Elon Musk is a master at mastering the scene, or so he thinks. His Twitter, since he is under his control, is a real disaster, installed in chaos, but he is looking for a way to mislead and change the news media.
This Thursday, regardless of the fact that almost everything in the United States is paralyzed because Thanksgiving is celebrated, he announced that he is opening the doors of the platform to all those expelled and decided to revive the banned accounts. As master and lord, which is what it is, of the social network, it granted a general amnesty and will reinstate users suspended for harassment, abuse, threats and misinformation. It will be from next week.
His initiative has only increased the alarm of activists and security experts. Again he resorted to an alleged survey among subscribers. On Wednesday he tweeted in which he posed: "Should Twitter offer blanket amnesty to suspended accounts, if they haven't broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?" According to his calculations, and without any kind of public verification, 72.4% answered yes.
In barely a week, he again resorted to the formula "Vox populi, vox Dei", "the voice of the people is the voice of God" to communicate in his tweet that he had given forgiveness.
Seven days ago, a survey among users did the same with another, also without proof to certify it and easily manipulated, on the return or not of Donald Trump, who had been banned in January 2021 for apologizing for the coup after the jump. to the Capitol, promoted by himself when he lost the elections in November 2020. An alleged 52% supported the welcome of the former president who wanted to perpetuate himself in the White House.
In this second ballot it is assumed that three million votes were registered. This massive return of undesirable users for committing offenses such as violent threats, harassment, abuse and disinformation can have a very significant impact on the company, analysts noted. Many wonder what this return to life will look like as it is not clear what Musk means by "egregious spam" and the difficulty of separating users who have violated the law as it varies widely based on jurisdiction and country. country.
Musk is only fulfilling the worst of the fears that arose when he announced the purchase of the platform for 44,000 million dollars. It was feared that the call for freedom of expression was nothing more than the pretext to offer an open bar and allow toxicity to invade the network.
On the same day that it condoned Trump's coup, Twitter also unilaterally reinstated eleven other high-profile far-right user accounts, including Jordan Peterson, a professor who was banned for insulting and mistaking the gender of a transgender person, and Babylon Bee, a conservative company.
Other beneficiaries of this restoration were Project Veritas, a website generally accused of systematically misrepresenting the events it comments on and which was banned for repeated violations of the company's private information policy, as well as the personal account of Marjorie Taylor Greene. , ultra-conservative legislator linked to the QAnon sect. She had been banned since January for going against the social network's covid policy, spreading false information, and for extolling violence with her extreme rhetoric.
Experts argue that bots (fake accounts) and undesirable actors distort the results of Twitter polls and that basing decisions on those results is completely irresponsible. There is no scientific rigor in that task.
"Before the Musk takeover, there were teams that did market and user research, who followed strict protocols in place to do this kind of work. Suddenly, Muks runs Twitter from completely unscientific surveys, collecting opinions from strangers and, certainly, without any type of demographic representation", declared to 'The Washington Post' the professor at UCLA, Sarah Roberts, director for that university of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry and who previously worked for the platform as a researcher of research processes. content moderation.
Many predict that the admission of the banned will not have a good result on the network and will mean their fall into hell. Musk doesn't care if it gives him financial returns.
