There are plenty of journalists upset that their playground has been purchased by Elon Musk and he might just ease up on the censorship … um, “content moderation.” Musk’s claim that he’s a “free speech absolutist” has a lot of people worried that Twitter will be like a party with total freedom. Human rights groups are concerned about hate speech. Jen Psaki told us that President Joe Biden has “long been concerned” about the power of social media to influence. House Democrats urged the FBI to investigate Parler, which was taken down from Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store.
Back in November 2020, MSNBC published a report about Parler. “They’re fine with hate speech and racism,” they wrote about Parler, calling it a social media platform used for spreading conspiracy theories. “Swearing is not really allowed … nudity is not really allowed, so it’s a free speech platform in racism only.”
The author of that piece? Ben Collins, who’s back, as an expert on “extremism and lies,” to let us know we’re not going to like where Twitter is headed under Musk.
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.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2022
Other than being filled with death threats, racial slurs, and fake recipes for play-doh that actually produce napalm, the sites are simply unusable from a basic user experience level.
Admins get bored of running a hellsite filled with garbage and let the bad stuff dominate.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2022
There are plenty of ways this could work out fine.
Pushing through beta stuff in a backlog — like an edit button — might make the site jankier right away but better in the long run.
But it's not going to be a public company, so this makes decisions and data less transparent.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2022
Because Twitter’s been so transparent about the application of its suspensions and bans.
For example, what if he were to lean in on maximizing profit above all costs?
That means more ads, yes, or more paid features. But another fast way to make money with a userbase this big and young is to sell user info to data brokers. Wouldn't be a ton of oversight on that now.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2022
Twitter as it stands pulls down botnets that used to make this site very bad. (They still exist, trying to hawk NFTs, but to a much lesser extent.)
What if this very expensive investment needs a shiny new user growth number so Twitter just… stops doing that? Not impossible.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2022
Anyway, there's a lot more at play here than just "Will Donald Trump be allowed back on here?" Who knows! Maybe? Probably?
There are a lot more ways this site can be dramatically affected by an owner committed to using a hammer and not a scalpel.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) April 25, 2022
Any recommendations for those that are now going to have to leave Twitter? Or stay and be bullied by those hateful people?
— andria lynne (@andriasf67) April 25, 2022
Yes. Log off and go outside.
Oh no! https://t.co/v4vtWC8CXT
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 25, 2022
When Glenn Greenwald in November of 2020 called out the “little hall monitor dweebs” who work for the networks and “whose only purpose is to pressure other platforms to censor or block the voices that are most threatening to them,” one of the two dweebs he was referring to was Collins.
I'm not really sure how or why it happened — and at some point it should be studied with the perspective of some temporal distance – but the neediest, most ardent, and most passionate censorship crusaders are the tattletale-employees of media corporations like this: https://t.co/dqEy57O3Qw
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 25, 2022
WELCOME TO THE THUNDERDOME DICKBITCHES https://t.co/LpGMxOnZ07
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) April 25, 2022
He's seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. https://t.co/8erJJkxaJI
— Nathan Wurtzel (@NathanWurtzel) April 25, 2022
Your “disinformation community” co-writer at NBC falsely claimed that the Wi-Spa protests was based on a hoax.
You amplified this disinformation.
Please leave Twitter on principle. Thanks. https://t.co/ui01Uehwnm pic.twitter.com/gOSAz0gYX9
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 25, 2022
Dude clowning on MSNBC https://t.co/bUd1s3ikdS
— Gary (@garyalan82) April 25, 2022
Now Ben can get tricked on Twitter by trolls as he does spending his life on 4chan https://t.co/1r2EihcZz4
— Ahmed Al Assliken (@assliken) April 25, 2022
Twitter is now the dark web. A reign of terror will be unleashed by the notorious hacker known as 4chan.
May God have mercy on us all. https://t.co/OWw7GTdVFN
— The Partyman (@PartymanRandy) April 25, 2022
LOL when I said you were on those sites all day you went ballistic. https://t.co/ONoz6YSlSh pic.twitter.com/SG6yzFK0zk
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) April 25, 2022
Ben Collins should cover his own extremism and lies. https://t.co/d2hWrOci65
— Chris Loesch (@ChrisLoesch) April 25, 2022
Tough day for professional tattle-tales and hall monitors https://t.co/fyEjQgIGUR
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 25, 2022
Oh no.
The bad people might say bad stuff and as a helpless minority, I'm totally defenseless against these horrors.
Ahhhh. https://t.co/SVBd5LabXH— Chad Felix Greene 🇮🇱 (@chadfelixg) April 25, 2022
The fainting couch industry is having a banner day. https://t.co/oLCX4RwaO5
— Arthur Boreman Once Held His Breath for 30 Seconds (@ArthurBoreman) April 25, 2022
NOTE: Liberals who say their beat is "extremism and lies" actually mean their beat is "right-wing extremism and lies." https://t.co/0qvmzW6IlB
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) April 25, 2022
Learn to cope https://t.co/S0YTby8pi2
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) April 25, 2022
Related:
NPR’s Eric Deggans says to expect the amount of disinformation in our media ecosystem to explode https://t.co/HswQ4X3CLT
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 25, 2022
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