https://summit.news/2022/04/28/is-twitter-burning-the-evidence-by-unshackling-conservative-accounts/
I made the case some time ago that shadow banning on advertisement driven platforms constitutes fraud. Where money changed hands e.g. a person paid for promotion on the platform, I suspect there probably would be a strong legal case if that person could also prove they were shadow banned.
I’m sure that’s why they’re doing it. The rats are panicking…
Musk’s main purpose in buying Twitter was to undo the bias against the right, not to offer the platform as Exhibit A of the left’s hypocrisy in the court of public opinion’s endless litigation of the culture war. The knobs by which the ideologues at Twitter promoted Democrats and suppressed Republicans were going to be dialed to “Neutral” by Musk, anyway.
And that concept of Neutral is anathema to the radical left, because a return to open debate (free speech) will loosen their monopoly on what is cognizable by the people. For their monopoly to hold, they have to present a binary world: we own the truth, they own lies. The public square may not accommodate liars. The gate-keeping - censorship - is necessary for Democracy. The left has transcended the judicial - constitutional - concept of truth: that truth it emerges from the contest between two opposing sides. The contest must be rigged: the right’s claims of system-rigging are inadmissible and pretexts for their own system-rigging. The right should have learned that outrage at the corruption of process and procedure and appeals to corrupted institutions to cleanse themselves is not going to achieve a return of neutrality.
The removal of shadow banning, resulting in an upsurge of followers for rightist accounts, and a fall in followers for leftists, is to give the left a foretaste of what Musk neutrality means and to galvanize them into action: We truth-tellers are being supplanted by those liars; the marginalized are being targeted; the space is “unsafe”; the air will be poisoned; toxic racists will promote Trump. It is no co-incidence that the Ministry of Truth has been announced after the Musk offer for Twitter was accepted. Government will take over thought control from Twitter before the election. Evidence for the “necessity” for that will be the Musk-effect: the rise of rightist thought in Democrat Party space pushing out Democratic voices.
Yes, the left always claims the high moral ground, and then projects what they really are themselves - the enemies of democracy - onto the right, demonizing them.
I think that’s the most pessimistic assessment of the takeover that I’ve heard, personally I’m inclined to think that Musk is approximately half-human at least, so I’m not convinced that he’s in on the whole “anti-disinformation” censorship push. That said your point about the timing does give me a little pause for thought.
Regardless of whether he is part of the plot or not, it won’t surprise me at all if indeed hordes of fake accounts suddenly “flood the zone” (Event 201-speak) to give the appearance that there is a huge threat from the “far-right”. Indeed then the government might step in before the next election and squash the brief re-emergence of freedom of speech on Twitter.
Hah! I wonder if Musk has thought of that. A campaign of pretend “white supremacists” arguing for “insurrection”. What will he do about it.
Of course, both sides can play that game.
That sounds exactly like something the left would do. Or the FBI…
I fear that I have not been clear.
I admire Musk, and hope that he will stop the censorship of the right on Twitter. I am very optimistic that he can make Twitter to a neutral platform. He is certainly not “in on” the anti-disinformation censorship push.
My point was merely that the sudden rise in rightist account followers and drop in leftist account followers should not be understood as a cover-up of censorship but an effort to provide evidence of the rise of the right for the purposes of government control. Should the Disinformation Board (“The Ministry of Truth”) become a reality, Twitter - like Fox News - will be subject to immediate scrutiny for the increased rightist content and follower numbers. The masters of the algorithms are granting a foretaste of an open platform to rouse the left into demanding government stymies Musk’s plans. We are coming up on elections that might be a wipe-out for Democrats. The left will want its government to stop right-wing propaganda about leftist suppression of information(e.g. laptop-gate), before the campaign season heats up.
Ah OK I see I misunderstood your comment, that’s a plausible possibility I suppose. Musk has already said that he will comply with the law, but the authoritarians want to bring in laws (as we’ve seen with the Online Safety Bill) which the courts could never enforce in any sane manner as they are based on vague and subjective terms like “harmful but not illegal”. A lot depends on whether they succeed in getting these laws passed, and whether the courts enforce the laws in the way intended. There are still some judges who work on principle by and large, as we’ve seen with judgements on some of the COVID-19 measures.
In short I don’t think the authoritarians have defeated democracy altogether, not yet. Musk’s liberation of Twitter might just give us a brief window of opportunity to sway the political climate far enough to cause another “populist” upset at the polls. The problem is that window is going to be very brief (with regard to those elections you mention), as the Twitter deal does not complete for months apparently, and the regulators may try and throw a spanner in the works before then as well.