A business contact of mine recently declared that he'd
closed his Twitter account.
In itself, there's nothing remarkable about this. All social media platforms experience a fairly consistent churn among their user base.
Yet, what struck me as especially odd about this one individual decision was the rationale given: because Twitter's ownership had changed. Or more precisely, because he disagrees with some of the opinions of the company's new owner - Elon Musk.
To be fair, I don't think my contact objects to the growing success of the Tesla brand and its contribution to making the motor car much more environmentally friendly.
Equally, I doubt he objects to Musk's extraordinary space flight ambitions enshrined in his SpaceX venture, although admittedly he might consider such effort and expenditure to be vainglorious.
No, his reasoning is that as a self-declared libertarian, with a strongly reasoned default objection against the growing censorship on and off social media, Musk might well let the likes of Donald Trump, and those holding similar views, back on the platform.
My contact is not alone. Amongst the political elite in this country and elsewhere, Musk's ownership of Twitter - and in principle, support of free speech - has been lambasted, often with the most ridiculous hyperbole.
As usual, the Left shows its cowardice in challenging others' views or having its own assumptions challenged by running away and crying foul.
Even this Government, tacking between its libertarian instincts and its newfound fondness, thanks to its COVID19 interventions, for state control, seems to be gearing up for a fight.
The Online Safety Bill, apparently so benign in its language, would allow the British state to compel social media platforms to remove content that it deems “harmful” - or risk the latter facing huge fines.
Yet, domestic legislation in this country already offers a range of ways in which social media posts can be removed, and penalties imposed either through civil or criminal means.
Frightening though the prospect of state-sanctioned censorship might be, it is not as if these social platforms are free speech sanctuaries in any case.
As Musk has said, the use of evermore complicated mathematical formulae to set the limits as to what opinions even make it onto the respective platforms, means that much news reporting and opinion never sees the light of day - or are marginalised into irrelevance.
Elon Musk has promised to bust open this self-censorship culture by publishing the algorithms that censor certain messages. The likes of Facebook, YouTube et al have made no such commitments and so are already conniving in the suppression of information.
Yet, even this might not be enough, since machine learning is so powerful that the way that the algorithms develop, in light of their own operation, may well be beyond the comprehension of their initial human programmers.
Furthermore, Musk has committed to addressing the other poisoners of the well of free speech: bots which send out hundreds of thousands of messages per minute but which are not linked to individual users, by improving the transparency of Twitter accounts.
Surely these efforts at the de-industrialisation of Twitter by handing back control to individuals is a positive and democratically enlightened intention?
To be honest, my worry is from the other end of the debate: that Musk will not fully deliver on his rhetoric. As a serial entrepreneur, he has many business interests that might result in him trimming back on his plans in order to appease authoritarian governments around the globe including, regrettably, our own!
That would be a shame. In the past, Musk has referred to Twitter as "the public town square". In such scenarios, the most effective way of seeing off false and hateful views is to argue them off the platform with reason, facts and careful questioning.
For all our sakes, let's hope that Musk sticks to his libertarian guns and delivers a platform that allows us all to participate in debates and come to our own conclusions about issues.
And I hope my business contact reconsiders and re-joins Twitter.
In itself, there's nothing remarkable about this. All social media platforms experience a fairly consistent churn among their user base.
Yet, what struck me as especially odd about this one individual decision was the rationale given: because Twitter's ownership had changed. Or more precisely, because he disagrees with some of the opinions of the company's new owner - Elon Musk.
To be fair, I don't think my contact objects to the growing success of the Tesla brand and its contribution to making the motor car much more environmentally friendly.
Equally, I doubt he objects to Musk's extraordinary space flight ambitions enshrined in his SpaceX venture, although admittedly he might consider such effort and expenditure to be vainglorious.
No, his reasoning is that as a self-declared libertarian, with a strongly reasoned default objection against the growing censorship on and off social media, Musk might well let the likes of Donald Trump, and those holding similar views, back on the platform.
My contact is not alone. Amongst the political elite in this country and elsewhere, Musk's ownership of Twitter - and in principle, support of free speech - has been lambasted, often with the most ridiculous hyperbole.
As usual, the Left shows its cowardice in challenging others' views or having its own assumptions challenged by running away and crying foul.
Even this Government, tacking between its libertarian instincts and its newfound fondness, thanks to its COVID19 interventions, for state control, seems to be gearing up for a fight.
The Online Safety Bill, apparently so benign in its language, would allow the British state to compel social media platforms to remove content that it deems “harmful” - or risk the latter facing huge fines.
Yet, domestic legislation in this country already offers a range of ways in which social media posts can be removed, and penalties imposed either through civil or criminal means.
Frightening though the prospect of state-sanctioned censorship might be, it is not as if these social platforms are free speech sanctuaries in any case.
As Musk has said, the use of evermore complicated mathematical formulae to set the limits as to what opinions even make it onto the respective platforms, means that much news reporting and opinion never sees the light of day - or are marginalised into irrelevance.
Elon Musk has promised to bust open this self-censorship culture by publishing the algorithms that censor certain messages. The likes of Facebook, YouTube et al have made no such commitments and so are already conniving in the suppression of information.
Yet, even this might not be enough, since machine learning is so powerful that the way that the algorithms develop, in light of their own operation, may well be beyond the comprehension of their initial human programmers.
Furthermore, Musk has committed to addressing the other poisoners of the well of free speech: bots which send out hundreds of thousands of messages per minute but which are not linked to individual users, by improving the transparency of Twitter accounts.
Surely these efforts at the de-industrialisation of Twitter by handing back control to individuals is a positive and democratically enlightened intention?
To be honest, my worry is from the other end of the debate: that Musk will not fully deliver on his rhetoric. As a serial entrepreneur, he has many business interests that might result in him trimming back on his plans in order to appease authoritarian governments around the globe including, regrettably, our own!
That would be a shame. In the past, Musk has referred to Twitter as "the public town square". In such scenarios, the most effective way of seeing off false and hateful views is to argue them off the platform with reason, facts and careful questioning.
For all our sakes, let's hope that Musk sticks to his libertarian guns and delivers a platform that allows us all to participate in debates and come to our own conclusions about issues.
And I hope my business contact reconsiders and re-joins Twitter.
First published www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday May 12, 2022
No comments:
Post a Comment