Elon Musk’s very weird night on Twitter- STUFF MOM NEVER TOLD YOU

Last night Elon Musk banned a bunch of journalists, stormed out of a Twitter Spaces when questioned about it, then (maybe?) turned off the Spaces feature for everyone!

Given how weird his tenure has been, let’s revisit how we got here with my friends at Stuff Mom Never Told You. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of I Heart Radio and unbost Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
It has been a really weird time on Twitter lately,
so last night Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk suspended journalists

(00:25):
from big name publications like CNN and The New York
Times for doing pretty straightforward reporting about the banning of
a Twitter account that tracked Elon Musk's personal jet using
publicly available FAA data. Then Musk joined at Twitter Spaces,
which is basically Twitter's audio chat function, to talk about this,
and when Buzzfeeds tech reporter Katie and Anopolis grilled him

(00:48):
about it and started really asking him some questions about
his moderation inconsistencies, Ellen abruptly left the spaces and then
Spaces was basically shut down for everyone globally. Now, Elon
said this was just a glitch, but I don't know
that timing just seems awful suspicious to me. You know.

(01:09):
When Elon first bought Twitter, he went on and on
about how he wanted to make it this haven for
free speech, even going so far as saying that he
had not banned the Twitter account that tweets about the
location of his private jet, that is until he did
ban that account. And I think if reporters and journalists
are going to be retaliated against for doing pretty straightforward

(01:30):
reporting about him, it sends a pretty clear signal about
what he actually thinks about protecting speech. And this all
comes as Musk is also banning links to the Twitter
alternative Mastodon and flagging any links to Mathodon as containing malware. Honestly,
it was wild. So given all of this, I thought
it might make sense to remember how we got here,
so I joined my friends Annie and Samantha over at

(01:53):
the podcast Stuff Mom never told you to talk through
the origin stories of Elon Musk buying Twitter, And I'm curious,
are are you gonna stay on Twitter? Were you never
on Twitter? Are you looking for alternatives? I'm definitely shopping
around where I might wind up. Who knows, um, So
let me know if if you have platforms that you're
liking or want to talk through any of them. Hey,

(02:17):
this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stephone. Never
told your protection of I Heart Radio, and today we
are once again thrilled to be joined by the fabulous,
fantastic Bridget Todd. Welcome, Bridgets. We're always so happy to

(02:39):
have you. Thank you for having me. I'm so happy
to be back here and happy, happy, late thanksgiving Yes
to you too. Okay, So, Bridget, Samantha and I the
topic you brought today are very We're very excited you
brought it because we have a lot of questions, but
also we've been meaning to talk about it, but we
were hopeful that you would talk about it because I

(03:01):
feel like you have a lot more knowledge and expertise
in this arena. So I'm so I'm so excited that
this is what we're talking about today, which is Twitter. Yeah,
and you know, the last time you were on, we
actually talked about the fact that it was the beginning
of the end kind of had them that moment because
at that moment we knew that Elon Musk was coming on.

(03:23):
We're like, oh, no, here do we go. Uh So definitely,
as we were watching this, I feel like it was
just yesterday that we mentioned this, So I'm sure you've
got so much more in depth information from the beginning
of to today. Yeah, I I I mean, it's it's
so weird and just two level set like we it
does feel like we're in a little bit of unprecedented waters.

(03:47):
You know. I have a lot of expertise when it
comes to tech technology and platforms and how they run
and how they're moderated. But this has never really happened before.
Since I have been working in in the internet spaces,
I've never seen a billionaire I one of our largest
digital communications platforms and like change the culture pretty much
single handedly overnight. So I am going to try to

(04:09):
bring whatever expertise I have and answer whatever questions folks have.
But I don't know a lot because this is just
like a very new, weird experience. I am learning right
alongside all of y'all and figuring out what's happening um
in real times. It's it's kind of exciting, kind of interesting,
but also tb D. Yeah, which I guess we should say.

