Tweet

 "Elon is trying to control how people think. That is our job” ~ Mika Brzezinski

The big news in The Twitter World is that Money-Bags Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. Of course, it has all of the Twitter a-buzz because Musk says he believes in absolute free speech, and you know, we can't have that around here.

Why does Musk want to buy Twitter? He said, “My strong, intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization." That sounds a whole lot better than "because I want it." 

If you haven't been keeping up, over the past 15 years or so, "Social Media" has become, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "a really freaking big deal."  While there are many different social media sites on the internet, the most important ones are Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook is the nicer of the two, believe it or not.  You see the name and photographs of your "friends,"  and you can post pictures of your supper for all your friends to admire so they can become jealous of you because you're eating something good and they are eating the same old crap.

Twitter was intended to capture comments throughout the day and is not interested in any of your daily meals.  On Twitter, you can follow anyone else who has a Twitter account and interact with them. For example, I sent a "tweet" ( the Twitter term for a comment) to Jimmy Fallon, and he answered me back and now get this, tagged Colin Quinn in his tweet to me, and then Colin Quinn tweeted back to the both of us.  It made my year.

However, Twitter has some problems. One is that you don't have to use your actual name on Twitter, and you can have as many accounts as you can tweet.  This allows people to say some harsh and nasty things to various people.  It also plays a part in the "Twitter mobs," in which Twitter acts as a forum to punish people.

As an example, there's a Presbyterian campus minister by the name of Sammy Rhodes who became Twitter famous for funny little tweets which, for the most part, were rephrasing of bits from stand-up comedians.  Somehow, Patton Oswalt became involved and called Rhodes a "thieving hack."  This caused Rhodes to leave Twitter for a while.  He's back now but doesn't seem quite as funny.

There are many other examples, but all have something in common: their meanness.  The level of vitriol that is unleashed daily on Twitter is simply a wonder to behold.

The past couple of years has not been good for the Social Media Giants.  Politicians have become involved and insist that Facebook and Twitter manage "disinformation" in their sites.  So Facebook and Twitter have tweaked their algorithms to ensure their "platforms" do not disseminate any incorrect information. The fact that the algorithms are Democrats shouldn't bother you at all.

All of us on Facebook remember the little square box that would appear if you mentioned "Covid-19"  in your post. But, heaven forbid if you posted, "This horse paste is real good, Yum! Yum! It got rid of my Covid".  Your post would have been tagged as misinformation.

Twitter took it a little further, of course. They began "shadow-banning" (blocking Tweets without the person's knowledge) conservatives. They also removed the link of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden, which they said contained "Russian disinformation" that just happened to fall in the middle of the 2020 Presidential campaign.

Well, it turns out, the story didn't contain "Russian Disinformation," but it simply made the algorithms uncomfortable.

A few weeks ago, Twitter banished the Satirical Evangelical site "The Babylon Bee" because it posted a story that awarded transgender government official Rachel Levine "Man of the Year," calling it "hateful speech."

Out of nowhere, Musk comes riding in, stating that Twitter's capricious and arbitrary standards are wrong. He said, “Twitter should match the laws of the country" He added, “If it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist.” 

That made the heads of a lot of Blue Check Twitter people explode.  Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist, said, "I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media, anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less."

I don't know how more content moderation would help democracy survive, but I don't work for The Washington Post.

All of this is about one word: control.  Who gets to control the most influential social media platform?  A better question is, what richy rich kid gets to control the most influential social media platform?

Twitter could have avoided all this by banning bots, using a little more discretion on what they ding for violations, and giving people an edit button for their tweets. In other words, use a little common sense. You can't ban The Babylon Bee and keep The Onion. It is inconsistent and hypocritical

For now, I will sit back and watch the circus. It is worth the price of admission to see the wrinkle in Mika's worried brow.