Twitter And Free Speech In The Musk Era: The Manhattan Contrarian Experience

Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Prior to Musk’s taking control, there had been many complaints, particularly from the right, of Tweets getting suppressed, down-graded, “shadow-banned,” or the like, but without anyone having detailed information of exactly what Twitter was up to. Then in December 2022 a group of journalists recruited by Musk — e.g., Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson — started releasing lengthy Twitter threads documenting exactly how pre-Musk Twitter had “moderated” politically sensitive content to manipulate the public discussion. The releases, known as the Twitter Files, show Twitter executives in the pre-Musk era working hand-in-glove with government actors to suppress disfavored content on sensitive subjects ranging from Covid-19 protocols to climate change to the Hunter Biden laptop and Biden family scandals.

In early 2022, back when his bid for Twitter was pending, Musk had famously called himself a “free speech absolutist.” In April 2022 Musk issued this famous Tweet:

So to what degree is Musk living up to his promise to bring free speech to Twitter, including in particular allowing criticism of himself? Readers might be interested in the experience of Manhattan Contrarian on that subject.

A couple of weeks ago a guy named Randy Bock had me as a guest on his podcast. The subject of the discussion was largely the DC Circuit litigation where I am one of the counsel, CHECC v. EPA, challenging EPA’s finding that CO2 is a “danger” to human health and welfare. Shortly after we recorded the session, Bock issued a Tweet containing the video of the discussion, and also sought to promote the event by buying an ad on Twitter. To his amazement, he got a notice from Twitter saying, “We have determined that the following Tweet cannot be included in your Twitter Ads campaigns.” Twitter gave as the reason for rejecting the ad the one word “Political.” Bock took some kind of appeal, contending that there was nothing “political” about the content, but got no further response. You can view both the video of the podcast and Bock’s correspondence with Twitter at this link.

When Bock told me about this event, it occurred to me that I ought to check my own Twitter account. I have set up an automated function where a Tweet is automatically generated each time I post on this blog, and thus people can follow me on Twitter as one way of “subscribing” to the blog. Since this is done automatically, it doesn’t take any effort on my part, and I rarely check Twitter to be sure that it is operating appropriately. But I thought to check it on this occasion because I had written two posts critical of Musk, which were posted on April 9 (“Tesla’s Entry Into The Net Zero Game: ‘Sustainable Energy For All Of Earth’”) and April 11 (“Reality Versus The Tesla Energy Report, Part II”).

As an example of criticism of Musk (and Tesla), the April 9 post contained this paragraph:

Why would a Tesla put out a Report like this? It doesn’t take much thought to understand the reason. Getting the bureaucrats excited about their utopia coming to pass is the route to the mandates and subsidies for EVs and batteries for decades to come, all of which will maintain Musk as the world’s richest man. And if it all doesn’t work in the end? Somebody else’s problem.

Here is the link to my Twitter feed for @mhtncontrarian. If you go there, here is what you will find: There is a Tweet for each of my posts through March (March 1, 3, 7, 9, 12, 15, 20, 23, 26, 28), and then April 1 and 3, and then — blank until April 22 when the Tweets resume. A total of 5 Tweets are missing, two of which are the ones critical of Musk. Also deleted are Tweets promoting three other unrelated posts, one before and two after the two that criticize Musk and Tesla.

Unlike Bock, who at least got a lame one-word explanation, I can’t find anywhere where they inform me what they have done or why. But it certainly looks like Musk behaving in the usual thin-skinned manner of the big muckety-muck. “I hope even my worst critics remain on Twitter”? Sure — just as long as the criticism doesn’t appear on Twitter.

Meanwhile, I can’t deny that things have improved greatly on Twitter. Both sides of the debate on things like Covid protocols and climate change now appear to be welcome (although there may be undisclosed suppression of various sorts still going on beyond my ability to detect). Biden family scandals can be discussed. Last week, some ridiculous Tweets by Randi Weingarten claiming that she had always been in favor of reopening schools got mercilessly fact checked by the Twitter community, who quoted Weingarten back to herself.

