Members-Only Article
Like many others I’ve been watching the alt-right take over of Twitter evolve in real time. The whole operation is now chained to the manic outbursts and enthusiasms of majority owner Elon Musk and he — as I explained here — is locked in an increasingly tight embrace with a series of far right accounts who keep buttering him up into an escalating froth about how his battle for “free speech” on Twitter is a battle in which the future of humanity at stake. “This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead,” he tweeted on Monday. (Seriously, I watch this clown so you don’t have to …) But just over the last couple days it does seem like there’s a purge of progressive accounts on the site.
At first some of the banned account were ones that can be reasonably classed as radical anti-fascist accounts. To be clear, I do not in any way equate these groups with the fascist paramilitaries they oppose. But these are groups that mobilize to confront Proud Boys type groups on the streets. Some provide armed security at LGBTQ events and other marginalized group/threatened events. It’s plausible that they might say things that could be reasonably construed as endorsing violence. They might be “doxxing” far right individuals. My point is that in a climate of unequal enforcement of Twitter’s terms of service they might actually be violating those terms of service. Again, I’m not justifying their suspensions. I’m providing context for what might be driving them.
But then Chad Loder got suspended. He’s a guy in tech who has become a thorn in the side of the right as a DIY researcher of the online extremism. Then today I found out that Andrew Lawrence got suspended. He’s a senior staffer at Media Matters. Then Dean Baker. Baker has been a fixture of the DC economic policy debate for decades. He occupies what amounts to the leftward lane of the mainstream policy conversation in the nation’s capital. He’s a cofounder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He’s “radical” in the sense that Keynesianism is radical.
So what on earth is going on here?
I think we get the best explanation is this Tuesday article in The Intercept.
Reporters got in touch with Loder who in addition to being an activist/researcher is also a tech guy and cybersecurity expert and thus has real insight into how the platforms operate. He doesn’t think Musk or one of his deputies is banning left-leaning accounts. He thinks these accounts are falling victim to mass reporting campaigns from the right. Those kinds of campaigns aren’t new. They are actually a standby of far right online activism. But they’re interacting in a specific way with the hollowed out staffing situation at Twitter.
Twitter and other social networks have systems in place which can automatically suspend an account if they’re suddenly the target of numerous complaints about abusive behavior. The idea is that you freeze the situation until a human can review it and figure out whether the reports are valid and what to do. The problem is those humans aren’t there anymore. The Trust and Safety and moderation parts of the workforce were a particular focus of Musk’s mass firings. After all, what do those folks do, in Musk’s view, other than enforce “woke” speech codes and stifle independent thinkers? It’s the obvious place to cut costs. In any case, this is Loder’s theory of what’s happening and it strikes me as very plausible.
Notably, Lawrence, Baker and others’ accounts appear to have been suspended for “spam” and “platform manipulation,” basically for being bots or quasi bots. Last night Musk said that Twitter is currently “purging a lot of spam/scam account right now, so you may see your follow count drop.” To the extent these actions aren’t intentional decisions by Musk’s management, they are clearly confirmed and accelerated by the virtual high fives of Musk’s new fascist and fascist-curious pals.
What’s relevant to take from this is that it’s an illustration of how Musk’s malevolence, ingenuousness, inexperience and slapdash management are interacting with and catalyzing each other. Meanwhile, to the extent these actions weren’t intentional on the part of the new management, they’re unlikely to get resolved since Musk seems entirely in the thrall of a series of far right accounts which now camp out in his Twitter timeline telling him he’s doing a great job and that everything is going according to plan.
