海角大神

Call it the $44 billion tweet. When the conservative news satire The Babylon Bee tweeted a joke that Twitter deemed offensive, it inadvertently triggered Elon Musk鈥檚 multibillion-dollar bid to buy the social media platform, which the company has accepted.聽

The backstory? USA Today had nominated Adm. Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as one of its Women of the Year. Ms. Levine is transgender. In response, The Babylon Bee 鈥� whose motto is 鈥淔ake news you can trust鈥� 鈥� named Ms. Levine its Man of the Year. To some, The Babylon Bee鈥檚 riposte was an assertion of biological fact. To others, it was hate speech. Twitter suspended The Babylon Bee account in March.聽

Mr. Musk, dismayed by Twitter鈥檚 decision, reached out to the Bee鈥檚 CEO. Shortly afterward, Mr. Musk initiated steps to buy Twitter outright. The entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX has also made a point of asserting that free speech should be Twitter鈥檚 governing principle.聽

Mr. Musk鈥檚 proclamation sparked a backlash exemplified by Washington Post columnist Max Boot, who tweeted: 鈥淗e seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.鈥�

Mr. Musk鈥檚 bid to buy Twitter, which functions as a digital town square, has exposed a widening rift in the culture of free speech. On one side are institutional gatekeepers who favor top-down control of speech on social media, filtering out abhorrent rhetoric and false information that could sway how citizens vote. On the other side is Mr. Musk鈥檚 classical liberal vision for speech 鈥� once predominant in Silicon Valley, but no longer 鈥� which prizes competition within a marketplace of ideas.聽聽

Both the far right and the far left increasingly favor top-down curbs on speech that they believe to be harmful and dangerous. The right favors legislative bans on content in school curricula and libraries. The left favors campus speech codes and prohibitions on hate speech, including on social media platforms. Twitter, a relatively small platform, wields outsize influence as a hub for journalists. MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan accused Mr. Musk of handing 鈥渙ne of the world鈥檚 most influential messaging machines鈥� to the far right.

At the heart of the debate over Twitter鈥檚 model for content moderation lies a deeper question: Is it possible to engender greater trust in online information and discourse?

鈥淲hat I think we have happening in society now is primarily that there is a new abundance of speech,鈥� says Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. 鈥淭he people who were not represented in mainstream mass media now have a seat at the table of the negotiation of norms in society. Those who held that table in their control resent that.鈥澛犅�

Similar battles have played out whenever a new technology, such as the Gutenberg printing press, enables speech that threatens established institutions. As another example, Mr. Jarvis cites the alarmed response of the newspaper industry to the advent of radio. Twitter, founded in 2006, hosts everything from sports to pornography to 鈥淐aturday鈥� photos to, well, an account titled @BoredElonMusk that parodies the multibillionaire. (Sample tweet: 鈥淒o astronauts put their phone in spaceship mode?鈥�)

鈥淭he Barbarians are at the Gate鈥澛�

But some believe that Twitter鈥檚 media and politics sector has been monopolized by institutional gatekeepers. The day after Mr. Musk offered to buy Twitter, he tweeted, 鈥淭he Barbarians are at the Gate.鈥� The platform 鈥� whose employees鈥� political donations were 98.7% for Democrats 鈥� has been accused of covertly suppressing the visibility of non-progressive viewpoints.

鈥淚鈥檓 on the left, but I can see it,鈥� says Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor at Newsweek and author of 鈥淏ad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.鈥� She recalls that Twitter once censored her tweet about a debate that Newsweek hosted on whether climate change is an emergency. 鈥淲e weren鈥檛 even questioning, 鈥業s climate change happening?鈥� Both sides admit that, of course, the climate is getting warmer. ... For asking whether it鈥檚 an emergency, we got censored.鈥�

Twitter鈥檚 gatekeepers try to control everything from banned聽content (child pornography, for instance), to rooting out state disinformation (including in the war in Ukraine), to issuing credentials (to distinguish real accounts from fake or parody ones). But one of Twitter鈥檚 most controversial decisions apparently still rankles Mr. Musk. Several weeks prior to the 2020 election, Twitter suspended the New York Post for reporting on the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic presidential nominee, that it alleged showed corrupt business deals in Ukraine and China. Most corporate news organizations and online platforms, including Facebook, believed that the computer was Russian disinformation aimed at skewing the election. This year, The New York Times tacitly verified the legitimacy of the laptop. At the time, Twitter defended its 16-day suspension by citing its policy against sharing hacked and private information. Last week, Mr. Musk tweeted, 鈥淪uspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate.鈥澛�

The multibillionaire has stated that, for Twitter to deserve trust, it must be politically neutral. The entrepreneur cites the First Amendment as a model he鈥檇 like to emulate.聽As for content moderation standards, Mr. Musk will have to contend with a new law in the European Union aimed at regulating harmful speech on social media.聽

鈥淧eople are not hearing Elon Musk鈥檚 outcries of free speech as an outcry for free speech,鈥� says Karen Kovacs North, director of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. 鈥淧eople are hearing that Elon Musk is using the concept of free speech to allow people to come to Twitter and say things that have previously been stopped or controlled because they are hateful or hurtful in some way.鈥�

Free speech or online bullying?

