On October 26, 2022, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk walked into Twitter headquarters in San Francisco carrying a sink basin, posting a video of his dramatic entrance with the caption. “Let that sink in!” One day and one particularly egregious dad-joke later, Musk officially became the owner of Twitter. Before the day was over, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and policy chief Vejaya Gadde were all sent packing, and on October 31, Musk dissolved Twitter’s board of directors, making him Twitter’s only director. While heads are already exploding on the left side of the aisle over Musk’s takeover and terminations, a good house cleaning at Twitter may be precisely the change that the right has needed with regard to social media.
Social media has generally been notorious for censorship, but Twitter stands near the peak of ideological restrictiveness. Prominent conservative accounts have been either temporarily suspended or permanently banned from the site for transgressing Twitter’s nebulous and often biased conduct policy. Notable accounts banned include Jordan B. Peterson, Project Veritas founder and journalist James O’Keefe, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and, most infamously, President Donald Trump. More egregious still, Twitter censored key stories pertaining to the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop and the questionable efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and lockdown measures.
Lest anyone come to the conclusion that the bans were not driven by an ideological impetus, Twitter staff ranging from executives to low-level workers have openly expressed a dramatically left-wing worldview. In 2010, future Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal brazenly tweeted “If they are not gonna make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists.” Former Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey established in an interview that conservative employees at Twitter often did not feel comfortable expressing their opinions publicly in the office. With a CEO devoted to identity politics and an echo chamber environment favorable only to left-wing ideas, is it any wonder that the Twitterati became the principal arm of leftist ideological enforcement on social media?
It is increasingly apparent that left-wing stranglehold on the social media landscape is a threat to freedom of expression and presents the prospect of interfering with the American system of government itself. On October 31, the Department of Homeland Security was forced to release a cache of documents revealing an elaborate scheme by the agency to expand its control over social media platforms. Among DHS’ priorities were finding ways to restrict and eliminate what the department termed “misinformation,” which has come to be defined as a catch-all for any sort of opinion or disinformation which conflicts with the mainstream narrative. DHS took a particularly strong stance on alleged misinformation pertaining to the pandemic, withdrawal from Afghanistan, “racial justice,” and the 2020 election, and, during the latter event, used its reach to flag numerous posts it found to be problematic in order to demand their removal. The leaks present a bleak picture of social media’s future, a future in which the government is empowered by partisan companies to dictate what is acceptable within online discourse.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter presents the possibility of a fresh start for social media as a medium. While Musk does have a prior track record of supporting Democratic candidates, he is a businessman first and foremost, and a platform with a reputation for censorship makes for bad business. In addition, Musk has not been shy about expressing his support for freedom of speech, going so far as to call himself a “free speech absolutist.” Accordingly, it is safe to expect that Musk will throw his support behind the downtrodden and maligned right-wing voices on Twitter and begin the process of dissolving Twitter’s excessive restrictions.
Of course, Musk faces an uphill battle should he choose to undertake this endeavor. Shortly after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the notoriously partisan and censorship-friendly Anti-Defamation League first sought to coerce Musk into working with them in order to find new ways of curtailing free speech on Twitter. When this failed to materialize, the ADL went on the offensive against Musk, demanding that advertisers boycott the website and castigated Musk for what they perceived to be a failure of leadership.
Still, all is not lost. On November 10, two prominent Twitter executives left the company over differences with Musk. One of those executives was Yoel Roth, the senior director of trust and safety, who was heavily in favor of incorporating additional restrictions on the platform and has a history of left-wing partisanship, even going so far as to refer to Trump supporters as “Nazis.” With Roth gone, it would seem that Twitter has lost one of its most vociferous speech arbiters. While Twitter has not yet emerged as a bastion of free expression, under Musk’s unorthodox leadership, it seems the worst of the site’s censorship rats are fleeing the ship.