Ed wrote an outstanding post on Elon Musk’s suspension of 6 journalists’ accounts from Twitter last night. I highly recommend it.
I wanted to add my $.02 because Musk’s actions haven’t just been controversial in liberal circles, but in conservative ones as well.
Actually, anybody who uses Twitter or gets their news filtered through, by, or among the Twitterati are affected, so it actually matters quite a lot, even if you do not use the service yourself.
In terms of what news you consume, Twitter is one of the most important places on Earth. Weird, I know.
First, the basics: a day and a half ago Musk’s son was, in Musk’s mind, put in danger by an anonymous driver who ran the car he was in off the road and who then jumped on the hood. Somebody had tracked down Musk’s location and assumed that he was in the car. What exactly happened isn’t 100% clear, but Musk was justifiably upset and implemented a policy on Twitter to prevent the real-time tracking of anybody’s location under Twitter’s existing doxxing policy.
Delayed location information was still acceptable, but not real-time. This is hardly burdensome.
On Twitter there has been an account dedicated to tracking Elon’s private plane. Such information is often public, but Musk’s is not. The FAA will hide the information if there are reasonable security concerns, and they do for Musk. This Twitter account used non-public information to do the tracking and release the information. It is a gray area, but leaning toward black. Twitter allowed the account until the attack on his car, and then banned it.
Left Twitter went wild. Censorship! The reporters in question all decided to link to a new account outside Twitter where the location could be found, ensuring that people could still follow an account providing real-time information on Musk’s location. This violated Twitter’s Terms of Service and the accounts were suspended. Musk called the account an assassination tracker for obvious reasons.
Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2022
BOOM! The Left suddenly discovered that censoring accounts is very evil. No more “it’s a private company” arguments. Lots of whinging about how careers are made and lost on Twitter, etc. The schadenfreude of conservatives was glorious to see, because a few Lefties finally got to experience how damaging and frustrating it is to be banned from the platform. It is literally where the intelligentsia communicates with each other. Opinions, news, and influence are all bartered there and few other places.
Yet there is also lots of consternation, even among conservatives about the move. It seemed arbitrary and capricious. An account that was allowed on Twitter forever was suddenly banned, and soon thereafter 6 prominent journalist accounts were as well. It seemed not just an overreaction, but also an indication that Musk was making it up as he went along. Which is of course the problem we all had with old Twitter.
So what to think? And how should we analyze the rights and wrongs of the affair?
- First of all, Musk may have allowed his personal reactions to a threat to his family to cloud his judgment–the changes made to Twitter’s policies should have been transparent and explained clearly prior to any actions. The fact that they weren’t is emotionally understandable. But bad business practice IMHO.
- The actual TOS changes are fine. Nobody is harmed in any significant way and no genuine speech is restricted by preventing people from pointing out the exact location of target for harassment. That is literally the only reason why this real-time location information would be broadcast to the world, so the actual policy is a good one. Reporters gleefully reposting information intended the facilitation of harming somebody is pretty evil.
- The reporters’ motives in pointing people to this real-time location information were bad. Musk’s son had been attacked–in Musk’s mind at least–and their response was to make fun of it and to make it seem likelier to happen. They were making a juvenile “debating point” about free speech (really juvenile, since Musk never said that literally anything could be said on Twitter, and that anything promoting violence would be banned). They have no moral leg to stand on because they were being truly awful people. They are not martyrs to free speech in any way.
- Making these suspensions in this way was a bad look, even if utterly defensible. The journalists were acting like asses and could easily have been shamed before the world for doing so. Attacking a man defending his children is a terrible look, but instead the reporters now have their colleagues outraged on their behalf instead of embarrassed for them.
- This was a bad business move. Twitter is extremely valuable to the right sort of people, and as much as they have declared their intention to leave, nobody important has. News organizations, high profile reporters, influencers, sources, and regular folks like you and me use Twitter to communicate and see what people are thinking and saying. Part of its value is hooked up into the existence of these high profile accounts, who are a draw. The loss of these six, even if permanent, is no biggie. But now everybody, not just conservatives as before, is worried about volatility. The search for a real alternative just kicked up a notch for the Left-leaners on Twitter.
- The hypocrisy is amazing to watch, and this is where the schadenfreude comes in. Not a single one of the people screaming to high heaven defended The New York Post when it was kicked off Twitter for 8 days. Any claims of defending either free speech or journalism by Left-wing Twitter is laughable, and we should laugh. Just because kicking off the journalists was a bad business move doesn’t make it morally or ethically wrong.
The current position taken by most journalists seems to be that sending people off to harm Musk and his family is morally right and just, but preventing jerks from doing that is tyranny. That is an absurd position, and perfectly in line with Elite thinking.
Their motto is “do unto others so they can’t do unto you.”
Elon should release clear, comprehensible, and timely Terms of Service rules to everybody, and then enforce the rules ruthlessly. He came close in this case, but whiffed by appearing to be arbitrary. I say appearing because he may technically, by tweet, have notified people of the change, but it wasn’t clear to everybody. This is just bad business. Make things crystal clear.
I have no sympathy for the suspended. Each is a total and complete tool. But suspending them in this manner was a bad look, and in the end that matters to the value of the platform, both financially and as a communications tool.
That, in a nutshell, is my two cents.
UPDATE:
“Try being an entire news organization with legitimate breaking news during a presidential election.”
-New York Post https://t.co/FhAj97wzRL— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) December 16, 2022