“We believe this is a vector of long-term growth and is the right thing to do for people on Twitter and also for the world,” Dorsey said of the company’s call for profits for the fourth quarter of 2018. focus on the “health” of the platform.
Musk, a controversial Twitter user with a history of chaotic behavior on and off the platform, called for freer speech on social media and policies that would favor leaving most tweets and accounts.
“If in doubt, let the speech exist,” Musk said in a TED interview earlier this month. “If this is a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist. But obviously in a case where there may be a lot of controversy, you don’t have to advertise this tweet. ”
Under its ownership, Twitter could undo steps taken in recent years to make the platform more accessible to the most vulnerable users, usually women, the LGBTQ community and people of color, according to security experts.
In addition to potentially alienating employees who have worked or supported efforts to improve moderation of content on the platform, canceling Twitter’s progress in “healthy conversations” also risks losing users as the company struggles to reverse slow growth. This can also exclude advertisers who are concerned about not showing their ads to harmful content. Although Musk said his Twitter offer “is not a way to make money,” he is still a business and advertising remains his main source of revenue.
Although smaller than some competing platforms, Twitter also has a huge impact in the online (and offline) world because it is popular with influential figures in media, politics and entertainment and because it has often acted as a model for other platforms on how to solve of problems with harmful content. In this way, changes in Twitter policies can have a broader effect on politics and society.
Twitter was certainly not perfect in content moderation, but as Kirsten Martin, a professor of technology ethics at Mendoza Business College in Notre Dame, said: “Twitter is constantly striving to be a responsible social media company by more than just moderating. their content, but also their employees in the field of machine learning ethics. “
“I would worry about how this will change Twitter’s values,” Martin added.
Twitter and Musk did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
A billionaire with a history of trolling
Musk has a mixed reputation in the technology industry. He is undoubtedly one of the most ambitious and successful innovators and entrepreneurs of this era, but he is also a man who has courted controversy, often from his own Twitter account with 83 million followers.
Over the years, Musk has used Twitter to make misleading allegations about the Covid-19 pandemic to make baseless accusations that a man who helped rescue children from a cave in Thailand is a sexual predator to mock people who show his pronunciations for gender on the platform and make countless jokes with the numbers 420 and 69. He also tweeted (after deleted) a photo comparing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with Adolf Hitler and compared the new CEO of Twitter Paragu Agraval to Joseph Stalin.
Musk and others pointed out that most of the Twitter board has little experience in the actual use of the platform. The same can’t be said for Musk, an avid Twitter user with furious followers who understands the dynamics of the platform well. Yet Musk’s attempt to use Twitter as an ultra-rich white man is inherently different from that of most users, especially those who are women or from other marginalized communities that Twitter has tried to protect and can now are at risk if moderation policies are reversed.
“Every time someone says freedom of speech, it always means freedom of speech for the strong. That doesn’t mean freedom of speech for the less powerful, “said Leslie Miley, a former Twitter engineering manager who launched his product safety and security team and left the company in 2015.”[Musk] says he wants to make it a free speech platform. What he wants is a platform to say what he wants – and he wants other people like him to say what they want – without any responsibility. ”
For his part, Musk said on Twitter on Monday: “I hope that even my worst critics will stay on Twitter, because that means freedom of speech.”
Well-known users such as game developer Brianna Wu have been talking for years about how online mobsters on Twitter can stop from online hate speech to harm in the real world. She is now worried that the progress she and other Twitter users have been pushing for will be reversed.
“There have been so many difficult battles for them [safety] policies behind the scenes, “Wu, who is now the PAC’s executive director for progressives, told CNN Business.” I am extremely concerned that Musk will undo all the hard work done to combat hate speech on the platform. “
Musk’s plan for Twitter
At a TED conference earlier this month, Musk unveiled his broad vision for Twitter, including making his algorithm public to increase transparency about decisions about implementing and promoting content, a move that experts say is far from a silver bullet. Moreover, Musk said Twitter would be more “reluctant to delete things” and “very cautious with permanent bans.”
“My strong intuitive feeling is that having a public platform that is highly trusted and widely inclusive is crucial to the future of civilization,” Musk said.
Many followers of the company speculate that if his takeover bid succeeds, Musk could restore former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, which was banned early last year after the US Capitol uprising. Such a move could have huge consequences for the upcoming 2024 presidential election, as Twitter has been a key tool for Trump to gather his base, encourage political allies and ridicule critics, and spread false and misleading allegations.
“If Musk buys Twitter, then he will certainly bring Trump back to the platform, opening the door to viable work in 2024,” said Joan Donovan, research director at the Harvard Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard on Twitter. the Monday before the deal. was announced. Trump, meanwhile, told Fox News Monday that he has no plans to rejoin Twitter if invited, but will instead start using his own Truth Social app (Trump posted only once on the site back in February). ). “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he will improve it and is a good person, but I will stick to the TRUTH,” Trump told Fox. Donovan also noted that under Musk’s leadership, Twitter could “further become a breeding ground for cultural wars.” With a “freedom of speech” mandate, the kind of harassment that content moderation will become an excessive force targeting lgbtq groups, women, BIPOC and everyone else is fighting for civil rights. “
Musk said in a statement Monday that he also wants to “make Twitter better than ever by improving the product with new features, making open source algorithms to increase trust, defeat spam bots and authenticate everyone.” people. “
Platform with more work to do
Each of the major social media platforms is facing pressure from lawmakers, researchers and the public to do more to combat abuse, harassment and misinformation, and have taken different approaches with varying degrees of success. In many cases, Twitter has seen itself as an industry leader in how it handles problematic content and is transparent about its approach and the success of its efforts. Above all, Twitter was the first major platform to ban Trump from violating his policy of inciting violence, prompting other platforms to follow suit.
“It’s not great today, but it’s better,” Wu said. “I don’t think people understand how much we have to lose.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said he hoped Twitter would remain a place where people could talk freely while feeling safe. “When I say safe and secure, I mean bigotry and a kind of horrible trolling that makes it too toxic for so many of us,” he added.
However, others are less optimistic. Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Combating Digital Hate, said Musk had a “rather imperfect view” of the factors the platform should take into account when “providing access for bad actors to normal people.”
Harmful content can have real consequences – the genocide in Myanmar and the Capitol riots are two of the most egregious examples, but a flood of harassment and shrouded threats of offline harm can seriously affect users on an individual basis – and social media platforms face difficult balance in considering how to allow consumers to speak as freely as possible while protecting them from such harm.
Although Musk has said he wants to allow “any legal statement on Twitter”, the lines of what is legal may be blurred and vary from country to country – and may also change soon as regulators intervene. social media platforms for harm. there may be on consumers, especially young people, and civil proceedings.
“[Twitter has] “They started talking about the morality of what they were doing, in a way that suggests they understand it,” Ahmed said. But with Musk, “there is a feeling that child this [Twitter] is the real world … I hope he can see the difference between knowing you’re stupid and dangerous. ”
Some experts also doubt that a less moderated platform would be a sustainable business. Several new platforms launched in recent years have promised to take a less restrictive approach to content moderation, often in hopes of attracting right-wing users, frustrated by the big technology giants, but have largely failed to gain significant acceptance. The most recent example: Truth’s Truth Social. Online advertisers are also reluctant to show their ads alongside dangerous or controversial content …
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