Monday, 9 May 2022
Automated Political Advocacy
Armin Rosen has an interesting piece in Tablet on the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter and the powerful organisations opposed to any change in Twitter's political and social policies.
Elon Musk’s maybe-impending purchase of Twitter is being treated not as a mere business acquisition but as a kind of twilight battle over the fate of the American experiment...
On May 3, a trio of so-called “advocacy groups” sent a letter to Twitter’s major corporate advertisers, including image-conscious and regulation-sensitive heavyweights like Coca-Cola and Disney, urging them to pull their business from Twitter if Musk proves unwilling to censor speech on the platform to those organizations’ satisfaction. “Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety,” began the missive, distributed under the letterhead of Media Matters for America, Accountable Tech, and UltraViolet, and co-signed by another two dozen groups, including the Women’s March, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and NARAL Pro-Choice America. These groups are promising to mobilize their activists, and whatever other resources they might have, to punish companies that will stick by Twitter if it junks its pre-Musk content moderation regime. The pitch was a simple one: Nice store you got there. It would be a shame if someone threw a rock through your window.
The whole piece is well worth reading for the way it highlights how well-funded, ruthless and almost routinely automated political advocacy could become.
What really unites these organizations isn’t an ideology or a common donor list or a shared agenda or the prominent place of the Democratic Party in the resumes of their leadership. What binds them is a project to expand the partisan battleground until nothing and no one is exempt from the end-times struggle they might sincerely believe themselves to be waging—not Elon Musk, not Coca-Cola, not Rick Ross. And not you, either.
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4 comments:
Perhaps the advocacy groups are best thought of as cliques within the elite courtiers trying to ensure that the gravy train runs their way?
I don't do social media, believing parts of it to be unwholesome, but if Media Matters for America, Accountable Tech, and UltraViolet et al are against Musk's buyout then I am quite prepared to take their protests as a sign that Twitter (at least) may improve.
I've no idea how this kind of murky activity can be regulated or curbed without infringing on other freedoms. But this whole business has meant that, for me, Musk transformed from being a sort of freakish billionaire odd-bod into someone I admire.
"further toxify our information ecosystem and be a direct threat to public safety"
Not if you don't give a toss about it all, and live normal lives!
DJ - I'm sure it's a sign that Musk thinks Twitter could improve enormously by being less restrictive and end up being worth far more than he paid for it.
Sam - that's my view and maybe Musk will demonstrate the financial value of not shutting out huge numbers of potential users. We'll see, but it could be very interesting.
Scrobs - and the language gives them away as loons nobody should have to give a toss about.
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