When Elon Musk bought Twitter, his commitment to free speech was a big part of the purchase. Musk alleged that the government had conspired with Twitter’s old management to quash dissenting speech and even had Matt Taibbi release carefully selected internal documents from prior to his takeover of the company in a series of “Twitter Files” threads.
I read several of the Twitter files threads and never thought the actual releases measured up to the hype. There were quite a few problems with the documents that didn’t fit the narrative. Among these were the facts that most of the government interactions with Twitter seem to have been during the Trump Administration and many of Twitter’s crackdowns were on leftist accounts. Both undercut the narrative that the company collaborated with liberals in government to silence conservatives online.
At any rate, the news recently broke that the Turkish government had “requested” that Twitter censor opposition accounts ahead of the national elections in that country over the weekend. Despite Musk’s professed commitment to free speech online, the company acceded to the demand.
Two days before the election, Twitter posted this message confirming that it was engaging in political censorship.
Matt Yglesias took offense to this and retweeted the post with the message, “The Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election and @elonmusk complied — should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting.”
Yglesias added, “As I’ve been saying all along, the big problem with Twitter and free speech is that Musk has a much more significant business as the main shareholder of a major international car company that needs to curry favor with various regimes.”
And, as it turns out, Musk does do business with the Turkish government. SpaceX, another of Musk’s companies, contracted with the Turkish government for satellite launches in 2021. Tesla also expanded into Turkey in late 2022.
This drew the attention of Twitter’s troll-in-chief, who responded, “ Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”
Aside from the snarky and unprofessional tone of Musk’s response, the tweet shows where Musk’s priorities lie. The moment could have been a touchstone in online free speech if Musk had tweeted the correspondence from the Turkish government and announced that Twitter would not comply on ethical grounds.
If the Turkish government shut down access to Twitter in the country, it wouldn’t be the only country where Twitter is banned. Twitter is already officially unavailable in a number of countries including China and North Korea, but in practice, these bans can be circumvented with virtual private networks (VPNs).
A Turkish ban on Twitter would tell us a lot about the Turkish government, however. The government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become increasingly authoritarian, taking actions like expanding presidential authority, purging and imprisoning opponents, and, well, censoring opposition Twitter accounts. If the Erdogan government actually banned Twitter from Turkey, it would telegraph Erdogan’s dictatorial intent.
Jonah Goldberg said it best when he tweeted, “If Twitter were throttled in its entirety perhaps Turkish voters would better understand the authoritarian tendencies of their government and the costs it’s imposing on the nation as a whole. Throttling the opposition to that govt on election eve doesn’t seem optimal IMHO.”
Or to put it another way, as Nicholas Grossman of Arc Digital tweeted:
FBI: We have a warrant to investigate a Twitter user for sexual exploitation of children, the govt will reimburse any labor costs you incur, as per law.
Twitter Files: POLITICAL CENSORSHIP!
Erdogan: Help silence my political opponents before the election.
Twitter: Oh-kay!
Is Musk concerned about the loss of revenue if Twitter lost its Turkish business? That doesn’t seem likely after the businessman valued the company at $20 billion in March, less than half of what he paid for it last year. Musk hasn’t seemed concerned with the company’s bottom line elsewhere, and his Turkish business seems far smaller than what he has written off by alienating American users. However, the value of Twitter’s business combined with SpaceX and Tesla could be enough to influence Musk’s actions, especially combined with losses that he has already taken from the markdown of Twitter and other business problems.
Musk seems to finding out what thousands of activists have found out in past decades. The US isn’t perfect and it’s a lot easier to protest the speck in America’s eye than the two-by-four in the eye of an authoritarian country.
Twitter belongs to Elon Musk. He and the board can run it as they see fit, even if that means running it into the ground. But it’s hypocritical to publish the Twitter Files decrying censorship and then partner with Erdogan to censor the platform in Turkey.
As a Muskian version of Teen Talk Barbie might say, “Moral consistency is tough!”
As I write this, election results are still being tallied in Turkey. CNN reports a likely runoff with Erdogan leading the main opposition candidate by a margin of 49.34 percent to 44.99.
