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A12 TECHNOLOGY
Thursday 5 May 2022

The Twitter page of Elon Musk is seen on the screen of a computer in Sausalito, Calif., on Monday,
April 25, 2022.
Associated Press
Musk's 'free speech' push for Twitter:

Repeating history?

By BARBARA ORTUTAY and tip elections or undermine Criado-Perez, who success-
AMANDA SEITZ public health. fully advocated for novelist
Associated Press "With Musk, his posturing of Jane Austen to appear on
Elon Musk, the world's rich- free speech — just leave a British banknote. Creasy's
est man, is spending $44 everything up — that would online harasser was sent to
billion to acquire Twitter be bad in and of itself," said prison for 18 weeks.
with the stated aim of turn- Paul Barrett, the deputy di- Twitter has continued to
ing it into a haven for "free rector of the Center for Busi- craft rules and invested in
speech." There's just one ness and Human Rights at staff and technology that
problem: The social plat- New York University. "If you detect violent threats, ha-
form has been down this stop moderating with auto- rassment and misinforma-
road before, and it didn't mated systems and human tion that violates its policies.
end well. reviews, a site like Twitter, in After evidence emerged
A decade ago, a Twitter ex- the space of a short period that Russia used their plat-
ecutive dubbed the com- of time, you would have a forms to try to interfere with
pany "the free speech wing cesspool." the 2016 U.S. presidential
of the free speech party" to Google, Barrett pointed election, social media
underscore its commitment out, quickly learned this companies also stepped
to untrammeled freedom lesson the hard way when up their efforts against po-
of expression. Subsequent major companies like Toy- litical misinformation.
events put that moniker to ota and Anheuser-Busch Even now, Americans say
the test, as repressive re- yanked their ads after they they're more likely to be
gimes cracked down on ran ahead of YouTube vid- harassed on social media
Twitter users, particularly in eos produced by extremists than any other online fo-
the wake of the short-lived in 2015. rum, with women, people
"Arab Spring" demonstra- Once it was clear just how of color and LGBTQ users
tions. In the U.S., a visceral unhealthy the conversa- reporting a disproportion-
2014 article by journalist tion had gotten, Twitter co- ate amount of that abuse.
Amanda Hess exposed the founder and former CEO Roughly 80% of users be-
incessant, vile harassment Jack Dorsey spent years lieve the companies are still
many women faced just for trying to improve what he doing only a "fair or poor"
posting on Twitter or other called the "health" of the job of handling that harass-
online forums. conversation on the plat- ment, according to a Pew
Over the subsequent years, form. Research Center survey of
Twitter learned a few things The company was an ear- U.S. adults last year.
about the consequences ly adopter of the "report Meanwhile, terms like "cen-
of running a largely un- abuse" button after U.K. sorship" and "free speech"
moderated social platform member of parliament have turned into political
— one of the most impor- Stella Creasy received a rallying cries for conserva-
tant being that companies barrage of rape and death tives, frustrated by seeing
generally don't want their threats on the platform. The right-leaning commenta-
ads running against violent online abuse was the re- tors and high-profile Re-
threats, hate speech that sult of a seemingly positive publican officials booted
bleeds into incitement, and tweet in support of femi- off Facebook and Twitter
misinformation that aims to nist campaigner Caroline for violating their rules.q