Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” is a whole lot of nothing.

surprise to you. I try pretty hard not to talk about Elon Musk too much on the podcast, uh, from being in meetings and calls and stuff with you to make the show. That's probably surprising to you because I know that you know, I have a lot of feelings and thoughts and opinions about Elon Musk. Yeah, he's pretty hard to avoid these days, It's true, and I guess

I feel, you know, when making the show. The reason why I try to limit it how much I talk about him is because I just don't think it's really helpful to report on or respond to every little thing that someone who clearly wants attention says or does. I feel like I learned this the hard way back when Musk was first talking about buying Twitter, you and I rushed to put out an emergency episode. We stopped what we were doing. It was like a stop the press moment.

And you know, after that episode, Ran, I think it was like months and months and months and months and months until we actually bought Twitter. And during that time, it would be like he would say, Oh, the deal is off, and everybody would rush to report on it and respond. And then it would be like, Oh, the deal's back on, and everyone would rush to report on that and respond. And I think it's a strategy that people like Musk employ that allows for them to set

the tone. And I just I don't think that being reactive, always reacting to the things that they say, every little move they make, is the most helpful mode to be in, because I think ultimately it really serves them in setting the agenda and capturing attention, which is clearly something they want. Yeah, I think it's a useful strategy for people like him

and like Trump UH. And I think also it's a useful strategy that just happens to align with their own personal UH needs to constantly be the center of attention, you know, and to constantly control the narrative and have people, you know, jumping and reacting to what they say to fill that void where other people feel love. Yikes, just coming at the gate with a one to punch on Muck's inability to feel love. Okay, wow, damn, we're we're off to a good start off to the races. Sorry,

that wasn't my intention that. It's just it's it's been a real evolution for me the last couple of weeks about him. But that's that's not what this episode is about. I don't mean to distract. I mean it might be a little bit right, And so again I try really hard to to avoid just reacting to things that that tas little stunts, because people who pull stunts they want

you to react, they want you to respond. But this past weekend something happened that really felt like a direct hit to my work, and a direct direct kind of I feel like, you know, um, if you watch Housewives, when Kenya Moore says, don't come from me unless I send for you, I feel sent for as Kenya Moore would say. And he brought up something that I actually have quite a bit of personal experience on and I

felt kind of compelled to talk about on this podcast. Yeah, I know you do have a lot of experience in this area, and you don't talk about it on the show much. And so the fact that you, I think, felt so compelled to say something about it really speaks to that that feeling of being called so you know, speak it. Let's here. So what's going on? Well, this past weekend, Elon Musk tweeted that he'd given internal Twitter documents to journalists Matt Taibi, calling it the Twitter files.

To be clear, that's what Elon Musk is like branding it as I'm not going to be calling it that because I'm not going to be just you know, doing his work for him and running with this little branded thing that he's trying to make happen for him. Um, but that's what he is calling it. He was very excited about this. He was teasing it all weekend. He tweeted, what really happened with the Hunter Biden story? Suppression by

Twitter will be published on Twitter at five pm. This will be awesome popcorn emoji, right, And so this is someone who is really drumming up excitement about something they think is going to be big. He finally got the opportunity to come up with his own nickname, and he's so excited for everybody to hear about it. You can just tell how excited this dude is to be trying to make this happen, Like he's trying to make that ch happen. He is all in this is this is

his thing. So to to talk about what's in this report, Let's back up a little bit. The report appear to show in turtal debate at Twitter about how the platform should handle the content of a report on the laptop that was alleged to belong to President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, that was reported initially by The New York Post. You probably recall this story if you were in the United States and paying attention to domestic politics on the presidential election.

Um Hunter Biden has dealt with addiction issues, and this laptop purported to show evidence of all this unseemly behavior on the part of President Biden's son Hunter. I should say it is not clear to me how this laptop was obtained if it was actually Hunter Biden's laptop, and thus there was a lot of confusion around how folks could you know, responsibly report on it or talk about

it yeah, I remember that obviously. Uh. And I feel compelled to remind everybody that the reason we know about this Hunter Biden laptop story, which you know, maybe it was this laptop, maybe not, We don't really know, you know, I did some research ahead of this show, and like, it's basically unverifiable. But the reason that we know about it is because a concerned citizen brought it to Rudy Giuliani, right, And I think that says a lot if you think

about the source of the information being Rudy Giuliani. Earlier this morning, he was at a hearing here in d C before the Bar uh phasing possible disbardment for his frivolous, ridiculous actions in the contesting election, and his defense there was that he didn't have the time to verify that the what he was failing to court was accurate. And so if he's not gonna if he doesn't have the time to verify his legal briefings, what are we to make of his everything else in his life? I don't know.