Maybe the opposition will unite and Turks will vote to oust Erdogan, a man who has been in power since 2003. And maybe if they do, Erdogan will respect the will of the voters and step down.
If any of this happens, it will be no thanks to Elon Musk.
Picky point. He’s not a hypocrite. He is cynically BSing. It’s just bad faith lying. That’s it.Report
Agreed. I seem to recall this scenario being batted about during the run up to the purchase and a great many of our resident free speechers poo pooing such things.
I’ll wait at that table on the left for the crow eating to start.Report
Yes, but nothing we didn’t already know. What we’re learning is about Elon Musk, and it isn’t particularly surprising either.
His understanding of free speech is that of a fedora-wearing teenager fresh off his first Ayn Rand novel, and so it isn’t all that weird that when he does stick up for free speech it’s on behalf of catturd2 and other trolls, and it’s not on behalf of people who are actually being suppressed by their governments.Report
He supports dictators. If you didn’t know this before he bought Twitter, you haven’t been paying attention.
You also support dictators, and very publically. I like to think, if you had the resources Elon does, you’d put your money where your mouth is, and Support The Troops And Bloodshed.Report
LOL what dictator do you claim I support?Report
Probably Biden or Zelensky, or both.Report
Good guesses. But my money’s on “Fauci.”Report
I don’t understand. I thought that consensus was that the US doing this wasn’t worth getting in a twist over.
Is that not the case?Report
I thought government censorship was bad? Cause if it is, it is, then this is very bad. Old twitter didn’t bend the knee but musk did and got a sweet contract out of Turkey.Report
I can’t conjure a good reason for Musk to have buckled under Erdogan’s pressure; I prefer to believe it is a combination of mercenary instinct and naiveté about Twitter’s ability to withstand the positive law.Report
It is about his affection for authoritarian strongmen and his desire to own the libz. Nothing more, nothing less. Things will continue to get bad as long as we “prefer to believe” instead of stating things as they are.Report
One thing that I would wonder is whether the EU has rules about this.
I know that private companies can do whatever they want, of course.
But is there an agreement among the EU countries that they not do stuff like this?Report
Believe it or not, there are rules about this! Article 11.
Looks like there are loopholes galore, though.Report
I thought that it wasn’t a bad thing for governments to engage in.
Old twitter didn’t bend the knee but musk did and got a sweet contract out of Turkey.
Really? Is that what the consensus was about how old Twitter handled things?Report
Apparently twitter fought censorship in turkey in 14. They went to court to avoid it and it was briefly taken down.
Twitter used to aggressively fight lots of take down requests.Report
Oh, is that what the Twitter Files revealed?Report
Why don’t you just tell us what you think the Twitter Files revealed?Report
I did! I posted them as comments a bunch of times.
Would you like links to those comments? I can dig them up, if you’d like. You might be shocked to see some of the responses!Report
[eye roll]Report
Well, here is my take:
Elon done screwed up with his decision on Turkey.
He should have said something to the effect of “You know what? We’re going to make you ban the website.”
And then made Erdogan ban the website. Then Elon could have asked everybody else in the EU to gently tell their censorious member to lighten the hell up.
As it is, he paid the Danegeld.
Which means he’ll be paying it again someday.
As for morally, eh. I’m a fan of the Enlightenment. I think that Free Speech is one of those things that is good even when one’s opponents has it.
And that’s without getting into how it’s irritating as hell to see people pivot from “well, you have to understand…” when it goes against their opponents to “WHERE ARE THE FREE SPEECH SUPPORTERS?” when the wrong ox gets gored.Report
“As it is, he paid the Danegeld.”
And I gotta say, he seemed quite happy to do it. That post about “I support free speech so long as it complies with the law” was…wheeeew buddy, someone who reads SF for fun should damn well know better than to talk like that!Report
Turkey is not a member of the EU. NATO yes, EU no.Report
Oh. My bad.
I suppose it wouldn’t make sense to appeal to the European Union–Turkey Customs Union. That’s only about trade, really.Report
Weren’t you the one chastising people for talking about Trump in regards to claims of Biden corruption?
Now you want to talk about Old Twitter in regards to New Twitter?