(04:31):
We're recording this on November because things are changing rapidly.
Things are changing rapidly. A lot has happened, as you said, Samantha,
since Elon Musk came on board, So yeah, we'll see.
I think there's a lot more to come. Yeah, well
that's a great place to start, you know, just the
rapid changing of the situation. I initially started putting together

(04:54):
an outline a couple of I think like last week,
and mostly all that stuff that I wrote is now
has now been changed, So hopefully this will be not
totally out of out of date by the time folks
hear it. UM. I have to ask before we even start, like,
have you sense that your relationship with Twitter has changed
since Elon Musk took over? Uh? Yeah, I would say so,

(05:15):
UM because one of the biggest things that I've experienced
with Twitter since um Elon Musk has been um either
kind of a sense of uncertainty or confusion or people
will contact me and be like I'm not sure. I'm
not sure what's going on, so you can find me
on this other social platform or whatever. And then I

(05:38):
have had a several experiences where I went to check
on um something somebody uh somebody on Twitter is doing
that I follow and their account is not there anymore,
to deactivated, and kind of just a general like I'm
not sure if this is coming from who I think
this is coming from. I guess like, um, like a

(05:59):
loss of us like I'm not sure what is going
on and if I can trust anything that is happening, right,
I mean essentially, I think that's the biggest thing is
I don't know if this is a real account to
someone at all. The amount of ads I've been getting
have gotten up. It's the same three ads, but I'm like,
oh my god, it is constantly there, which we all

(06:21):
know why, but I mean because they're losing so much money.
But um, I think one of the big things is
like I will see parody accounts, which because of the
verification system has kind of completely gone out the window
that I don't know if it's real. I think there
was one at one point that I was like, oh
that that one is real. Oh that's real. Like that's
kind of one of those moments as well as the
amount of misinformation has grown. To me, at least I

(06:43):
knew if it was coming from this specific account or
type of account. What was happening. Now I don't know.
I'm like, okay, wait, did that actually happen? And I
don't know anymore if it's real or not, Like so
many things that are aimed specifically at Elon Musk and like,
is that is that real? Is that really happening? Did
he do these things? Or are people saying this in
order to fear monger or make it even bigger, and

(07:04):
then he comes back and saying, just kidding, that didn't happen,
Like I don't. I don't know at this point who
to trust and who not to trust. Of course on
our stuff, I've never told you account we the followers
just dropped because so many people have left. I'm assuming
maybe they just all thet I don't know, but like
the amount of people that had left has like increased,

(07:24):
and in the fact that has impacted our numbers for
a while. Not that we we don't do too much
because I am still fearful of writing anything uh on
any of the social media accounts at all, but it's
interesting to see how that is fluctuating as well. The
people who I again trusted losing their verification because they
didn't pay for us, so therefore I don't know if

(07:45):
that's them anymore. There's so much like I don't quite
know what's reality what's fake, And then the amount of
disformation and people that I'm trying like have been banned
or back on that, I'm like, oh god, why. So
it's really sad because Twitter has been something that I
use to like, let me know what's going on is
faster than um any other news platforms, and and seeing
like the truth of what's actually happening, whether it's information

(08:08):
about wrongful deaths or protests around the country, around the world.
So it's there's a lot that I'm like, uh, I'm
kind of lost, but also at the same time entertained
because it's going in flames. Yes, A thousand times. Yes,
So I have seen all the things that y'all have
seen and felt and sensed. I have also seen and
felt and sensed. And for folks listening, even if you're

(08:30):
someone who doesn't use Twitter, like the majority of Americans,
or like will never use Twitter, not a social media person,
I am confident that I can help help you see
why this is a big, a big deal for all
of us, not just folks who are on Twitter, because
I do think that a lot of the reporting on
this is like, oh, well, this matters because it's Twitter
and everybody uses Twitter. Not so right, Like when you

