulations from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide, Dmitry Medvedev, and tweeted, then deleted, an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband who was attacked in his home.

More than 30 advocacy groups have sent an open letter to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, urging Twitter to undermine “brand safety” and undermine content moderation under masks. asked to promise to stop

“Extremists are not only celebrating Musk’s takeover of Twitter, but are also seeing this as a new opportunity to post the most abusive, harassing and racist language and images. This includes: It includes a clear threat of violence against those they disagree with,” the letter said.

One of Musk’s first moves was to fire Vijaya Gadde, the woman responsible for trust and safety on the platform. However, he took over Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, Yoel Roth, and took steps to reassure users and advertisers that the site could be the kind of “who’s who” some people fear. But I guarantee that it won’t become a “free to use hell”.

On Friday, he tweeted: push. “Nevertheless, more and more advertisers are pausing their spending on Twitter and re-evaluating how the mask change increases offensive material on the platform.

According to a tweet sent on Nov. 1, Musk also met with civil rights leaders “about how Twitter will continue to fight hate and harassment and enforce its election integrity policy.”

However, representatives of the LGBTQ community were not present at the conference, even though members of the LGBTQ community are much more likely to be victims of violent crime than people outside such communities. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on whether Musk plans to meet with LGBTQ groups.

Capricious billionaire won’t make big decisions about restoring content or banned accounts (such as former President Donald Trump’s account) before setting up a multi-perspective “Content Moderation Council” The council would include “civil rights organizations and groups facing hateful violence,” he later added. But experts point out that Twitter already has a trust and safety advisory board to deal with moderation issues.

University of Virginia Law Professor Daniel Citron is a member of the Council and has worked with Twitter to combat online harm, including threats and stalking, since its inception in 2009. “Our council has every opinion on free speech.”

A certain amount of turmoil can be expected after a corporate acquisition, similar to layoffs and terminations. But Musk’s ambiguous plans for his Twitter, particularly his policy on content moderation, misinformation and hate speech, have raised alarm bells about where he is headed in one of the world’s most high-profile information ecosystems. I’m here. One thing is for sure, at least for now, is that Twitter is, as Elon Musk is.

“We hope that responsibility and maturity will triumph,” said Eddie Perez, a former Twitter civil integrity team leader who left the company before Musk took over. Being a troll and trying to make me laugh with a meme and trying to do it well is one thing.You are now the owner of Twitter and you have a new level of responsibility.”

For now, however, the meme seems to be winning. Pundits like Perez are concerned that Musk is moving too quickly without listening to those who have worked to improve civility on the platform, instead Drawing on his own parochial experience as one of the platform’s most popular users, he has millions of fawn fans who admire him. every move.

“There is one billionaire who controls something as influential as a social media platform like Twitter, and an entire nation whose (its) political goals are hostile to ourselves. , they’re trying to create chaos, and they’re asking for direct favors.” With Musk, Perez said.

“There is no world where it’s all normal,” he added. “It should absolutely concern us.”

Twitter didn’t start as a cesspool. And even now, there are pockets of funny, weird, nerdy subgroups on the platform, out of the messy, confrontational places that can emerge if you follow too many fanatical agitators. But like Facebook, Twitter’s rise coincided with growing polarization in the United States and abroad and a measurable decline in online politeness.

“The great understanding that happened between 2008 and 2012 is that the way to gain attention and gain attention on all social media, including Twitter, is to use inflammatory language to challenge the basic humanity of the opposition. “It’s been a long time coming,” said Laney, director of Internet and technology research at the Pew Research Center.

Things continued to deteriorate as the 2016 US presidential election approached, with the new president cementing a reputation as one of Twitter’s most provocative users. The social media platform itself has become a central figure in political debates after it was revealed that Russia was using his platform to influence elections in the United States and other countries.

“Do they have too much power? Do their content moderation policies privilege one or the other?” Laney said. “Companies themselves have found themselves in the midst of some of the most heated debates in culture, and that’s the environment Elon Musk is in now.”

And beyond fuss and out-of-the-ordinary personality, Musk’s own description of his new job, “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” may prove to be the biggest challenge yet.

——

AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this article.