Twitter Briefly Pretended To Take A Stand Against Hate, But Then Elon Admitted It Was All A Mistake (Or A Marketing Campaign?)

Content Moderation

from the every-wrong-ove dept

Back when I wrote the blog post detailing the basic content moderation learning curve speedrun, I actually thought that, like most sites that go through it, Elon might actually learn from it. Yet, it appears he still has trouble processing lessons from basically any of the mistakes he makes. Or he seems to be trying to leverage his own nonsense into helping his friends.

Yesterday was a weird one on Twitter, and that’s saying something given how weird and pointless the site has been of late.

On Thursday morning, the CEO of a nonsense peddling website who doesn’t deserve to be named, took to Twitter to whine that Twitter was suppressing “conservative” speech. Apparently, that website had worked out a deal with Twitter to host a very silly excuse for a documentary that serves no purpose other than to push forward a hateful, harassing culture war. The documentary came out last year, and got exactly the kind of bad attention its creators wanted, which is why we see no reason to name it here either. If you don’t know what it is, trust me, it’s exactly the kind of nonsense you think it is, focused on driving mockery and hatred towards people based on their identity.

As part of Elon’s big new push to host video (which has resulted in lots of infringing movies uploaded to the site, and a surprising lack of lawsuits from Hollywood so far), Twitter and the nonsense peddling website had agreed to post the full documentary to Twitter, with some unclear promises of promotion. However, after the team at Twitter viewed a screener of the movie, they told the nonsense peddler that while the film could still be hosted on Twitter, they would limit its reach while labeling it (accurately) as “hateful conduct.”

To some extent, this was bound to happen. Remember, so much of this mess today is because a bunch of Trumpist crybabies insisted that basic moderation was ideological “censorship” of conservatives, even though actual studies showed that Twitter went out of their way to promote conservatives over others, and to let them avoid punishment for breaking the rules. But the Trumpist crew must, at all times, play the snowflake victim. They have no actual policy principles, so all they have is “these other people are trying to oppress us” despite that not being even remotely true. Hell, the whole movie at issue here is more of that very same thing. The underlying premise is that because some people ask you to treat them with respect, “the libs” are trying to oppress you. It’s nonsense.

Either way, there was, just briefly, this moment where it looked like maybe Twitter staff recognized that posting such whiny, hate-inspiring content wasn’t good for business. After all, just last month, the company had updated its “Hateful Conduct policy” which still includes rules against promoting “hostility and malice against others” based on a number of categories, including “gender identity.” And the policy makes it clear that this includes video content as well.

As such, it’s not hard to see how the film in question would violate that policy.

Of course, that was until the boss found out what was going on… and then made it clear he disagreed with the decision.

Elon’s quote is as follows:

This was a mistake by many people at Twitter. It is definitely allowed.

Whether or not you agree with using someone’s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.

I should note that I do personally use someone’s preferred pronouns, just as I use someone’s preferred name, simply from the standpoint of good manners.

However, for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used.

While he’s correct that it does not violate any laws in the US (in some countries it might), Twitter’s written policy says nothing at all about content needing to break the law to get visibility filtering.

And, again, remember that Musk himself keeps talking about “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” and the company has said repeatedly that it will limit the visibility of content they believe violates their policy. And it appears that’s exactly what was happening here. The trust & safety team (what little is left of it) determined that this film violated the policies on promoting hostility and malice towards people for their gender identity, and, in response, allowed the film to still be posted on Twitter, but with limited reach.

All of that is clearly within Twitter’s stated policies under Elon Musk (all of those policies have been updated in the last two months under Musk).

So I’m not at all clear how Musk can be claiming that this was a “mistake.” Part of the problem is that he seems to think (incorrectly) that Twitter said the film wasn’t allowed at all, rather than just visibility filtered. But then… he basically says it shouldn’t be filtered either. Because someone pointed out that when a clip from the film was posted to Twitter, it had a label about visibility filtering, saying that the content may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct, and Elon said it was “being fixed.”

But then things got even odder. After first claiming it was a mistake and was “being fixed,” a little while later he seemed to double back again and admit that the original designation was correct, and that it would be “advertising-restricted” which would “impact reach to some degree.”

A little later, after another nonsense peddler whined that the film was still being visibility filtered, Elon said that “we’re updating the system tomorrow so that those who follow” the nonsense peddler website “will see this in their feed, but it won’t be recommended to non-followers (nor will any advertising be associated with it).

Which, uh, sounds exactly like what the nonsense peddler website was told originally, and which Elon had originally said “was a mistake by many people at Twitter,” despite it (1) clearly following the policies that Elon himself had previously agreed on and (2) matching his claimed “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach” concept. So, which is it? Is it just Elon talking out of both sides of his mouth yet again?

Or… the alternative, which some people are suggesting: Elon thinks that pretending to “suppress” this film would drive more views of it. Which seems to be supported by him claiming that “The Streisand Effect on this will set an all-time record!”

As the person who coined the Streisand Effect in the first place, I can assure you, this is not how any of this works. But either way the whole thing is stupid (and also why we’re not naming the film or the website, because if this is all a stupid attempt to create a fake Streisand Effect, there’s no reason we should help).

And, either way, this morning Elon insisted that all the visibility filtering had been lifted and the only limitation would be whether or not advertising would appear next to it:

He later tweeted a direct link to the film itself, promoting a tweet from the nonsense peddling website insisting (little fucking snowflakes that they are) that it’s the film “they don’t want you to see.”

Basically, a manufactured martyrdom controversy, combined with Twitter pretending to stand up to encouraging hatred, only for Musk to double down that hate has a comfy, welcoming home on Twitter.

Of course, in the midst of all this, the news came out that Ella Irwin, who had been leading trust & safety since relatively early in the Elon Musk reign, and who had been on Twitter through Wednesday directly responding to trust & safety requests, had resigned and was no longer at the company. It’s unclear if her resignation had anything to do with this mess, but the timing does seem notable.

Still, given all of this, is it really any wonder that advertisers like Ben & Jerry’s have announced that they’re ending all paid advertising on the site in response to the proliferation of hate speech?

Filed Under: content moderation, elon musk, hateful conduct, visibility filtering, what is a woman
Companies: daily wire, twitter