(08:52):
compare Twitter to other social media platforms like Facebook, only
a small amount of Americans use are on Twitter actively,
and even less Americans actually tweet and participate there, So
we're talking about a small amount of folks. However, the
reason why this actually like kind of matters is because
the people who are active on Twitter are kind of like,

(09:14):
I guess you can sort of call them like the tastemakers, right,
Like journalists, researchers, activists, organizers, people who are really able
to shape conversation and shape our public discourse and sort
of have an influence on what becomes part of our
public kind of conversation. Right. And so, Samantha, exactly like
what you were saying, when people need quick, up to date,

(09:37):
hopefully somewhat reliable information, they're not going to Instagram. They're
not going to Tumbler, they're not going to snapchat or TikTok.
They're going to Twitter. You know, there's a reason why
when there's a you know, mass shooting on a campus,
people can follow updates quickly on Twitter. And so Twitter
is not just this place where public discourse is shaped.

(09:58):
It is also a place where you just go to
get easy, quick access to hopefully reliable information about stuff
happening near you. And so you can sort of get
a sense of why this is a platform where these
kind of power struggles happen, right, Like, it's not surprising
that like a person like Donald Trump, Twitter was his
platform because you can have such outsized influence in getting

(10:21):
a message out there quickly and effectively. And I just
don't think that we have another social media platform that
mimics that so effectively. Like Facebook moves a little bit slower,
even though more people are there. Instagram, the timeline moves
in such an algorithmic way that you don't need It's like,
if I posted something that was really important, it's not
even a guarantee that everybody who follows me would see it, right.
And so Twitter is such a fast moving platform, and

(10:43):
I think it's one of the reasons why we're seeing
it spring up as a battleground in this like highly
polarized kind of culture war. I'm really glad that you're

(11:06):
here to make this case because we recently it was
recently Thanksgiving and I went home and um, a lot
of people were kind of, you know, laughing about Elon
Musk and Twitter, and there are definitely some funny aspects
of it, but they're all like, well, I hate Twitter,
so I'm not sad to see it go. And I
was like, well, I have a lot of problems with
Twitter too, but it's important it does matter, and it
is a shame like that we're seeing this happen. And

(11:27):
there have been things, examples of stuff that took off
on Twitter and then fundamentally changed our public discourse, whether
you use it or not, totally right. And so this
is this is the drama will always beat. Even if
you are not someone who was actively using Twitter, you
have felt the cultural impact of movements and conversations that

(11:50):
started on Twitter. You know, if you think about the
way that people who traditionally have not necessarily had a
lot of access to power and influence they can use
was Twitter to build up that power and that voice
and that influence. I could give you a million different
examples of concrete changes that we're all aware of and
probably all felt directly that started on Twitter. You know, Uh,

(12:11):
it's not surprising to me that Twitter has been used
as this way to really hold power structures accountable. When
Toronto Burke started to me Too movement, you know, she
had this this movement that she had started for black
and brown women and girls who were survivors of sexual violence,
and when actor Alissa Milano tweeted about it on Twitter
using the hashtag me too, that's when it really took off, right,

(12:34):
And so you see the the power that you know,
generating conversations on the platform can have. If not for Twitter,
I don't know that we would have the me to
move it the way that the way that it was,
I don't know that, you know, all of these different
powerful abusers would be eventually held to account and that
we would be having a national conversation about things like
gender and sexual violence, you know, I'm Another great example

(12:56):
is a friend of mine, April Rain. She tweeted about
how white the Oscars nominees were and tweeted Oscar so white.
It completely took off. People were tweeting things like Oscar
so white, it touches my hair without asking, Oscar so white?
It you know, dada. And because of that conversation, it

(13:16):
fundamentally changed how the Oscars were that year. Uh Spike
Lee won an Oscar and he he said that he
doesn't think it would ever have happened without that campaign,
which started as a tweet a hashtag on Twitter. Look
at the way that it was instrumental during Arab Spring, right,
and so like, there are so many ways and times where,
particularly outside of the US, Twitter has been used to