I'll just leave it there. I don't mean to make the story about but anything even connected to Rudy Giuliani, let alone originating with Rudy Giulietti, I feel it needs to be taken with a pretty big grain assault. Are you trying to suggest that when Rudy Giuliani is I'm gonna mix on something is in the mix on something that it's not on the up and up. If he's

in the mix, God help everyone. So you can sort of get an idea as to like why there was a lot of skepticism and confusion early on around this Hunter Biden laptop story, and that confusion very much extended

to social media platforms like Twitter. Twitter staff independently decided to block posts about the Hunter Biden laptop story and prevented people from sharing the New York Post story in d MS, citing that the content fell under its Hacked Materials policy because at the time, the thinking was that the content of the laptop had been obtained through hacking. This decision was made after a lot of internal debate

at Twitter. Taibi's report shows a lot of back and forth internally at Twitter about how to moderate tweets about this Hunter Biden laptop story. Trent and Kitnedy, a Twitter communications official, wrote an email, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for making for marking this as unsafe. Uh. Kennedy advised that the company should say that it is waiting to understand whether the New York Post story was

the result of hacked material. I have to say, Twitter, it sounds like they really aired on the side of caution here. Um. You might remember that White House spokesperson Kayleie McKinney her Twitter account was locked for sharing a tweet with the laptop story in it. Um. Twitter took a lot of heat about this with conservatives who said that this was evidence that Twitter and big tech in

general was biased against them as conservatives. Uh. Then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke about the backlash publicly saying, we made a quick interpretation, using no other evidence, that the material in the article were obtained through hacking, and according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread. Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected

it within twenty four hours. Um. And so again you really see this sort of messy nitty gritty of the company having to decide in real time how they were going to moderate this story that they could not verify and didn't know its origins, and at a time when everybody was was felt the same way, like they were not alone in that thinking. So I guess the question might be like, was this the right call? I honestly could not tell you. This is like way above my

pay grade. But I do think that reasonable people could and do disagree with whether or not Twitter should have allowed that report about the laptop to be on the platform. But I will say that it seems like fairly new ground for a platform to have to sort out, you know, this kind of situation that is so potentially sensitive, Right, so I can understand why there was some debate about it. I can understand why folks internally disagreed, why folks externally disagreed.

It's really kind of new territory for a platform to have to sort out. And the emails really reflect that that there was a lot of what seems like healthy discourse about how they should best proceed. Right, So there's

two different things. Right. You can disagree with the conclusion that they came to to moderate the content, which maybe that was the right decision, maybe not, depending on your point of view, but to take some time and like have a discussion about whether it should be moderated, Like, there can be absolutely nothing wrong with that right, like they had a discussion about it. Just the act of discussing it is not in itself anything nefarious. And to

eat to suggest that it is is really disingenuous. Well, enter the big Elon Musk bombshell that he dropped. It's gonna change, It's going to change everything. Nothing will ever be the same. So get this. So get this. If you're driving, pull over because it's gonna be it's gonna blow your mind. I don't want I want you to be safe. Before Joe Biden was elected, his campaign staff flagged tweets containing sexually explicit image is of Hunter Biden

for the Twitter staff, and those tweets were removed. I know, I know, canceled the constitution. That's it, America is over. So In an email from a Twitter employee from it included six links to tweets and the line more to review from the Biden team, the employee wrote, Another Twitter worker replied, handled these. Interestingly enough, tibe's reporting did not show the Biden team contacting Twitter over the initial reporting about the laptop. It was the tweets containing sexually explicit

photos that they were raising an objection over. So when the first new York Post story dropped with a laptop. Biden's team did not reach out. It was the images with Hunter Biden, you know, nude that they were objecting to tbe shared. Five tweets that that the Biden campaign flagged. Four of those still have archives available online, and they

