Twitter exhibits the power of shaping and changing narratives, without accountability. The Elon Musk takeover of Twitter has given us the opportunity to discuss it now
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the CEO of Tesla, is in the news after he bought Twitter Inc for $44 billion, an almost 38 per cent premium on Twitter’s present market capitalisation. One among several reasons given for buying Twitter is that the company is not adhering to the principles of free speech and thus undermining the basics of democracy.
This episode prompted the debate on the Internet regarding free speech and the uncontrolled as well as unaccountable power of Big Tech to censor it. Several articles in the international media, written mainly by those having a Left bias, criticised Musk over his advocacy of free speech absolutism. One Indian columnist went to the extent of saying that “free speech absolutists are the best friends of hate speech” and warned Musk to stay away from Twitter. Another Brazilian writer commented that what people should speak should be left to the consensus of social scientists.
These arguments for curbing “hate speech” are profound. Twitter also runs a mission called HateLab to end the hate speech on the platform; it has a policy on hateful conduct, according to which appealing an economic boycott is also a violation of its policy. Some stereotypes, which are of course bad and bigoted, are also a violation of hateful conduct and result in de-platforming. It has a policy that if some tweet causes public disruption, it should be removed. Twitter also restricts engagement and views on some tweets if they are not in line.
The main problem with such an approach is that it is vague and often asymmetrical. Such ambiguity is a privilege for those having the power of discretion to determine what is permissible or not. Fighting against hate speech has become a weapon for some, specifically those who are politically Left-leaning, to restrict other viewpoints rather than defending their own. Calling someone fat is a hate crime; arguing to protect the right of cis-women in women’s sport is also a hate speech; referring Pakistani as a Paki is also a hate speech, and my one friend lost his 10-year-old Twitter account for doing so. The legit criticism of some lunatic political or religious ideology is also considered hate speech.
It is all ambiguous, and the line doesn’t exist, and if it does at all, it is blurry and often redrawn for convenience. One can argue algorithms detect such speech, but the problem is the developer of an algorithm is also human, suffering from bias and heuristics. When Musk asked Twitter to put its sorting and other algorithms in open source, Jack Dorsey, founder and former CEO of Twitter, declined to do so and said it should not be in the public knowledge. Plus, the question of accountability already exists; governments are accountable to the people, at least in democracies, but corporations are mostly not.
Thus, the question comes: Is it equal to advocating that anything and everything should be published online, or defending whatever Musk is doing is fine? Nope, it is not. What the point here is the criteria should not be blurry, as Twitter keeps it.
First, some speeches, tweets, or posts are morally deplorable in some geographical or cultural context but aren’t criminal. For example, the language used in the DC for the discourse is not the same happening in the village of West Africa. But when threats of physical violence, intimidation, assault, or genocide are evident, moderation should take a proactive step to curb such accounts. Offending someone should not be the criteria to suppress voices. For clarity, there must be precise policies about what constitutes a violation or not, and such a message should be conveyed to the concerned account without ambiguity.
Second, the country-specific laws must be followed, and the Big Tech should be held accountable for enforcing such laws. We can discuss the limited scope of freedom of speech in some countries. Still, at the end of the day, it should be left to the system of those countries, including law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, and the government, on what to allow. Because rather than the Big Tech, these institutions are more accountable to the general people. Private, for-profit and (for many countries) foreign entities don’t hold any privileges to secure freedom in any sovereign nations.
Third, the right of the social media platforms to ‘fact-check’ the information should not exist. We had seen how Twitter and Facebook labelled then US president Donald Trump’s tweet as factually incorrect when he was alleging election fraud, but, in India, when people question the authenticity of the EVM, we hardly see such actions. In such cases of factually incorrect information, the proper legal request or order should be the option, based on each country’s convenience and system.
Twitter exhibits the power of shaping and changing narratives, without accountability. The Elon Musk takeover of Twitter has given us the opportunity to discuss it now.
The writer is an independent columnist who writes on international relations, and socio-political affairs. Views expressed are personal.
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