VICE News: Toxic Twitter Disinfo Is Bad Enough. Musk Could Make It Even Worse.

VICE News: Toxic Twitter Disinfo Is Bad Enough. Musk Could Make It Even Worse.

"As we saw with Jan. 6, Trump gets so much engagement that his network of high-profile politicians and influencers can keep disinformation flowing at a fever pitch. Some Jan. 6 rioters have been citing election disinformation as a reason behind their actions at the Capitol. He’d be able to essentially restart with this built-in network that can be weaponized against democracy. Either way, consistent content moderation is vital, not just at election time but during non-election periods, when platforms like Twitter and Facebook have disbanded their teams or stopped moderating." - Yosef Getachew Q&A with Todd Zwillich

For the low, low price of $44 billion and a lot of trolling, Elon Musk has made a deal to buy Twitter. No one knows exactly how he’ll run it or what he means when he says he’s returning “free speech” to the platform.

Anyone who’s spent even a few minutes in a journalist’s mentions or in their memories of 2020, knows what online “free speech” looks like in a high-leverage environment for disinformation.

So I talked to a couple of online disinformation experts about what Musk might do with Twitter, whether Donald Trump will return, and how important the platform is to real-world politics and safety. Emma Steiner is a disinformation analyst at the democracy advocacy group Common Cause, and Yosef Getachew is the group’s media and democracy program director.

Our chat has been edited for length.

What’s your first reaction to Elon Musk buying Twitter?

Yosef Getachew: Twitter hasn’t been consistent with how it enforces civic integrity policies. We’ve found over the past couple years that they’ve stopped enforcing against lies about the 2020 presidential election. So if you go on Twitter now, you may see content that says the election was stolen. They made the active decision to no longer enforce against that type of disinformation. One concern we have is what content moderation looks like under a new regime. I don’t think that’s been fleshed out yet.

Emma Steiner: And Twitter’s inconsistent moderation policies have already led to offline harm. Conspiracy theorists and their followers mobilize there to direct their false narratives. Election officials and poll workers, who are usually women and people of color, are most often the targets. Conspiracists use Twitter to share information allowing them to attack and harrass these poll workers.

We’ve noticed a pattern where bad actors will take content from Twitter to more extremist spaces and organize there, which, as we saw on Jan. 6, can spread into real-world actions and violence. So we really don’t need it to get any worse with Elon Musk’s takeover.

I’m not sure what Elon Musk really means when he says he believes in free speech “under the law.” 

Getachew: I don’t think he understands what he means by that. We have democratic values and public safety values that go right along with our free speech values. And applying First Amendment values doesn’t mean the same thing in government as it does in a private company. All of that points back to content moderation and how it balances those things. 

Everyone’s pretty focused on whether Donald Trump returns to Twitter. Trump says he’s not coming back. We’ll see, of course, but from a disinformation perspective, how important is that? 

Getachew: As we saw with Jan. 6, Trump gets so much engagement that his network of high-profile politicians and influencers can keep disinformation flowing at a fever pitch. Some Jan. 6 rioters have been citing election disinformation as a reason behind their actions at the Capitol. He’d be able to essentially restart with this built-in network that can be weaponized against democracy. Either way, consistent content moderation is vital, not just at election time but during non-election periods, when platforms like Twitter and Facebook have disbanded their teams or stopped moderating.

Some of the most prolific purveyors of election disinformation on the right seem to think that Musk’s purchase this week is their salvation.

Steiner: There’s a widespread perception that not only will there be some sort of “banned jubilee” where banned users can return, but that practices like shadow-banning will be lifted. Republicans disproportionately believe they’re victims of shadow-banning, despite data that it’s not the case.

Getachew: I think their joy is in part because of that false narrative that Twitter and other platforms have been biased against conservative viewpoints. The idea that Elon Musk saying ‘I’m the free speech guy” leads to more conservative voices needs to be figured out. We don’t know a lot about what he’s going to do. In reality, if you want to have a platform that works for everyone, you’re going to need content moderation and civic integrity teams. If you don’t have them, the public square becomes a cesspool for bad content no one will want to use. I think the question becomes, is he going to keep those civic integrity teams or do away with them?

There’s this kind of savvy phrase in politics that Twitter isn’t real life. Maybe what Elon Musk decides doesn’t matter that much. 

Steiner: Only 22 percent of Americans use Twitter. But it’s a space where a lot of political and cultural narratives are generated. Our own research shows that narratives that often start on Twitter migrate to other platforms. People who don’t use Twitter will see ideas, memes, or political narratives that started on Twitter eventually migrate over to their platform. So I would take issue with the idea that it doesn’t affect your life, because we’ve seen it on Jan. 6. Many people stormed the Capitol on the basis of false narratives that often started on Twitter and were perpetuated on Twitter by the president.

I’m talking to Elon right after this. Not really, but, but let’s say that I am. I can convey one brief message.

Steiner: Elon, content moderation on social platforms is good. It helps protect democracy and safety. There’s all sorts of laws against offline voter suppression tactics. But it’s up to content moderation and civic integrity policies to help with this issue online. And so it’s important to maintain the practices that are already in place on Twitter and also figure out how to close those loopholes.