Did Twitter Go Back to its Bad Ways?

Published: 06/02/23 17.10 ET

Once upon a time, when Parag Aggarwal was Twitter's CEO, Babylon Bee posted a joke about the Richard Levine health secretary dude (who is calling himself Rachel Levine these days) that referred to him as a man. Twitter goons tagged this as 'hate speech' and 'misgendering', and suspended Babylon Bee account pending the tweet's removal. Bee didn't delete the tweet, so the account stayed suspended. Subsequently, Elon Musk bought Twitter and reinstated Bee's account.

Musk said more than once that he wants to allow as much free speech as legally permitted on Twitter. The platform didn't quite live up to this promise, though. For example, if you joked about hurting someone, it still tags your tweet as glorifying violence, and makes you delete the tweet under threat of suspension. I am no lawyer, but internet lawyers say law doesn't prohibit all talk about violence. The criteria is, does you speech create a threat of imminent violence?

Musk used to also say "free speech, but not free reach." That is, "undesirable", but legal, speech is permitted to stay on Twitter, but its visibility is restricted - the tweet will get a much smaller number of views, people may be prohibited from retweeting it, and so on. I didn't see any high profile examples of this practice until now. This morning, Jeremy Boreing, the Cofounder of Daily Wire, tweeted:

It seems "misgendering" is a no no again at Twitter. But instead of suspending your account for this, Twitter will just limit the reach of your tweet now. You said something, but few know you said it, so it's almost like you didn't say it. You get to keep your account. But what is the account good for, if you really can't use it to say things you want to say, things that are not legally prohibited? If you want to stick to non-controversial topics, there are any number of social media platforms for you. You never needed Twitter under the leadership of 'free speech warrior' Musk. Twitter occupies a niche for conservatives at the moment. It is the only platform that supposedly allows them to speak the controversial truths. But the Daily Wire experience shows that is not really the case. Dumb libs have already denounced Twitter for allowing "hate speech", and the return of "moderation" at Twitter may make it unattractive for right wingers too.

Why does Twitter want to limit reach for speech that it considers undesirable? Is EU threatening to ban it there if it doesn't do "moderation"? Is the threat coming from phone platform owners Apple and Google? Is WEF involved? We don't know for sure, but even apart from all these, Musk himself wants to do some moderation. Basically, Musk wants to "do good" through Twitter. Jack Dorsey before him wanted to do the same. These two are both rich and capable. It could be the ego, or a desire for glory, that is at play. Unfortunately for Twitter's users, "doing good" will actually hurt Twitter. It is a communication medium. It needs to be efficient and accurate. High fidelity ought to be its highest ideal. Let the follower count etc. determine "reach" without putting your thumb on the scale. Let people speak, and let people hear. Let people take responsibility for what they do with what they hear. You just stay out, except in extreme and clear cases. That will do the most good in the end.

UPDATE: Musk made some amends. Apparently the head of "Trust and Safety" Ella Irwin is no longer with Twitter. This is a fallout of the Daily Wire 'moderation' fiasco. Unfortunately though, the visibility restrictions on What Is A Woman are only partially lifted. Musk himself seems to think this will upset people and needs to be moderated. He insists on "doing good." Twitter's downfall started (around 2016 or so) when they started pandering to the alphabet crowd, and it continues to this day. Ask yourself why they call their moderation group "Trust and Safety". Whose "safety"? It's the trans goons' imagined "safety" because speech critical of them "threatens" them. Once you entertain the "words hurt" BS, it only ends with you going insane.

UPDATE 2: Musk went ahead and removed almost all restrictions on What Is A Woman. The only remaining restriction is that its promotion cannot appear next to a paid advertisement, which is a reasonable rule. Kudos to Musk! If you are a high profile user, Musk may intervene and fix things, but low level Twitter employees still seem to err in favor of censoring. But we are making progress - Yoel was gone last time, and the Irwin woman is gone this time. So is someone called Maie Aiyed, who seems to openly hate whites. This is San Francisco we are talking about. Virtually every Twitter employee there is a dumb lib. But, with each firing, the remaining dumb libs get a little more cautious. Things will improve.