Elon Musk gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, on June 16.GONZALO FUENTES/Reuters
For all its faults, social media offered great promise: Democratization of voice and a platform for all, gatekeepers be damned (with exceptions to keep things safe). Here was a way, beyond the letters-to-the-editor page, to scream into the void with results; someone might hear you and engage.
And for better or – with increasing frequency – worse, it has changed the game. Facebook went from being a way to find old high school pals to a key venue for political discourse. And Twitter, now X, became the platform of record for world leaders, health authorities, you name it, to share information. These platforms allowed us to follow breaking news in real time and be exposed to different perspectives. A win for democracy!
That’s not exactly how things worked out, as everyone reading this knows. Echo chambers were formed, silos erected, and mis- and disinformation exploded. Racism became commonplace, along with death threats, pile-ons, and malicious lies.
It was bad enough when some users fell to these depths. It’s quite another for it to be the guys in charge.
Hard to believe, in this ongoing limbo dance of low points, but we seem to be at a new one after an inglorious social media summer.
Elon Musk, who bought Twitter in what felt like a temper tantrum and then was forced to stick with the purchase, continues to dismantle the platform into a shadow of its former self, and use his own expensive toy to spread dangerous, childish dog-whistly messages. “Woke is fundamentally anti-human” he posted this week. And a few days earlier, an altered New York Times logo reading “The New Woke Times.”
Now, in a new low even for him, Mr. Musk has set his angry sights on the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL is a Jewish social justice organization, dedicated to fighting against hate speech. Mr. Musk is blaming the ADL for his company’s woes.
“To clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism, it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!” Mr. Musk posted last weekend.
That’s one word for it, I suppose. Victim-blaming would be a better one.
The ADL has called attention to the increase in antisemitic and other racist content since Mr. Musk took over and it has made advertisers aware of that correlation. Mr. Musk says the ADL’s call for advertisers to reassess the worthiness of the platform is what is hurting it; not all the antisemitic garbage that led to the call to begin with.
Mr. Musk has amplified anti-ADL sentiments (including the hashtag #BanTheADL) and posts sharing antisemitic tropes. Anyone following along understands that in fact Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform he bought by slashing content moderation, cozying up to the alt-right, restoring accounts to banned users, and allowing and even engaging with blatant antisemitic and other racist posts.
We are in a society where the primary platform for information sharing has become a breeding ground for antisemitism, conspiracy theories and lies. Supported and amplified by the guy who owns the joint.
This does not make me want to use X. But what is the alternative? A few have come along, but nothing has stuck.
The situation is arguably more dangerous over at Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company. As wildfires raged across this country this summer, Canadian politicians urged Meta’s executives to drop their protest ban on sharing Canadian news in order to help people access crucial information. Meta, which had invoked the ban in response to federal legislation requiring some tech companies to pay for news content, refused.
A for-profit company, Meta’s chief concern is not community or individual safety, but money.
Meanwhile over on X, on that terrible August night when a wildfire jumped the lake from West Kelowna over to Kelowna, B.C., I was trying to follow events using the platform. But with blue checkmarks no longer identifying a verified user but rather someone who paid for it, it was difficult to find accurate information.
So that’s what we’ve got: the place for social and political discourse controlled and degraded by petulant man-baby billionaires. Mr. Musk and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg are planning a cage match at some point. Of course they are.
I’ve been debating leaving Twitter ever since Mr. Musk took over, but I find it useful, even in its lesser-than state, for my job. My engagement has fallen dramatically – which has freed me. But it is such a shame. In a world of so much desperate inequality, a place where we could converge and talk to each other has been ruined by a guy with too much money for his own good, and for ours.
When private interests own the means of communication, we are at the mercy of whoever is in control. And those people are showing us who they are, loudly and clearly.