Although Twitter鈥檚 terms of service forbid glorification of violence, targeted harassment of individuals, or hateful conduct, the platform is still rife with abusive behavior.

鈥淚t鈥檚 still an environment where Black women, in particular, queer folk, differently abled folk, are already experiencing high levels of toxicity,鈥� says Andr茅 Brock, an associate professor of media studies at Georgia Tech and author of 鈥淒istributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures.鈥� 鈥淭here will be an uptick in harassment, toxicity, misogyny, and racism, in part because many folk who had left the platform to go to spaces like Gab or Truth Social 鈥� [are] coming back to Twitter because they feel they won鈥檛 have to face the same consequences for their speech.鈥�

Mr. Musk isn鈥檛 afraid to test the boundaries of taste and decorum on Twitter. He once compared Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. Quick to mock 鈥渨oke鈥� viewpoints, he tweeted a meme that said, 鈥淣etflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a Black Ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender Russian.鈥� He has also sparred with the Securities and Exchange Commission over what the agency claims are several instances of inaccurate information about Tesla that boosted the company鈥檚 stock prices. A judge ruled against his suit to have the consent decree removed just last week.

Ms. Ungar-Sargon of Newsweek is concerned that Mr. Musk may tamp down speech that interferes with his business interests, including Tesla鈥檚 ties to China. This year, Tesla opened a dealership in Xinjiang, China, despite widespread reports that the province has imprisoned Uyghur Muslims in 鈥渞eeducation鈥� camps.聽

Another high-profile question: Given that Mr. Musk says he favors 鈥渢imeouts鈥� rather than permanent bans on Twitter, will Donald Trump be allowed back on his favorite bully pulpit? The former president was banned from Twitter 鈥渄ue to the risk of further incitement of violence鈥� following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Many on the progressive left argue that disinformation on Twitter is potentially dangerous and thus beyond the safe limits of acceptable speech. After all, Mr. Trump鈥檚 claims that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen through voting fraud fueled the angry crowd 鈥� which included white supremacists and QAnon conspiracy theorists 鈥� that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. More recently, the platform has clamped down on COVID-19 misinformation that it believes is harmful to public health. For instance, feminist Naomi Wolf was ousted from Twitter following a series of tweets including the claim that mRNA vaccines are a software platform that can receive 鈥渦ploads.鈥�

Those types of views on matters such as public health 鈥渟hould be tamped down and it鈥檚 within the right and responsibility of a platform to do so,鈥� says Mr. Jarvis.聽

The battle to combat misinformation isn鈥檛 easy. If Twitter gets it wrong, it risks losing public trust. During the pandemic, Twitter censored heterodox views 鈥� from the hypothesis that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory to questions about the efficacy of cloth masks 鈥� that later became more widely accepted. Martin Kulldorff, a founder of the Great Barrington Declaration and former member of the Vaccine Safety Subgroup of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention鈥檚 Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, was temporarily suspended for claiming that vaccines are important for older, high-risk people but not for children. Indeed, Mr. Kulldorff says that Twitter has hosted misinformation disputing the effectiveness of natural immunity. Yet the scientist doesn鈥檛 believe that Twitter should censor erroneous views, because the scientific process necessarily involves argument.聽

鈥淲hat is the point of having people that you think are wrong or maybe even liars be given permission to share the same space in the public square with you? And the answer is, because you know what? He may be right or she may be right,鈥� says Martin Gurri, author of 鈥淭he Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium.鈥� 鈥淭he only way we find out what alternative possibilities there are to the world we鈥檙e interpreting is by hearing people that have radically different perspectives from ours.鈥�

Times Square, not the NYT

Mr. Jarvis, for one, believes it鈥檚 time to shift discussion away from the bad content and concede that it鈥檚 always been present and always will be.聽

鈥淭witter is not The New York Times. It鈥檚 Times Square,鈥� says the media pundit and journalism professor. 鈥淚f you walk through Times Square 鈥� you will hear smart people and stupid people. Right things, wrong things. We feel no compulsion to go through there and correct everything.鈥�

If anything, Mr. Jarvis says that efforts to debunk bad speech only end up amplifying it. A better approach, in his view, would be to treat such . Twitter allows one to curate what one sees and doesn鈥檛 see by muting or blocking other users.聽

Even so, Twitter鈥檚 algorithms may amplify some content that some may object to. An internal study conducted by the company across a range of countries in 2020 found that its algorithm was biased toward recommending right-leaning political content. In a bid to boost public trust in Twitter, Mr. Musk says he is keen to allow transparency of its algorithms.聽

Ultimately, efforts to restore a modicum of confidence in the institution may have to start at the top.

鈥淭rust is a human thing, not a technological thing. I almost hesitate to use the word, but it鈥檚 almost a moral quality,鈥� says Mr. Gurri. 鈥淵ou trust somebody who you think is good, somebody who鈥檚 not trying to fool you, or who is not trying to feather their own nest, or who鈥檚 not just an empty suit. ... To the extent that our elites learn to be, number one, good characters, and number two, project themselves as good characters in the digital world, trust will be restored.鈥