did include nude images of Hunt or Biden. So these images were already pretty clearly in violation of Twitter's rules around non consensual explicit images, which specifically prohibits sharing images or video that are taken in an intimate setting and not intended for public distribution. Not to mention, state law in California, where Twitter is based, also outlaws sharing non

consensual explicit images. So essentially, this huge bombshell that Elon Musk has presented us is that Twitter was following their pretty clear guidelines about removal of non consensual nude images and like complying with with California state law. Yeah, and the breathless tweet revealing that you know, did not include

any of that context. You know, it's just like, here's links to four tweets that were removed, of course, like smoke and mirrors, suggesting that something more nefarious was going on exactly, So Elon Musk after this bombshell revelation was dropped, he tweeted, if this isn't a violation of the Constitution's First Amendment, what is now? First of all, Biden was

not a government official at the time. He was still campaigning, right, and so it's not really clear to me how that would be a violation of the First Amendment, which we know regulates how government's control speech. But you know whatever, Honestly, who at this point expects Elon Musk to be either getting or making these kinds of distinctions at this point, right? And so Musk and Taibi say that this was evidence that Twitter was in the bag for the Democratic Party

and the left. Uh, they did not provide any evidence of this. But Taibi says, quote, this system wasn't balanced. And if you're wondering why he thinks that, well, it's because he says, the majority of Twitter's employees are Democrats. How do you know, because Twitter's team has greater campaign

contributions to Democrats over Republicans. So, as someone who has done this work for the majority of my adult life, this is an absolutely wild conclusion to jump to for many many reasons that I want to talk about after this quick break and we're back. We were talking about Elon Musk and Matt Taiebee dropping this bombless bombshell about what they say is evidence of Twitter and big tech being in the bag for the Democratic Party and the left.

And I have to say, as someone who has done this work, it's just a really out there conclusion to jump to. First, of all, social media platforms, having a direct line of communication with political leaders is one normal and that is the case for all major social media platforms. Facebook has them, Instagram has them, Snapchat has them. It is totally a normal, commonplace thing. You know. I have done that work professionally, both from the platform side and

the advocacy side. When I worked at the social media platform medium, I was essentially the person on the political team whose job it was to make in roads and connections with political leaders and activists and thought leaders on the left. You know, they could have reached out to me with issues and questions, etcetera. There was also a counterpart to this work on the right who did the

same thing as me, but within the Republican Party. Um. It was actually like a very fulfilling and interesting job. We had lots of like spirited discussions and debates about content on our team that actually remind me quite a bit of like the internal emails that we saw from this reporting. It's also fun fact why I attended the Republican National Convention and got to watch Trump officially accept the nomination for president in person, which is a story

for another day. But part of the advocacy that I do now involves communicating with platforms to hopefully help influence their content moderation decision making to be less hostile toward marginalized people. Um. A lot of the time that work looks like flat, like the same thing that the Biden campaign was doing to the Twitter folks, you know, flagging

content that we think needs to be removed. A lot of times it's like faked demeaning misogynistic images of women, women of color elected officials like AOC for removal being like, oh, um, actually this image that purports to show a misogynistic crew drawing of AOC. We think this might violate your guidelines. Can you please remove it? Um? But we also have had some like really good wins doing this work. You know, earlier this year, TikTok agreed to add dead naming and

mis gendering to their community guidelines. Um, we got YouTube to agree to remove inaccurate information about abortion from their platform. So it's it's like fulfilling work. I don't act really bring it up a ton on the podcast, mostly because it's just not that exciting, Like it's fairly mundane work, and it's just, yeah, it's just not exciting, you know, completely normal and commonplace for folks in these positions to

have a direct line with folks at platforms. You know, we have flag I have flagged things for them that they that they do not take down, you know. So it's not like when you reach out and say, hey this is problematic, or hey we believe this violates your your your community guidelines. It's not a guarantee they're gonna take it down. But it's like that tedious work of relationship building for for a particular goal, and Musque trying to reframe that work that so many people do that

is totally commonplace across platforms. Him trying to reframe that as somehow nefarious or somehow a threat to our democracy

is completely wild, completely wild. Yeah, it really is, especially when you think about the role of advocacy in a democracy and because the groups, you know, making the case for their constituencies about issues that they care about, policymakers trying to get policies put in place, and you can tell from those emails that the Twitter team was talking about their policies and how did this fit within their policies that have been crafted to describe the situations in