But various critics have pointed out many ways in which Twitter continues to fail to live up to the ideal of a wide open town square. Here is an April 12 piece from FIRE listing some things they view as shortcomings. On some of these issues I agree with Musk (e.g., taking down Twitter accounts that disclosed the location of his private plane). But on other issues there is a notable theme of Musk being intolerant of any criticism that touches himself personally.

The moral is that humans are flawed creatures, and Elon Musk is no different from anyone else in that regard.

I can say that I never got blocked or banned on Twitter in the pre-Musk era, but since Musk took over, I have seen automatic warnings several times (of the “most people don’t send tweets that sound like this.. are you sure you want to post?” variety), and now my account was auto-locked by an algorithm instantly after sending a sarcastic tweet. Not reported by butthurt lefties, or the person I was tweeting too, just auto-blocked by an algorithm that was monitoring replies to one particular right wing twitter account, likely because my tweet included a “spicy” (but not profane) word.

Twitter says they’ll unblock my account if I delete the tweet, but since Musk has said “comedy is allowed on Twitter again”, I am not going to delete a clearly comedic tweet that was never reviewed by a human being and judged to be in violation of any rule. So I appealed it. Been a week so far with no action from Twitter, but they have 14 days to process the appeal. We’ll see. I won’t delete the tweet, so if they don’t unblock me, I’ll never use it again.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-hypocrisy-rcna81961

New data exposes Elon Musk’s free speech charade
If Elon Musk loves free speech, why is he so cozy with dissent-crushing governments?

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has made a big show of portraying the site before his takeover as a bastion of government censorship. He has coordinated with journalists to publish information known as the “Twitter Files” that suggest that the company was overly compliant in submitting to demands from governments — especially the U.S. government — to take down posts or limit their visibility.

But new data suggests that, at least by some measures, Twitter has become more compliant with government authorities than before he took over. Musk’s promises to shepherd Twitter into a new era of radical free speech are looking phonier by the day.

According to a report from Rest of World, based on data from Harvard University’s Lumen Database, in the six months since Musk’s arrival, Twitter’s compliance with government demands for censorship or surveillance has risen to over 80%, from around 50%. The information comes via Twitter’s largely automated self-reporting to the Lumen database, which monitors government requests for content removal online. According to Lumen, out of 971 government requests received from last Oct. 27 — when Musk took over — to April 26, Twitter completely complied with 808 requests, partially complied with another 154 cases and did not report a response for 9 cases. Notably, Twitter did not report any outright refusals during this period, as pre-Musk Twitter did from time to time.

Some of the most worrisome requests have come from India, where Narendra Modi’s right-wing government has bombarded Twitter with demands to censor unflattering media portrayals of the governing party. Under Musk, Twitter blocked in India posts sharing a BBC documentary that questioned Modi’s role in a 2002 massacre in the Indian state of Gujarat. (Musk at one point said he hadn’t known that Twitter was complying with India’s requests, and cited being busy with Tesla and SpaceX as distractions.) Twitter also recently complied with the Modi government’s requests to locally block the accounts of over a hundred politicians, activists and journalists as it conducted a manhunt for a Sikh nationalist leader. Before Musk took over, Twitter was complying with about 20 percent of India’s requests; it’s unclear where that number is now.

Another authoritarian democracy, Turkey, has been the most prolific submitter of requests to Twitter during Musk’s tenure, and they’ve been overwhelmingly fulfilled. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country has passed multiple rounds of laws restricting speech in recent years. Experts say the government views regulating Twitter as a key tool for suppressing dissent ahead of this year’s elections.

The reason that Musk/Twitter are being pushed ad nauseum with the free speech badge is precisely because they aid and abet “dissent-crushing governments.” It is to condition the masses into acceptance - by deceiving them. The objective is to point people away from the true purpose of Twitter - now X Corp: to be, along with WeChat, THE tool and control apparatus of the New World Order.

Musk has clearly stated his admiration for China’s WeChat app, and his intent to move Twitter into that mold. It couldn’t be any clearer.

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