So much for Elon Musk’s promise.
Two days after the new Twitter owner said the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” under his watch, he let fly with one of the most irresponsible tweets by a tech industry CEO in Silicon Valley history.
In the process, Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” gave credence to the widespread fear that he will not stop disinformation, hate speech or inciting of violence on the social media platform.
On Sunday, Musk tweeted an unfounded rumor about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Musk’s tweet, which he later deleted, linked to an article by a fringe website that the Los Angeles Times has reported is “notorious for fake news.”
Musk was replying to a tweet by Hillary Clinton that criticized Republicans’ “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” and said, “It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result.”
Musk countered, saying, “There is a tiny possibility that there might be more to this story than meets the eye” and posting a link to the baseless, anti-LGBTQ article.
Wow.
It’s precisely this type of factless rumor-mongering that causes people to lose trust in the technology industry’s ability to police its social media platforms. Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg have had a lock on the title of least-trusted of any major American tech company. But Musk is signaling there is a challenger for that dubious distinction.
Silicon Valley leaders used to understand that the tech industry needed to be a trusted force for good, not just a money-making machine. David Packard and Steve Jobs embraced that philosophy. And for more than a decade Google employees lived by the company’s “do no evil” motto, before it was officially altered in 2015 to “do the right thing” when Google was reorganized under its new parent company, Alphabet.
Since then, the landscape has dramatically shifted, and Musk’s acquisition of Twitter might prove the most destructive to tech’s reputation and integrity.
Right-wing pundits are already testing whether Twitter’s existing policies on misinformation will be enforced. Buzzwords such as “ivermectin,” “Trump won” and racial slurs began popping up on Twitter on Friday, testing whether Musk would adopt an “anything goes” approach to the site. And it’s uncertain whether he will allow users whom the platform has previously banned — including Donald Trump, white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — to tweet at will.
Social media platforms are immensely complex. In a better world, tech industry leaders would have taken a lead role in developing well-thought out regulations. It’s now up to a divided Congress, which can’t even agree on an Internet Bill of Rights, to rein in Zuckerberg and Musk before they do any more damage. Such is the sad state of the tech industry today.
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