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.
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).
Ben Collins, also senior reporter at NBC News on the “dystopia beat,” foreboded that Twitter would be overrun with “extremism and lies.”
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.
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.
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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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.
I'm very impressed - this is quite eloquent for a hot take! Thanks for producing a response so quickly.
I saw that "the bird is freed" tweet this morning and had to laugh. Also laughed at "Chief Twit" in Musk's twitter bio.