(13:39):
document you know abusive power and hold that power to account.
And I think it's even if you're not on Twitter,
you've probably felt or seen some kind of the impact
of some kind of movement that was started on Twitter,
you know. And as you're talking about these movements which
are so huge, I had to go back to the
original idea of like our lingo changed complet lately with

(14:01):
what is now the hashtag as well, because that actually
originated in two thousand seven. According to one of the
resources that I looked at on Twitter, like it literally
changed how we looked at so much of our conversations online. Um.
It brought up a way for us to pass messages
and bring up big issues with what I would have
known as pound sign, which just the lineals don't know

(14:25):
what that is. And that's fine, I'm fine with it.
I'm okay with it. Um. But like that in itself
has begun a new conversation the zite guys in itself
had changed because of things like that on Twitter, and
it's such a big significant thing that we don't often
think about, and knowing that before two thou seven that
didn't exist, and what a powerful tool it is on
across all social media Oh my god, Sam, this is

(14:46):
my your your I will keep my comments as brief
as I can. This is like my favorite topic. The
way that things that originated on different social media platforms,
in this case Twitter, have changed fundamentally changed the way
that we communicate digitally is fascinating to me. I don't
remember when hashtags were first rolled out, and previously there

(15:07):
wasn't really an easy way to quickly figure out what
everybody was saying on on a particular topic. And I
still remember I was working at a social media management
at the time when the conversation was like, oh, well,
should we use hashtags on Facebook? Like does it work
that way? And you know, people still use hashtag. You
go to TikTok, like one of the biggest, fastest growing
platforms out there. When you scroll down to the bottom

(15:27):
of TikTok, people tend to include hashtags. And so it's
interesting how this mode of this particular mode of digital
communication did not just stay on Twitter, how it really
shaped other platforms as well, and I think has become
a pivotal way in terms of like how we just
think about the way that discourse works online. I think
before the hashtag, we didn't think about it as like

(15:48):
I should be able to pull up a hashtag and
get a sense of, like the diversity of thought and
conversation on any one topic. And now that's kind of
integral to the way that we understand communications online. This
is something I could nerd out on for hours. It's
probably not interesting to anybody but me, but I found
it fascinating. To be fair, again, I was late in

(16:08):
coming to social media. I still in latant understanding social
media to a certain extent. So when I first started,
I was like, what are these hashtags? I'm just gonna
write sentences on there and there no sense. But I'm like,
that makes them blue, Like you can click on it.
I'm gonna do it, which is a whole different conversation itself.
I'm like, look technology, which is again how I react
to most things. But going back to where we started,

(16:31):
because finding something that's coming to this point, which seems
apocalyptic for a social media brand, but one of the
oldest one that has been out there, that's still like
stood the test of time outside of Facebook, it's interesting
to see what is happening because it does feel like
we have lived this extension of a life, of a
creation of something completely different. So with all that, how

(16:53):
do we get here? How did this happen? Great question?
So this is something again that I wish I saw
more of in the reporting. People kind of gloss over it,
and I think it's actually a really big part of
the story, and it's important to not just closs over it,
which is that you know, Musk's decision to to buy Twitter,

(17:14):
per his own statements, was rooted in transphobia. Um, he'd
been talking about buying Twitter for a while and Twitter
added intentionally misgendering people to their list a prohibited behavior
on the platform. So you can't, like, as a means
of trying to harm someone, you cannot misgender them. So

(17:35):
in the right wing, I guess you'll call it like
a parody site. Even that doesn't seem quite correct, but
we'll call it a parody website for the sake of conversation.
The Babylon b they violated this rule when they tweeted
a transphobic joke in scare quotes. Um that Dr Rachel Levine,
who was the first openly transfour star officer in the