which they would take action to moderate uh And even as I'm saying these words, it sounds so boring, but it's so crucial because without that, you end up with the situation that we have right now, where everything is just, you know, whatever Elon Musk decides about it. Right there's it's not clear what is and is not allowed on Twitter these days. It's just by executive fiat. And also all those fiats bring more attention and news attention to him,

which is a win win for him. I'm so glad that you said that, because a few weeks ago, I think it was Sam Harris asked Elon on Twitter about whether or not he was going to reinstate Alex Jones. And Alex Jones famously lies about babies who were tragically shot and killed in Sandy Hook and lies about their parents, and Elon Musk replied, I will never allow him back on the platform because I had a baby who died, and I held that baby in my hands, and I

know the heartbreak of a grieving parent. And I actually think that that actually was one of very few genuine statements about how Elon Musk is planning on moderating Twitter. If he can personally identify with the group that he is making a moderation decision around or based on, I think that you will get one thing. If he cannot identify with them, if he cannot put themselves, put himself in their shoes, or see their experience in his own experience,

He's I don't think. I don't think it's going to be real to him, And so I think that, to me, was the first honest assessment of how he plans to moderate the platform. It's just based on what he personally likes or doesn't like, what he personally can understand or can identify with or see himself in or not. And so you know, he is a white, straight, sis billionaire.

I don't know that he would be able to really see himself in the experience of a trans person or a person of color, or a queer person or someone who's not a billionaire and wants to start a union at their car factory, right, And so I think that really was a pretty clear indication that exactly what you're saying, it's just whatever Elon feels that's how we will be moderating.

And I don't think it's a great system, right, Like he is someone who is going on and on about the need to build transparency into moderation to restore trust. Let's start with a little transparency around how he is going to make moderation decisions. Yeah, And it's also a little bit like a high school student quoting Voltaire about

free speech. When he's talking about transparency, I think he still thinks, at least as like a couple of months to go, he thought that transparency meant making all of Twitter's internal decisions uh and algorithms uh like open source so anybody could read it, which is a terrible idea because that just is like a blueprint for anyone who

wants to abuse it. And so it's this the spot of like reality where there's like he has the high minded ideals of transparency and free speech, which are virtuous and good things, but to actually like implement them in the real world, one needs to have a thoughtful approach, and he lacks that second part. It's like how all of his tweets with polls about what he should do for Twitter and moderation, we're all accompanied by Latin. But

then like getting the Latin phrases wrong. It's like you kind of you're kind of you almost have it, like you are, you're you almost have it, you almost had it. You you found the Latin quote and you got the gist sort of and so speaking of the kind of disingenuous nods to what they're calling free speech, uh Musk really tried to frame this report as a bombshell that showed that Twitter is suppressing the free speech of conservatives

on the platform. But Tibee's own reporting shows that the Trump administration, while Trump was president, made the very same kind of requests as the Biden campaign did, and at least some of those requests were honored, right, And so there's not there's no Tibee includes that that information. There isn't any more transparency or any emails around what those requests would be. The public is still just like left to wonder what the what a sitting president was successfully

able to get removed from Twitter. Not not worth scrutiny, not worth this transparency that Elon Musk says he wants to bring to moderation on the platform. Musk said, quote, Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a First Amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech with no judicial review is. But then again, Taibe himself said, quote, there's no evidence that I have seen of any government involvement in the

laptop story. So truly, which is it? Like both of these things can't be correct. It can't be that as Elon Musk says that that Twitter was acting under orders from the government, and Taibe saying, actually, after reviewing this, I saw no government involvement in the suppression of this story. It doesn't it doesn't like something's not heading up the

Mattes not lughing. Yeah, it's it's almost like it's all just a big stunt and the substance doesn't matter almost, And I think like this is why, I mean, I I personally, this is just my opinion, but I think it's really really irresponsible to release communications that folks have had with Twitter over the years in this way, you know, In doing this, Elon Musk also released the personal email addresses former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and an elected official.

In this release not redacted, just tweeted them out. Um. He did later say on a spaces that he regretted this, but I think it really shows what we're dealing with here. And so, you know, I spent part of the weekend being like, well, geez is, I've had communications with Twitter officials like are they gonna I don't want my information released. I just know what can happen when you have someone who was addicted to attention and stunts and sensitive information.

