The Wailing and Gnashing of Tweets

Elon Musk, Twitter, and the hermeneutics of censorship.

Two narratives have emerged in the roughly twelve hours since Elon Musk’s private takeover of Twitter: one of exodus, and one of liberation.

According to guild members of the “journalistic tattletale and censorship industry,” the changes anticipated at Twitter under free-speech maximalist Musk’s ownership will result in users and advertisers fleeing the platform.

WaPo technology columnist and substack writer Taylor Lorenz quipped that “the gates of hell” had opened on Twitter overnight.

Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz

It’s like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight

Brandy Zadrozny, senior reporter for NBC news on internet, platforms, and politics (and self-proclaimed “librarian forever”), relayed Kate Klonick’s opinion that free speech will prove bad for business. (Klonick is a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society).

Brandy Zadrozny @BrandyZadrozny

Ahhhh @Klonick on WNYC this morning. “Being a free speech absolutist doesn’t really work” for the boss of Twitter. Elon will learn (is already learning) that “at the end of the day it’s going to be bad for business to take the content moderation guardrails down.”

Ben Collins, also senior reporter at NBC News on the “dystopia beat,” foreboded that Twitter would be overrun with “extremism and lies.”

Ben Collins @oneunderscore__

Beep boop.

Ben Collins @oneunderscore__

There are plenty of models for where this site is likely headed. I'm on those sites all day. I cover extremism and lies for a living. You're not gonna like it.

Sheera Frenkel retweeted fellow NYT reporter Stuart A. Thompson’s analysis that Twitter would serve as a bulwark for the Q curious, while NYT colleague Mike Isaac mocked those vowing to depart the platform.

Screenshot of Sheera Frenkel’s retweet of Stuart A. Thompon’s Q concerntrolling.

rat king @MikeIsaac

idk what y’all are talking about wit this “saying goodbye to twitter” mess i will be posting till my dying breath

Tweeting the untweetable

Meanwhile, counterculture influencers took to twitter with “test tweets” to vet content moderation practices with Musk at the helm. The content of their tweets reveal that which is perceived to be unsayable on the platform, allowing a kind of hermeneutics of censorship on social media. Topics like the contested 2020 election and January 6th permitted rally-turned-riot, the efficacy of COVID-19 interventions like mask and vaccine mandates, and the biological basis of sex are all regulated by Twitter rules on civic integrity, COVID-19 misleading information, and hateful conduct. These policies, and their enforcement, were overseen by ousted chief executive for Legal, Policy, Trust & Safety Vijaya Gadde. Seeing Twitter dissidents post this content to test Twitter moderation practices reveals those utterances that were deemed untweetable, mapping the boundaries of acceptable speech on the social media platform.

ELIJAH @ElijahSchaffer

Can we be honest about 2020 yet?

Terrence K. Williams @w_terrence

I can finally speak the truth on Twitter. Joe Biden did not win the 2020 Election

Excerpt from Twitter’s civic integrity policy.

Kyle Becker @kylenabecker

And, in summary: • The 2020 election was rigged • Hunter Biden's laptop is real • J6 was a set-up • Covid 'vaccines' are a fraud • Masks *never* worked • SARS-CoV-2 was made in a lab • U.S. should stay out of Ukraine • Trump should be on Twitter • Fauci should be in jail

Liz Wheeler @Liz_Wheeler

The COVID vaccines aren’t just bullshit, they’re dangerous. Men can’t be women, women can’t be men, & adults who teach trans ideology to children are groomers. The 2020 presidential election was fishy to the extreme. FREE SPEECH FEELS SO GOOD.

Excerpt from Twitter’s COVID-19 misleading information policy.

Excerpt from Twitter’s hateful conduct policy.

The most basic question

The American Library Association Council adopted the the Resolution on U.S. Enterprise’s Abridgment on Free Speech at ALA Annual 2021.¹ The somewhat euphemistic title belies a resolved clause that “urges” social media companies to

address disinformation, as well as targeted harassment or hate speech, in order to protect the honor, dignity, and humanity of users of their online platforms.

While the resolved clause is laudable on its face, it overlooks the most basic question: to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, who decides what is disinformation or hate speech? With this resolution, ALA endorses black box algorithmic censorship, the trauma and exploitation of content moderators, and significant control over public interest speech by private corporations.

Libraries must promote a culture of free speech beyond the legal contours of First Amendment protection - if for no other reason than that the law is downstream of culture. If we foresake free expression as a virtue, we can anticipate its diminishment as a right.

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1. As a member of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table executive committee at the time this resolution was presented for endorsement, I was the sole “no” vote on the basis of resolved clause #3.