Count Kara Alaimo, associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, among those unnerved and straight-up scared about the irreparable damage Elon Musk may cause to social media with his hostile Twitter takeover. Alaimo is so concerned, CNN gave her space to write a whole opinion piece about it:
"I predict that allowing harmful forms of 'free speech' — like misogyny and hate — on Twitter will actually have the effect of silencing many people and will be disastrous for the social network,' writes Kara Alaimo | Opinion https://t.co/qYEWP6padu
— CNN (@CNN) April 26, 2022
According to research by Pew, while women are far more likely than men to use Facebook and Instagram, they are less likely to use Twitter and Reddit, which have become infamous for trolling. (Bloomberg Technology host Emily Chang writes in her book “Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley” that “cyber hate is a far bigger, more visible problem on Reddit and Twitter than it is on Facebook and Instagram. Because my Facebook account is private and I have to accept friends before they can interact with me, I almost never see hurtful comments.”)This tells me that women already avoid social networks on which they think they’ll be abused — and if the abuse gets worse, it will have a profound effect on the kind of discussions that happen on the platform.As the writer Lindy West pointed out in the Guardian, “Internet trolling might seem like an issue that only affects a certain subset of people, but that’s only true if you believe that living in a world devoid of diverse voices — public discourse shaped primarily by white, heterosexual, able-bodied men — wouldn’t profoundly affect your life.”
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You mean like my timeline during and after your town hall? https://t.co/vR2RM3pOXf
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) April 26, 2022
I remember it well.
— The Patriot Hammer (@patriot_hammer) April 26, 2022
That infamous CNN town hall on gun control was basically CNN siccing the public on Dana Loesch for daring to believe in the right to self-defense. Jake Tapper got the ball rolling, and social media picked it up and ran with it. And to this day, CNN has never taken responsibility or offered up anything even remotely resembling an apology.
Did you guys see what happened to @DLoesch, her timeline and her husband @ChrisLoesch's timeline after that sham of a townhall you guys put on? She seriously got death threats. https://t.co/WACF0zbQMe
— MICHELLE (@Ummmmichelle) April 26, 2022
Why isn’t Kara Alaimo writing opinion pieces about CNN feeding into misogyny and hate?
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