- On Thursday, Elon Musk finally acquired Twitter. Executives should be fired immediately.
- Critics fear Tesla CEO, a self-proclaimed Tesla CEO. Absolute freedom to speakThis will lead to more hate speech.
- Media Matters president Angelo Carusone claimed that Musk will use Twitter“To advance his own red-pilled ideological agenda.”
On Thursday, Elon Musk completed the long-awaited $44 Billion acquisition of Twitter. Fire top executives immediatelyThis has raised concerns among critics, who are worried that the self-described “free expression absolutist” will allow more hate speech to be spread onto the platform.
“Elon Musk’s acquisition and subsequent running of Twitter will radically transform the current information landscape in much the same way that the emergence of Fox News changed the information landscape back in the late ’90s — and we will all be worse off for it,” Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters for America, said in a statement, predicting the rise of right-wing extremism as a direct result of Musk’s leadership.
Musk has maintained that he is “a great man”Absolute freedom to speak” despite a Reputation as professional of ignoring criticisms in retaliation or threats of lawsuits, has long condemned Twitter’s content moderation policies. The new “Chief Twit” has publicly lashed out at what he has done Suggested is partisan censorship on the platform, including the decision to ban former president Donald Trump — which Musk stated in May that he would reverse the decision..
Lawmakers, Media Watchdogs?, and Advocate groupsMusk’s purchase is something Musk had been saying for months. immense consequences for data privacyIn addition to an increase in harassment and extremism, and hyperpartisanship they have renewed their calls after Thursday’s close of the deal.
“Despite his Claim that he wanted to buy Twitter to ‘help humanity,’ Elon Musk has a Record of posting and defending harmful anti-LGBTQ content as well as content that harms other marginalized communities,” read a statement by the nonprofit Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. “GLAAD remains deeply concerned about the safetyOf LGBTQ people on Twitter and we join other organizations that are now questioning Twitter’s future policies and actions against extremist content.”
Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of watchdog nonprofit Accountable Tech, said Musk’s firing of Vijaya Gadde — a top Twitter legal and policy executive who headed the team that decided to remove Trump from the platform — was a “long-term catastrophe,” calling Gadde the company’s “moral compass,” Politico reported.
While Musk did not respond to a request for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Twitter referred to two tweets posted by the new owner of the social platform about the future of content moderation.
On Thursday, Musk posted that most of the speculation surrounding his motivation to buy Twitter has been wrong and said the platform “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences.” Instead, he said, Twitter must follow “the laws of the land” and “be warm and welcoming to all,” without specifying how to accomplish that goal.
Musk has not yet detailed any potential policy changes but, on Friday, tweeted that no content moderation policies have yet changed on the platform. In a separate tweet, he said a “content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints” will be convened before policy changes or account reinStatements are made.
In the meantime, a social media research group told The Washington Post that use of the N-word on Twitter jumped by almost 500% after the Musk takeover. Researchers from Memetica, a digital investigations company, also found a surge in Twitter accounts that followed right-wing media accounts like Tucker Carlon and One America News NeTwork in the first 24 hours following the completed deal, The New York Times reported.
“Simply put, Twitter is on a glide path towards becoming a supercharged engines of radicalization,” Carusone from Media Matters stated. Musk’s leadership will see Twitter become a dangerous swamp of conspiracies, partisan chicanery, harassment, and other nonsense.
