Elon Musk Says World Must Know Truth About What Twitter Was Doing: 'The More I Learn, the Worse It Gets'
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said in a pre-Thanksgiving tweet that problems at Twitter — presumably censorship and bias, and certainly a lack of transparency regarding its actions and algorithms — were worse than he knew.
“The more I learn, the worse it gets,” he tweeted Wednesday evening.
Earlier that day, Musk had tweeted a poll asking whether suspended accounts should be re-activated under a “general amnesty,” with reasonable carve-outs for illegal activity and “egregious spam.”
That poll, while obviously unscientific, garnered over 3 million responses, with those in favor of such an amnesty outnumbering those opposed by nearly three-to-one.
Should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022
One presumes that Musk isn’t going to make every leadership decision by unscientific polling, but in this case he said that he would abide by the “voice of the people.”
The people have spoken.
Amnesty begins next week.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022
One of the replies to the original poll, however, suggested that in addition to amnesty, consistency, transparency and objectivity should be key in whatever decision Twitter ultimately made.
well whatever it decides to do, twitter should be clear and consistent about it’s rules and penalties for breaking them, enforcement should be unbiased, and the mechanisms of enforcement shouldn’t be easily abused by people who have an agenda
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) November 23, 2022
“[W]ell whatever it decides to do, twitter should be clear and consistent about it’s rules and penalties for breaking them, enforcement should be unbiased, and the mechanisms of enforcement shouldn’t be easily abused by people who have an agenda,” read the tweet from the account of Shibetoshi Nakamoto, the individual — or rather, the presumed pseudonym of the individual — believed to have developed bitcoin.
Again, Musk seemed responsive to the suggestion.
The more I learn, the worse it gets. The world should know the truth of what has been happening at Twitter.
Transparency will earn the trust of the people.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2022
That would presumably be good news for anyone. Even those who believe that former President Donald Trump — to take just one example — should have been suspended from Twitter should be interested in knowing the precise reasoning behind that decision and the policies Trump was said to have broken that justified that decision, if only so that other Twitter users can learn from the incident and not repeat the same violations, right?
(Incidentally, Twitter did reinstate Trump’s account on Saturday, and, as I had predicted earlier that day, Trump doesn’t seem to care.)
Musk, however, seemed to indicate that one side of the political debate was likely to appreciate the transparency more than the other.
It is objectively the case that “conservative” political candidates were more negatively affected than “progressive” candidates.
Anyone using Twitter knows this. Question is simply one of magnitude.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022
Conservatives, of course, have claimed left-leaning bias at the social media giant for years. Without the underlying data to back up those claims, however, it was difficult to prove. (Research by The Western Journal into similar censorship at Facebook found a decidedly leftist bias, although Facebook corrected some of that following publication of that data.)
Regardless of where Musk stands on politics, his apparent commitment to transparency should help uncover the truth of those claims, which should only be a good thing for American democracy.
Not everyone, however, wants what’s good for American democracy.
In all sincerity, and since you can afford it, I trust you have the world’s best security at your disposal. If you don’t, I have recommendations.
We lost Andrew Brietbart far too soon. We can’t in this moment afford to lose you.
— Law of Self Defense (@LawSelfDefense) November 24, 2022
I’m far from a conspiracy theorist, and there’s no credible evidence that Andrew Breitbart died of anything but complications from the hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with which he had been diagnosed a year or so prior to his untimely demise.
But this still sounds like reasonable advice to me.
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