Twitter To Double Down on Censorship? Hurry Elon!

So Twitter is basically the equivalent of a foreclosed house that the previous “owner” hasn’t moved out of yet.

Instead of just packing their stuff and leaving, they are going to go out with a bang and trash the place.

Twitter’s latest effort to continue burning down the house is to flag and censor more content in “times of crisis.” Now, what the hell constitutes a time of crisis? If you’ve tried to fill your car up lately or get groceries, you may consider right now a time of crisis. I’d argue the entire Biden administration has been a time of crisis.

That’s the problem with big tech platforms making decisions like this. They get to define what a crisis is.

Let’s dive in and see what Outkick had to say:

Twitter is implementing more warning labels and censorship, the company announced Thursday. The idea is to suppress content and apply red flags to various tweets in times of crisis.

Which content will Twitter target? According to the official company release, a group of outside “experts” will flag the posts that they deem, wait for it, dangerous misinformation.

Dang, there’s that phrase again. “Dangerous misinformation“ has crept like a  parasitic weed into our lexicon to the point that no one really knows what it means.

That’s part of the problem. With phrasing as vague as “dangerous misinformation,” unscrupulous entities, for example, our federal government, can define what said misinformation is in their opinion instead of allowing the American public to disseminate it for themselves.

That kids are where the problems start. It’s just a stone’s throw to full-blown state-run media and censorship. This can’t be allowed to happen.

Outkick continues:

“During moments of crisis, establishing whether something is true or false can be exceptionally challenging,” Yoel Roth, head of safety at Twitter and site integrity, explained in a blog post.

“To reduce potential harm, as soon as we have evidence that a claim may be misleading, we won’t amplify or recommend content that is covered by this policy across Twitter – including in the Home timeline, Search, and Explore. In addition, we will prioritize adding warning notices to highly visible Tweets and Tweets from high profile accounts, such as state-affiliated media accounts, verified, official government accounts.”

Now it may seem Twitter has been doing this for years, just more low-key. However, with Elon Musk attempting to purchase Twitter, it seems curious that they would try to be more transparent about their manipulation of information. Is this an attempt to peel back the layers of deception and attempt to “normalize” this before Musk’s purchase? That remains to be seen.

When @jack resigned I highlighted warning signs showing that the new Twitter CEO @paraga supported adopting the censorship-by-algorithm practices used by platforms like Facebook and Google. Now we learn that Twitter will indeed be doing this, starting with—you guessed it—Ukraine. https://t.co/MvPRlBkKtj pic.twitter.com/R4oVOAPCq5

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 20, 2022

Outkick concludes:

While that sounds shady, and it is, Twitter has been doing this itself for years. So this news only means Twitter will be more transparent about its rig-job. And though the experts are sure to be sheep, they can’t be worse than the employees who have been enforcing these rules recently. Can they?

Anyway, this new ruling will prove meaningless if Elon Musk ultimately takes full ownership of the platform.

That is the key. Musk must purchase this company, strip it bare, and build it back from the ground up. That is the only way, despite Twitter’s last-minute attempt at transparency, to assure we all have access to a fair, balanced marketplace of ideas.