How… convenient…Report
Oh, was I the one who brought up Old Twitter?Report
“I don’t understand. I thought that consensus was that the US doing this wasn’t worth getting in a twist over.
Is that not the case?”
Is this not about Old Twitter?Report
No. It’s about us.Report
Jaybird, please do not tell me you’ve fallen for the Twitter Files billsh*t* story about Twitter censoring stuff. I swear, we have giant discussions where dumbass conspiracies get pretty thoroughly debunked, and then people here go back to arguing them as if they were true. It’s infuriating.
The Twitter Files proved:
a) Organizations sometimes make bad decisions when they notice that information is spreading via their own platform.
a) You often can get illegal revenge porn taken down from social media.
b) The FBI will alert companies if they discover those companies are spreading misleading information about the time and date of elections and how they operate.
On top of the basic fact stuff like this always proves: Conservatives will lie by selectively releasing things that only impact themselves…it’s the ‘IRS is targeting conservative organizations’ all over again, a story that not only was extremely misleading in general, but literally was the result of a _very selective_ investigation into just looking at how the IRS interacted conservative organizations, and it turned out the IRS had been just as incompetent towards progressive ones. (And this also has been debunked dozens of times here but keeps popping up.)
Because we all noticed that the Twitter Files mentioned a few times that the Trump campaign and administration also sent in requests, but for some completely inexplicably reason none of those were ever detailed or talked about about.
You know, the actual government at the time, which literally got impeached for illegally applying political pressure on Ukraine? We all remember that happened, right? Might be interesting to, uh, see what they were telling Twitter! Were they pressuring Twitter in some manner?! As opposed to the Biden campaign, who asked Twitter to, uh, take down illegal revenge porn of Hunter. Something that is actually illegal and isn’t a speech issue, violates Twitter’s TOS, and anyone can ask to be done.
But we don’t get that. We don’t get any information at all about what the actual government was asking, outside of the FBI saying ‘Hey, these tweets are incorrectly telling people how to cast a vote, a thing that is voter suppression, a violation of federal law, and explicitly something we’re in charge of, and also we’re literally just pointing them out to you and its up to you if you take them down’. But we don’t get any information about requests from the administration that was, against, impeached for illegally pressuring someone. And that makes it a pretty obvious political hit job, and means we shouldn’t listen to any of it…although that sorta was obvious from the start.
And we already talked about all this. Aren’t we supposed to be, like, a smart site? Shouldn’t we _remember_ the stuff we’ve talked about?Report
He has fallen for it because it ownz the libs.Report
Eh, there was the Biden Laptop story that got suppressed as “Russian Disinformation”. That was something we watched in real time.
How easy it is to forget!
As for Trump also making requests… I’m confused. Is this something worth condemning or something worth shrugging about? Do we sigh and say “well you have to understand” or do we puff up and say “this is a matter of principle!”?
Is it “who/whom”?
Because it’s starting to look like “who/whom”.Report
Got suppressed _entirely on Twitter’s own volition_, not by a government asking for it.
Jaybird, it’s your side that has absolutely no principles here, or they would have _also_ revealed what the ACTUAL LITERAL GOVERNMENT (That was literally impeached for illegally applying political pressure in another context) asked to be removed in addition to the ILLEGAL REVENGE PORN the Biden’s asked to be removed.Report
“it’s the ‘IRS is targeting conservative organizations’ all over again, a story that not only was extremely misleading in general, but literally was the result of a _very selective_ investigation into just looking at how the IRS interacted conservative organizations, and it turned out the IRS had been just as incompetent towards progressive ones.”
So when the IRS apologized for excessive targeting of conservative political groups, we should take that as just kind of general fuhfuh and not an actual statement of admission that they were excessively targeting conservative political groups?
“The FBI will alert companies if they discover those companies are spreading misleading information about the time and date of elections and how they operate.”
Please point to the Federal statute that makes “spreading misleading information about elections” something that the FBI is required to Step In and Handle (and something where the spreaders in question are required by law to do as the FBI says instead of telling them to eat it.)
