He also dissolved the trust and safety council, an advisory group created in 2016 to address problems of child exploitation, suicide and self-harm on the platform. He laid off about 80%, including the vast majority of those who policed the site for hate speech and conspiracy. During his first visit to Twitter HQ, he had insisted that there was no truth in rumours that he would lay off 75% of its 7,500 staff. Musk began unbanning Twitter accounts that had been removed after the 6 January insurrection, beginning, symbolically, with former president Trump’s. How we chuckled.Ģ0 November ‘ The people have spoken. Musk intervened to amplify those theories, linking to an article on a notorious fake news site, the Santa Monica Observer. The implications of that new less-than-serious ownership were established a couple of days later when Musk replied to a post by Hillary Clinton that expressed outrage at conspiracy theories surrounding the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives. The tech bro “joke” was that tech bro “jokes” and much else besides were now allowed on “liberated” Twitter. Musk arrived at Twitter HQ in San Francisco carrying a bathroom sink. Musk’s tweeting activity features more rocket launches than a North Korean propaganda film but, read collectively over the course of this year, also delivers insights into the ever-hardening politics of a man whose unnerving ambition is to own “the world’s consciousness”. In the event Musk has, in plain sight – and to an often sycophantic audience, mesmerised by his billions – doubled down on that fear, restoring a platform for conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, personally amplifying attacks on what he delights in calling “legacy” (ie fact-checked) media and public servants, implementing strategies that amplify the set of corrosive attitudes pushed by Trump and the American right: the demonising of refugees, the imaginary “LGBT” agenda to sexualise children, the “war on woke”. Social media had accepted its culpability in profiting from division. When he took over, the anxiety was that he would remove the checks and balances that had been implemented in response to the crisis in American democracy seen after the election of Donald Trump, and in populist governments across the world. The site’s algorithm ensured that his voice is the most prominent on a daily basis (he has 160.5 million followers). The goal is never to be it.” Musk has inverted that message. The traditional wisdom of Twitter was: “Each day on Twitter there is one main character. One year on, Musk has, step by step, reshaped his platform in his own erratic image. The subtext of that naive homily was: what’s the point in being the one of richest men in the world if you can’t corner the market in free speech? Musk told himself and the world that he had acquired Twitter (now renamed X) to create “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner”.
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