For instance, many gender-critical feminists have been censored simply for stating biological truths, or raising important questions about child safeguarding and the preservation of women-only spaces. The problem has never been that Twitter does not tolerate threats or harassment on its platform, but rather that harassment is often conflated with relatively innocuous behaviour in order to justify deleting accounts for political or ideological reasons. Few of them are saying that following yesterday’s news. Even appeals tend to result in further automated responses, digital missives from the Ministry of Truth.įor a long time, woke activists have been intoning the mantra that ‘Twitter is a private company and can do what it likes’, safe in the knowledge that the ideological bent of Silicon Valley conveniently aligns with their own. At present, the rules are deliberately vague, which means that users are often booted off the site without justification. He could draw up coherent terms of service to explicitly outline which kinds of behaviour are prohibited on the platform. Firstly, he could disband Twitter’s ‘Trust and Safety Council’, or at least give it a name that makes it sounds less like a group of Maoist bureaucrats orchestrating their struggle sessions. There are a few simple changes that he could make that would demonstrate his commitment to free speech. Who knows whether or not Musk will improve Twitter? He can hardly make it any worse. The moral high ground is far more satisfying. Musk is stubbornly refusing to dive into the squalid pit that his critics have dug for themselves, and from which they are frantically slinging mud that inevitably falls back on to their own heads. ‘I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter’, he wrote, ‘because that is what free speech means’. There’s little doubt that Musk’s first tweet following the news of his successful bid has only enraged his detractors all the more. Let’s see how committed you are to free speech when we start roasting your ass.’ Twitter has not been this entertaining for years. I’m saying this on your platform now and will keep saying it. You, your company, and everyone who Stans for you. Activist Tim Wise has gone straight for the trash talk: ‘Fuck Elon Musk. The broadcaster India Willoughby has said that ‘if Elon gets Twitter, I think that’s it for me’. Actor Jameela Jamil’s statement that she is leaving Twitter has been clocking up the retweets and likes, so it’s understandable that her account still remains active. King has since deleted his Twitter account, and many others have threatened to do so, too. Like all his fellow activists, King has the kind of access to his political opponents’ private thoughts that Uri Geller could only dream about. That’s his definition of free speech.’ No evidence for these claims has been forthcoming, of course. Apparently, Musk is ‘upset that Twitter won’t allow white nationalists to target / harass people. Activist Shaun King wrote that Musk’s move is ‘about white power’. Comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted that Musk is a ‘media-thirsty, vindictive, white supremacist who is looking to convince you he is an innovative disruptor’. It takes an infantile mind not to accept that democracy works on the basis of the loser’s consent, the principle that – as Roger Scruton put it – ‘We respect our fellow citizens even when they do not vote our way, because the government is not “mine” or “yours” but “ours”’.Įven the deranged reactions to the Brexit and Trump votes were but tepid premonitions of the responses to Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In the unbridled mania among identitarian leftists, we are seeing evidence that they have not learned the lessons of Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, which they similarly treated as portents of the apocalypse. And now, the news that Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter has been successful has caused a predictable meltdown of volcanic proportions.
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