Do keep in mind that CDA Section 230 makes information-transmission companies not liable for the content of the information they transmit. Although if you want to suddenly discover that all along you were strongly against CDA Section 230 and think it should be repealed, well, congratulations you agree with me again.Report
Here’s NPR covering the IRS’s apology.
It makes you wonder if there is a secret cabal of people in the IRS and in the media whose goal it is to discredit neutral organizations like the IRS. Painting everything in the worst possible light.
Secret Libertarians or something.Report
No, that’s NPR repeating Jess Sessions’ misleading comments about the apology. Here’s the ACTUAL apology they were required to issue by the consent decreed:
You will notice absolutely no mention of any sort of conservative targeting, in fact, if you read Sessions’ statement, you will notice _he_ made no mention of any sort of targeting either.
Weird, huh. It’s almost as if everyone was deliberately lying about that.Report
Yeah, it didn’t mention conservatives at all. Only the plaintiffs.Report
The IRS did no such thing. The IRS apology is this: The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determinations process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding of some Plaintiffs’ information that TIGTA determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong. For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.
That was the actual apology issued by the IRS. Perhaps you have confused that with statements issued by Jess Sessions, who it should be pointed out is a) a political appointee and b) not the IRS, and c) didn’t actually say that either, he carefully said that the IRS’s incompetence had a _disparate impact_ on conservative organizations, not that they were excessive targeted.
Twitter was _not_ required to do what the FBI asked, as evidenced by the fact that they sometimes didn’t! The Twitter Files actually talk about that, how Twitter removed some tweets, but left the ones that the FBI had pointed out but were obviously jokes. They felt no legal obligation to do what the FBI asked.
It really is astonishing how many people who pretend to be political thinkers have literally never even bothered to look into situations, have never even _glanced_ at anything that might rebut what they have been informed of by right-wing media.
And that’s why Twitter didn’t feel REQUIRED to do anything, but did it ANYWAY because they did not think misinforming people about where and when they could vote belonged on their platform.
And the thing making that under the FBI’s jurisdiction is this part of the Civil Right Act: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241
Which, again, cannot be enforced against social media companies or any sort of information transmission companies, and shouldn’t be. But that doesn’t mean that the FBI can’t notice that and say ‘Hey, you all are transmitting the result of a crime, you might want to take that down’.Report
I have no idea why my computer decided to call him Jess Session twice, I didn’t even type that on a phone, but his name is Jeff Sessions.Report
“I thought that consensus was that the US doing this wasn’t worth getting in a twist over.”
Personally, I’m still stuck on “Twitter is a private company and they can do as they please, there’s no free-speech or natural-rights issues implied in any decision they care to make”.Report
The Constitution binds government, not Twitter. There may be market consequences to Twitter’s decisions, but when a government asks Twitter to silence people twitter has no obligation to comply other then its bottom line.Report
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t bind government either. It’s more of a suggestion to Congress.Report
When a law – or an article or amendment to the Constitution – says Shall ( as in Shall make no Law) Congress has no choice. And should Congress choose to ignore that, that’s what the Judiciary is for.
Or so every government lawyer I have ever worked with tells me.Report
I have zero doubt that that is what you have been told.Report
You just don’t agree do you?Report
When it comes to the stuff that the Executive tries to pull?Report
I am the Executive. So are my two million or so colleagues. I have served the American People under administrations of both parties. So what exactly are you accusing me of?Report
Leaning rather heavily on “private companies can do whatever they want” when it’s whom and “THERE IS AN AMENDMENT!” when it’s who.Report
I don’t personally like that we have a system where private companies can, in fact do what they want. I think there should be way more community service ethos that comes with the profit motive. So far, however, we as a nation have declined to legislate that sort of stuff.
Which does change the fact that the Constitution – as a good many conservatives here like to remind me – binds the government, not Twitter.Report
Musk has the right to do as he damn pleases with Twitter, (not optimal, though probably better than the alternatives), but the rest of us have the right to point and laugh, both at Musk and at the fanboys who expected better from him.Report
See, this is how you make them vote for Trump. It’s all your fault!Report
People fooled themselves into thinking that Elon was Tony Stark, but it turns out he is Roman Roy.Report