It's it's it's concerning to me. And you know, I'm not concerned because I've ever had communications with Twitter that I would regret or that I wouldn't want you know out there. But unfortunately, I think that we are past the point of the substance of what is being released

being important at all. And I think, I mean, I might say that the first time that I really saw this happening for real was aroun on Hillary Clinton's emails, where it didn't really matter the substance of the emails didn't really matter, just the reporting around them seemed to suggest you know, nefarious behavior just like by design, right, And so it was reported as a bombshell, a smoking gun all of that, when really, if you look at it, you're like, well, what are you what it actually is?

Like newsworthy here? What actually is the big bombshell here?

And I think that we're in this place where people, particularly online, can really drum up a lot of fanfare around something and be like this is gonna blow your fucking mind, and then it doesn't really matter what's in it, because if you look at the reporting that Taiebee and Elon Musk did, nothing in there is really new, right, Like the whole internal debate around how Twitter should moderate the Hunter Biden laptop story, eventually they talked about it

in public, Like that quote that I read from Jack Dorsey was a pub quote. It's part of the public record already. So is the is the bombshell reporting? Just that this presidential campaign had had direct communication with someone at Twitter? That's also common knowledge, Like anybody who has ever worked in social media is aware of that. That's

not a bombshell. So if they're not actually reporting anything new, how can you tweet about it in such a bombastic way that like, oh, we are going to blow the lid off of this thing. You know, I saw people reporting about it, like Jack Procybia said, we will all remember where we were when this was reported. Like the breathlessness that people talked about this for something that wasn't

even any new information, I think is really I'm gonna say, irresponsible. Yeah, it's an excellent point because the only thing that's new here is sort of the salaciousness of the illusion of leaks, right, Like, oh, there's some sort of secret emails that they didn't want us to see, but that's obviously not the ace for like multiple reasons. One, like, the emails were released by Twitter, right there are emails by Twitter employees that Twitter is releasing,

so that's like not a leak. And in the content of the emails that the people wrote, it's clear that they expect these emails, or maybe they don't expect the emails themselves to become public, but they clearly expect. They are aware that there's intense scrutiny about how they are moderating this issue, and uh, and they expect to be called to account for it. And like you said, everything, you know, all of the decisions they made are already

public record. Uh, and not because of some sort of deep investigative journalism, but because Twitter like put out a press release about it and like said all the same things. So the only thing new here is just the framing as a leak that something inappropriate happened, But the actual

facts are completely unchanged. You know, like you said, like, what's the big reveal that that the Biden campaign didn't want the candidates sons like naked photos published without his consent like that, Yeah, they didn't want to cry a literal sex crime to occur. But news of eleven, Yeah, that's the only thing new here, just the illusion and

framing of salaciousness. And I think that Ellen is doing this because he's speaking to people who I think already feel aggrieved, right, and so they he knows even if this isn't really anything, nothing really new as being you know, talked about or reported, that people that feel aggrieved are going to be like, oh my god, mind blown. This is huge, Oh my god, this this confirms my persecution

complex that I have been censored on Twitter. And I think that's exactly why he is doing this, because he knows that all of this sycophants and hangers on are going to amplify that claim and be like, oh my god,

huge reporting, even though nothing new is being reported. Here's how Representative James Comer from Tennessee, here's what he had to say about this, or he's just beginning, Jason, because we're gonna have every single person at Twitter that was involved in this in front of the House Oversight Committee as soon as possible. So he's talking about like investigating

and hauling people in before our committee. I think that it really is a state, a testament to the fact that we are not like anybody can say anything and the substance of what's actually being said doesn't matter, because people who are already predisposed to feel aggrieved and be on the side of like, oh yeah, we're being censored, are going to circle the wagons to make sure that that claim is amplified and like treated with seriousness. Yeah,

like truth doesn't exist. It's all just framing and you know, winning the narrative. And right now, if you Google or take to Twitter to search her name, there are people talking about how the Jaya God who was Twitter's former head of Legal policy and trust at Twitter, the person who made kind of moderation decisions and was the head of you know, combating things like misinformation and hate speech.

