Here is an example of Musk and twitter’s idea of “real time, accurate information.”
This isn’t just any right-wing nut job using twitter to revive BS nonsense from decades ago, it is Elon Musk.
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Musk’s biographer? Essentially, Issacson is Musk’s spokesperson. Isssacson has to make money on his books.
We all know Musk is a Putin toady, so Musk allows Putin’s warships to continue to launch attacks against a much smaller nation and military.
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Even though X is the center of the universe for intelligent, informed political discussion, Musk’s posts are quite varied in topics and viewpoints. IMO, someone like Musk that loves downtown San Francisco and is begging for people return to work there doesn’t fit the profile of a right winger.
The rules on X are straightforward—post your viewpoint as long as it isn’t illegal or harassing. The ADL can choose to post on their account that they “believe Musk is allowing X, Y, and Z for these reasons…” Free speech. But instead, they chose to go to war with the platform itself, demanding people be deplatformed and directly threatening advertisers. Not free speech.
When confronted with the facts, the head of the ADL just resorted to the usual “bigot” name calling. Jewish people are the most highly respected group in the US, 40% more highly regarded than any other group, but this guy has to make money on his book by stirring the pot on antisemitism. Everyone knows this, so the court of public opinion has already ruled. The intricacies of any potential lawsuit don’t matter.
Couldn’t help but read that entire last post with interjections from Ron Howard as Arrested Development’s narrator.
“Even though X is the center of the universe for intelligent, informed political discussion,”
Narrator: It isn’t.
“Musk’s posts are quite varied in topics and viewpoints.”
Narrator: They aren’t.
“someone like Musk that loves downtown San Francisco …”
Narrator: He doesn’t.
(and so on)
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You have a strange and inaccurate understanding of what free speech is and isn’t. Even if your description of what the ADL had done was accurate (it isn’t), that would be protected speech. He has no defamation case, yet he threatens one anyway, in an attempt to stifle public debate about the cesspool formally called twitter. By the way, me calling twitter a cesspool is free speech. Me calling Elon Musk a buffoon (or any other name) is free speech.
As for your statements downplaying the existence of antisemitism in the US (and on twitter), telling you what I am thinking would be protectedfree speech, but might nonetheless violate the rules on CC, so I’ll refrain from expressing myself fully out of respect for those rules.
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Is this an opinion or do you have a source for this?
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Source?
Of course, even if that were true, a group can be highly regarded by most while also being despised and hated by some others.
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Jewish-to-“next most favorable” favorable-unfavorable balance ratio of 28:20=1.4.
The Pew article you posted does not support your attempt to downplay anti-semitism:
The positive public attitude toward Jews may not tell the whole story, however: A 2020 survey of Jewish Americans found perceptions of rising antisemitism in the United States, and other organizations have reported an increase in antisemitic incidents.
Also, the percentage with positive views toward Jewish people doesn’t have much of anything to do with the minority of vocal and hateful anti-semites who Musk welcomes with open arms (and often amplifies) on twitter.
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Although few of the survey respondents said that they dislike Jewish people, it looks like those whose dislike tips over into criminal acts are more likely to be among those who dislike Jewish people (51.4%) than those who dislike all other religions combined: Community Relations Service | FBI Releases Supplement to the 2021 Hate Crime Statistics
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Let’s not forget the Tiki-torch carrying chanters at UVA: “Jews will not replace us!”
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Gift link
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I’m not sure if there was ever a name for this kind of “hack”, but it was a somewhat common situation in the early days of Twitter. A random account would have predicted the precise scores of the Super Bowl or some other big game — not only the final score, but the scores of the two teams at each of the quarters. Or would include some other impossible-to-predict-this-whole-thing-must-be-fixed kind of situation.
Turns out that they were just throwing hundreds (if not thousands) of automated tweets up ahead of time, and then quietly deleted the ones that didn’t come true. Since it was a random account, nobody paid attention to it (or even saw it) beforehand. Afterwards, though, with the wrong data removed, it looked like they had some special insight, or that the game was rigged.
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Pre-NYT, David French was a free speech absolutist, speaking about the long history of censors exacerbating division, and the very act of arguing about what to censor facilitating division. People can choose what they want to see on social media with block/mute, he said, but in his recent NYT piece, he fails to mention that.
The FBI’s hate crime tracker is a mess. They’ve been trying for 32 years to define and track, but for example, the latest numbers from Florida indicate a single hate crime was committed there over an entire year, and it wasn’t an anti-Jewish crime. The real number could be better, or even worse.
Absent solid numbers, the ADL created a narrative to define tropes that are “dangerous” because believing in them leads to violence, even though their pollster told them in no uncertain terms that perpetrators of hate crime are different than the people that believe the tropes. Since the vast majority of people believe in at least one trope, it seems reasonable to allow that to be discussed on X. I don’t understand why the ADL would object.
Just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. Very long for a slow reader like me, but highly recommended. I wish more authors could write with the creativity, clarity, and flair that Isaacson demonstrates.
It weaves the complexities of Musk’s genius, personality, and management style that have made his many companies so successful into the motivations behind his purchase of Twitter and redirection of the company. Would I want to work for him? No. But many people do, and they have accomplished amazing things. After some initial havoc, X is settling in as the balanced public forum it was intended to be.