Musk Nails Twitter: How Can It Treat Half the Country Like This?
One of the left’s great sources of power in the culture is not allowing the right questions to be asked.
An increasing number of people are speaking up in defiance of threats from progressive cancel culture. One of the prominent voices daring to question the status quo world order is multibillionaire Elon Musk.
Musk’s takeover bid for Twitter continues to grind on, and he held a virtual meeting with the company’s employees on Thursday.
But earlier this week, he put those potential future employees on the spot with a one-word question about a controversy festering on the social media platform — one that had no good answers.
The Twitter account Libs of Tik Tok became very popular with a single brilliant idea: It just shared what progressives proudly film themselves saying and post on social media.
To anyone outside the safe space cocoon, the radical thoughts expressed are exposed as shocking delusions, vile hatred and creepy grooming.
To prevent leftists from being seen as what they are, progressives tried to silence the Libs of Tik Tok account by reporting it for “harassment.”
In April, Washington Post internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz went further, publicizing the name of the anonymous woman who runs the account along with other personal information.
The practice is called doxing: A person’s identity is revealed, all the better to make her the target of the same kinds of kooks who are making those delusional, hateful and creepy videos.
Doxing is meant to be intimidation and revenge for resisting the agenda. It happened to the woman behind Libs of Tik Tok when the Post published Lorenz’s story.
On Monday, Libs of Tik Tok tweeted that she had been threatened with a pipe bomb and asked the FBI for help.
This is what it’s like to be a woman on the internet who got doxed by a newspaper owned by the world’s richest man: actual death threats and encouragement of suicide.?
Since liberal outlets only care when this happens to rich, famous national journalists, they’ll ignore this: https://t.co/lOzo7CsVBp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 13, 2022
“I received about another 5 death threats in addition to this since yesterday,” she tweeted.
A few hours later came a follow-up: “Update: I have now received about a dozen death threats after radical leftists accused me of being a domestic terrorist extremist. Twitter has not removed any of the accounts of those who sent the threats.”
Update: I have now received about a dozen death threats after radical leftists accused me of being a domestic terrorist extremist. Twitter has not removed any of the accounts of those who sent the threats. https://t.co/tlHl2vagNA
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 13, 2022
Musk obviously stays on top of Twitter trends. He answered the last part of her tweet with a simple question.
“Why?” he said.
That’s one of those questions we are not supposed to be allowed to ask.
Musk added “@Twitter” to the post, which made it clear he was asking a real question of the company and expected an answer.
Why? @Twitter
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2022
Political commentator Ian Miles Cheong responded with a summary of Twitter’s typical behavior.
“On a just platform, everyone would be treated equally,” he tweeted. “As it is, you can be banned for merely criticizing (not even threatening) woke progressives, but they can send conservatives death threats without any repercussions.”
On a just platform, everyone would be treated equally. As it is, you can be banned for merely criticizing (not even threatening) woke progressives, but they can send conservatives death threats without any repercussions.
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 14, 2022
That allowed Musk to expand on his ideas of customer service and free speech.
“A platform cannot be considered inclusive or fair if it is biased against half the country,” he said.
A platform cannot be considered inclusive or fair if it is biased against half the country
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2022
It wasn’t the first time Musk used the brief medium of a tweet to great effect.
In May, after the Biden administration created the Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board to combat supposed “misinformation,” its poster child, Nina Jankowicz, was seen in a viral video making a disturbing proclamation: She decreed that as a “verified” Twitter user, she should have the ability to edit other people’s posts.
Musk, already working on the Twitter deal, tweeted one word about the idea: “Disconcerting…”
Disconcerting …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2022
Jankowicz ended up resigning, and the Disinformation Governance Board was “paused.”
Musk’s involvement in the Libs of Tik Tok threats also had a happy outcome. After his tweet, many of the abusive accounts were suspended, and Libs of Tik Tok thanked him for the move.
Maybe some Twitter employees are starting to accept the idea of working under Musk and following his lead.
As he said in his first meeting with Twitter’s staff on Thursday, “Obviously, people do need to listen to me,” a reasonable expectation from an employer.
They also need to answer the questions Musk asks, no matter how it exposes them.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