How she should be arrested for her role in moderating content around the Hunter Biden laptop story and quote rigging election for Biden. So it's interesting how all of this. I think it's it's it's savvy on Elon's part, because it feeds into this like big lie that somehow, somewhere the election was rigged for Biden against Trump. Yeah, and you know, isn't it convenient that they finally found a woman of color to be the like poster child of

this invented scandal. You know, obviously it's a woman of color. And the other idea in here is that this one singular event is what rigged the election for Joe Biden. Right, Like everybody still knew about the Hunter Biden laptop. We're still talking about it years later. You know, it's not like Twitter's decision to not show those photos somehow killed the story and nobody ever heard about it again. Right, So it's like even the part that they're aggrieved about

is just completely fabricated. More after a quick break, let's get right back into it. It is not surprising to me that a woman of color, a brown girl, is at the center of this story. There are memes on Twitter right now it says Twitter head of Legal Policy, I knowingly subverted your election process. I did it with the intent to throw the election. That makes that makes me guilty of treason under Article three, Section three of

the United States Constitution. Um, it's not surprising to me that, like earlier today, I saw a picture that had that was a explicit image of Hunter Biden where they had doctored her head on the body of another woman and they were involved in a sex act. It's not surprising to me. I think that when you talk about this kind of thing, and I know I beat this drum

a lot. Misogyny and racism, it's all linked. And when you talk about this kind of thing, it is not surprising to me that, you know, the fallout is not measured discourse. The fallout is talking about arresting this woman and making crude memes of her that are sexually explicit. Yeah, it's so sad and just like the same old story of like once again, it's just racism and misogyny finding new stories to turn into memes to feed that same

narrative exactly, and it has to be said. I mean, I didn't want to bring them up in this episode, but here I am. In response to this reporting, Trump took to truth Social two advocate for throwing out the Constitution and throwing out the election results. And so you know, if this whole thing was meant to be a crusade around free speech, and it led to Trump, who is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, being like, oh, I'm coming out in favor of throwing out the Constitution. The First

Amendment is part of the Constitution. So like, where where are all these like free speech crusaders who are like trying to protect the free free speech to the First Amendment. When the presumptive Republican presidential nominee comes out against just throwing the whole thing out because of their reporting, it's a great question. It's almost like, you know something, it's like selectively applies here but not there. You know, today

they care about the Constitution. Tomorrow let's cancel it. I mean, I guess two Republicans credit not many people like rallied around Trump's cry to cancel the Constitution. Whatever that would mean. I wonder if part of this whole thing is just like Ellen really being desperate to try to like get in Trump's good graces, you think, I mean some of those some of those images he was tweeting a couple of weeks back about him and Trump were definitely an

appeal to get into Trump's good graces. I'll say, I'll just keep it at that. We can move on. There were some good graces. Is the title of a movie here? So yeah, I think it's really scary how commonplace communications are being reframed as indicative of like nefarious, inappropriate behavior. And I also think that it's confirmation bias at work. Some people on the right, which at this point I think includes Elon Musk, already believe that they are being

censored on social media platforms. Are really interest study by the Pew Research Center found that Republicans believe that their views are being censored, and Republicans or people who who lent republicans believe that social media companies generally support the

views of liberals over conservatives. And so I think that, you know, it's this confirmation bias at work, where anything, even something that is like not anything, can be used to confirm this previously held opinion that they have, and Elon Musk repeatedly parents this claim that Twitter has previously had an anti right wing bias and thus quote the Twitter files is just another part of that, you know. But there are entire bodies of academic research that disapproved

this time and time again. Their studies from n y U, M I T that debunk this claim that there is anti conservative bias on social media platforms. It's just not a thing, right, And so there was also a study done internally at Twitter in the pre Elon Musk days after Trump was banned from Twitter. The team was facing a lot of criticism saying that they were censoring the right, so they looked into it. The internal research team at Twitter found that folks on the right are actually amplified

on Twitter, both within the United States and globally. Our results reveal a remarkably consistent trend. In six out of the seven countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left. They've released a whole twenties seven page report. It is fascinating. And so

here's my thing. Either Elon Musk is woefully uninformed about the realities of quote right wing bias at Twitter, or he's just lying to get attention from right wing extremists.

And that's really kind of what bums me out. You know, their entire bodies of work and studies in school of thought dedicated to answering all of these thorny, complicated questions that are raised by social media and how it is moderated, right, But Elon Musk is demonstrating him time again that he does not care about any of that because he thinks that he knows better despite never having done this work before.