(17:56):
military and currently the Assistant Secretary for Health in the US,
to part at Health and Human services. They made a
crack on Twitter that she had been named quote man
of the Year, right, and so a lot of the report,
first of all, it's wild to me, how like but
that level of humor has not evolved since that movie
Ace Venture a Pet Detective, Like we're still in nine Like,

(18:20):
oh my god, like like get a new joke, people
is it is so tired. But a lot of people
reported that the Babylon Bee was banned from Twitter for
this for this tweet, but that technically is not correct.
Twitter said that the Babylon Bee could have their account
back in twelve hours, but that that countdown could not
start until they deleted that particular tweet. They refused to

(18:42):
delete that tweet, so they were unable to tweet, so
they weren't technically banned. They kind of decided like we
are not we are going to die on this hill
of this tweet, and if we can't tweet, that's fine.
So at this time, Musk was already the biggest shareholder
of Twitter, and he had been invited to join its
board of directors. Um In April, Elion and offered to
buy Twitter, and he said that it was specifically that

(19:03):
Babylon b situation that prompted him to do so that
like that was the final straw, watching the Babylon Be
not be able to tweet because they refused to delete
this joke. The Babylon Be confirmed this to The Washington Times,
saying we have had some communication with Musk. Uh he
wanted to confirm that we had in fact been suspended
from Twitter. He reached out to us before he publicly

(19:23):
asked his followers if they think Twitter vigorously adheres to
the principle of free expression. He even mused on that
call that he might need to buy Twitter. So it's
to me, it's like pretty disappointing and also very important
that Elon Musk's you know, tenure at Twitter really starts
with his desire to protect transphobic jokes in scare quotes

(19:46):
as protected speech and free speech on the platform. And
I think that's terribly disappointing, and I think it's related
to the ways that we're seeing him, you know, at
the rain at Twitter right now. So disappointed because from
what I do understand, he does have a trade ends
child and and like obviously the relationship is not good.
They disowned Musk as there are parental figure but it

(20:08):
seems like just an attack on them if I were
If I were them, I would think this as well.
But I'm just so disappointing to know that you could
really care so little of your own child that you're
willing to go into forty four billion dollars in debt
to go for this. Yes, it is I mean, the

(20:29):
this is a weird aside, But like, I actually spend
a lot of time thinking about Elon Musk's like personal motivations.
I obviously don't know Elon Musk. I can't like at all.
It's all speculation, but I do think there's something about it,
like I can't imagine having a trans child and going

(20:49):
out of my way and spending a lot of money
to protect and like transphobic rhetoric. I I cannot imagine it.
It's difficult for me to put myself in that position.
I guess I'll say. I also think that it really
reflects the ways that particularly trans people have unfortunately kind
of become this like like just the existence of trans

(21:11):
people trying to live their lives has become this like
blash point. On the one hand, it is surprising to
me that he would double down on this, having a
trans child. On the other hand, I do see the
ways that just like the existence of trans people trying
to live their lives has become this incredibly like politicized
hot button issue. It certainly should not be. But on
the other hand, it's not terribly surprising to me that

(21:33):
his bid at Twitter starts with that transphobibia, that that's
where it that that's where it begins, right. It makes
me want to have him fail, but it's just me.
But you know, with that, it's kind of odd that
he also continues to talk about free speech. I think
it's really really almost ironic. He talks about free speech,

(21:54):
and several the people that I've seen band are the
people that said something about him, not necessarily the needing, uh,
completely offhand. It was just like, hey, he did this
and this is a bad thing, and he's like banned
them exactly. Okay, So let's get into this because Elon Musk,
he has called himself a free speech absolutist. He says
that a ted talk like free speech is the ability

(22:16):
for someone you don't like to say something you don't like, right,
And so you might be thinking, oh, well, he would
probably be working to foster a climate of open discourse
and discussion at Twitter now that he's in charge. But
you might you would You will be wrong if you
thought that, right, because that's not what the not what
the vibe has been so far. And so first of all,
I have to say, like, obviously, when we talk about