And I feel like everything in our culture is really coalescing around confirming that he has some kind of special, super special innate genius ability to understand this stuff as a novice more than people who have been working on it for years and years. You know, in his last few weeks, he came into Twitter and immediately blew up verification, only to realize like, oh wait, verification is actually important, and then walked back those plans to blow up verification.

He said, oh, we don't need moderation, and then Kanye West starts tweeting swastikas and he's like, wait, actually, we do need some moderation. Just kidding, guys, let's bring in some moderation. He is learning the very same lessons that every other social media platform, even the ones like truth Social and Parlor that started by being these fringe platforms that wanted to, you know, be free speech zones or whatever.

He is learning what every single social media platform, including those French platforms, has learned, only he's getting to the game years and years late. Yeah, I think you're right. He's just like pretty uninformed about these things. And you know, I think a a generous interpretation of his actions here is that he's bringing like a move fast and break things kind of attitude to the way that Twitter should

do moderation. And I think that sort of approach can work great for little scrappy startups trying to fight for a piece of market share to sell widgets. But when you are making decisions about a cornerstone of society, right like that like twitters or at least was how people share information, and it's just like it's a really important thing. And for him to just be making these huge decisions and then days later be like, oops, my bed, I

guess that was wrong. It's just so reckless and irresponsible. It's it's he should be ashamed, but he certainly is not. Yeah, that's my thing is like he should be embarrassed. I don't know that that is a an emotion that he feels the way that you or I might feel. A friend of mine, Justin Hendrix, who is brilliant. He runs a great organization called Tech Policy Press, which is they also have a podcast you should definitely should definitely listen to it. But he works with students, um, you know,

teaching them about social media. And whenever they the students are given like a thought experiment about how they should run platforms, they always at first or like we're gonna have no moderation. It's gonna be whatever people want to do and they can self moderate, and then immediately they're like, oh wait, that doesn't work. So it's like starting at the one, like the thing that like a one oh one student would suggest. That's where Elon Musk is starting.

But I don't feel like he's self aware enough to be like, oh wait, I'm actually starting at the ideas that a one on one student at this would actually come to the table with. Yeah, I think that is exactly right with him. I think he thinks that he is this genius. Uh, but he's just not. He just like doesn't know about these things. These things are complicated, and I'm not an expert in moderation, but I know that there are experts out there who spend a lot of time and ink on it and to just like

weighed in and just like makeups. It's it's just so reckless. Yeah, it is reckless. And I have worked in this space for a long time for years, and I come to the table with people who are way smarter than me, who have worked in this space, who are content moderation experts, and even in those spaces that it's not consensus of how to do it right. It is an ongoing, complex, complicated body of work, and people who have been doing it for years at the highest levels don't have consensus

of how to do it right. And I really take umbradge with this idea that Elon Musk, someone who has never done this, I have no background in it, no experience with it. It's just uniquely a genius at it somehow, And I reject that. And I honestly think that Elon Musk's tenure at Twitter, I think I'm seeing a little

bit of of the tides turning. I think, being someone who works in text spaces, we're so willing to give wealthy white dudes the benefit of the doubt that if they say they're a genius had something, then they're a genius had something. If they say that they know how to do it, even if they've ever done it before, give them millions of dollars of funding because they're going to figure it out. And if they don't, then you know they had to learn by failing. And I'm just

I know how this story end. You know, I've seen this story a lot. I have had to smile through this story being told to my face even though I'm screaming inside. And I think we're all starting to peel back back curtain a little bit and say, well, wait, are you actually a genius? Is it possible that maybe you're not playing chess, not checkers, Maybe you're not even playing checkers, maybe you're like eating the pieces and throwing the board on the floor. Yeah, you totally know it.

And you talked about how content moderation is like difficult and nuanced, and I think those sorts of things are like really difficult to talk about, and like you said earlier, they're kind of boring, they're not really exciting. You know, there's certainly if you were to try to pack all of it into a single tweet, that tweet would probably not get a lot of engagement, right because you need

to write like a lot of them about it. And I think, uh, you know, when we think about some of those studies that find that right wing social media posts tend to get amplified more than uh, posts written by people on the left, I think that's part of it that, like on the left, there is often a recognition of like nuance and things are complicated and wanting to qualify things and provide caveats, whereas uh, I mean, they're certainly thoughtful people on the right, but there's also

a lot of people who are not interested in the thoughtful nu once and are just interested in like getting those likes, you know, getting those retweets totally. And this is actually one of the reasons why, as you know, I was hesitant to even make this episode, because content moderation is messy, it's complicated, and it's mundane. It's a lot of stuff not working and being like, oh, well, here's why this didn't work, or here's what I thought

about this. I'm like, it's never the the reality of the work that people like myself do is never gonna be as flashy and exciting as the pithy but incorrect Elon Musk tweet about it right, Like, it's it ends like where I have a disadvantage. You know that the truth is actually the thoughtful, complex, truth is so much less exciting than the sexy bombshell with the popcorn emoji.

And I don't know. I struggled, Like when we were talking about how how I wanted to respond to this, we were like, maybe an op ed and I was like, yeah, I know the reality, and even I would still like to believe the Elon Musk version of things that there are some files in Twitter that revealed the smoking gun that election was rigged and blah blah blah and Soyland greenest people and all of that. Like, I know the truth, and even I would be more entertained to believe this

complete fiction that he is selling people. But that fiction is always going to travel faster than the mundane, boring truth. So that probably means that people listening to this, we're like, oh, glad I tuned in forty five minutes of mundane a curiacy. Yeah, I think you got it right with it's more entertaining.

Right that popcorn emoji. We haven't really talked about that, but I think it says so much about Ellen's approach to his shiny new toy that he bought for forty four billion dollars, right, Like, it's he He's the guy in charge, He's making all these decisions, but also he's like cool and detached and just like doing it for lulls, y'all,

Oh my god, totally. And I think it's like, so you don't I don't know if you know this deep thinks about emoji choices are my like, like, that's my Q and on I'm like, I'm like, I gotta I gotta like follow all the threads. But a popcorn emoji is inviting us to watch the show, right, Like he knows it's a stunt. He wants us to watch. And I think that he is betting this is just my opinion. He is betting on turning Twitter into a drama machine that people will pay a subscription to watch go down.

And I think that popcorn I think that you're totally spot on that popcorn emoji is. I know it's a stunt step right up, folks watch the show. It reminds me of something else that he tweeted. I think it was the first week that he bought Twitter and things really felt like they were on fire, and he tweeted, well, at least, you know, the last days of Twitter won't

be boring. And I think that's really what he is counting on us, our attention, our eyeballs really being glued to him and locked into what's going to happen next. It's the same way how how he kept tweeting about how, oh, the daily average users has never been higher, and somebody was like, yeah, that's like setting your house on fire, and then being like, wow, I've never had more visitors on my lawn than when my house was on fire. Yeah.

I am so curious to see where this goes, and like what Twitter looks like six months from now, who's using it, how many people are using it? You know, what are they talk and about on there? But that's probably a story for another show. So all of this is to say, I don't want to make it seem

like pre Elono Musk Twitter days were the best. Certainly if you listen to the show, you know that that's not how I feel, but I just want to say it explicitly, and I do want to say, like, there are so many good questions to be asked about the way that Twitter moderates content, and I think that more transparency around those conversations would be awesome. But unfortunately that's

not what we're getting. And it is so clear to me that Elon Musk is only interested in cherry picking instances to blow up and exaggerate that tap into this right wing fantasy about being censored on social media platforms. And so I would absolutely welcome and love and applaud more transparency about how moderation decisions are made. But this

is not it, you know, cherry picking these examples. It's below them up and hyping them up as this big bombshell and then flinging them to a group of people that you know is going to already be predisposed to being like, yes, this is so true. This totally confirms my worldview about me being persecuted. That is not the way that you achieve true transparency about social media platforms and how they are moderated. And you know what, the way that social media platforms work and on our run

in two. It can shape elections, it can shape democracy, it can shape what the world looks like, and so we deserve true transparency as the people that fuel these platforms. But what Elon Musk is selling us is not that it is a stunt. We deserve so much better than these little popcorn emoji stunts. Yeah, absolutely, it's a stunt. Transparency is great. This is not it. Well, that's it for me, Michael. Do you have anything else to add? No, nothing else. Thanks for having me, Bridget. I always love

talking with you here. Thanks for being here. I'll see on mathodon see there got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi. You can reach us at Hello at tang godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by Me Bridget Todd. It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Ary Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato

is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate, and review us on Apple podcasts. For more podcasts from i Heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.