(22:37):
free speech, really what we're talking about is whether governments
can punish people or prevent people, um from saying what
they want to say, right, And so the conversation around
free speech has gotten so modeled about like, oh, well,
this is censorship. It's like, oh, well not really, but
and there are absolutely free speech issues happening in the
United States right now, like when you look at like

(22:58):
anti CRT bills or like don't say gay legislation, Like
we are in a climate where free expression is under attack,
specifically from government. So like that needs to be clear, um.
But for the sake of conversation, let's talk about free
speech as sort of generally fostering a climate of open
discourse and debate. If we use that definition of a

(23:20):
free speech you might be thinking, like, has Elon Musk
worked to create that kind of environment since taking over? Also, no,
he has not done that. Uh, First he got started
by overseeing a mass exodus of staff at Twitter. On
some employees resigned, which I totally get, Like I would
have I would have been out the door. Honestly, there's
not a lot of jobs, and if I was offered

(23:41):
three months pay to not do it, that I would
keep doing it. It's not, it's not I can't. I've
got a lot of jobs where that would be the
case for me. So I would totally have been on
the resignation train. So I totally get that. And some
workers were fired, and specifically they were fired for things
that they said about Elon Musk. Engineer Eric Frohnhopper was
fired very publicly for going to gets Musk and it
happened to write on Twitter. Eric worked on Twitter's apps

(24:04):
for Android, and after Musk tweeted that Twitter for Android
had better really slow, the engineer retweeted Musk saying that
Musk his his under his technical understanding of Twitter's app
was wrong, which I can kind of buy because Elon
Musk gets famously not an engineer, so perhaps might not
totally know what he's talking about when talking to an
actual engineer who works on the thing that he is criticizing,

(24:28):
and so Musk replied and asked his engineer to elaborate
before writing, Twitter is super slow on Android? What if
you've done to fix that? They kind of go back
and forth, and then somebody else comes in and it's like, hey, engineer,
why don't you raise these issues privately with your boss?
And the engineer replies, maybe he should ask questions privately,
maybe you slack or email elon then weighs in and says, oh,

(24:51):
that engineer has been fired. So I find that it's
very interesting because a lot of people said, like, oh,
if you publicly disagree with your boss, you know you
can like pretty much anywhere, you'll probably be fired. And
I guess that's a fair point, Like I like in
most workplaces you can't like get on Twitter and call

(25:11):
out your boss. Totally get that, But I think the
larger point is, like it seems directly at odds with
somebody who has called himself a free speech absolutist. And
I also think that that engineer has a really good point,
like why is it that Ellen as a as the boss,
is allowed to publicly misrepresent his work on Twitter, and
that the staffer he is the one who has to

(25:33):
stay quiet and only set the record straight, like in private,
like if Elon Musk, like Elon Musk, made it public
by tweeting about it. Why is it that when his
boss publicly I think, craps on his work, he is
not able to publicly reply. I kind of totally get
why he did this, even if for most people they
might think like, oh, that's clearly a firable offense. Yes, yes, agreed.

(25:56):
And also there's been a lot of stories that, like
even privately, and that might not have protected him exactly.
So even if this engineer had brought it up privately
via Slack or email, he probably, I think probably still
would have been fired. Because it's not just staff who
have publicly gone against Musk who have been terminated. ABC
reported that dozens of other staffers said that they were

(26:18):
fired for raising criticisms on internal Slack messages or email.
And that kind of tracks with the kind of climate
that Musk has run at his other companies. I don't
know how he's been able to dub himself as a
free speech warrior because that the record of his of
the climate at his other organizations just does not reflect that.
Like at SpaceX, for instance, former staff filed an unfair

(26:40):
labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board saying
that they were retaliated against for writing and organizing a
letter that was critical of the company when Musk have
been accused of sexual harassment, and so they wrote this
letter saying Elon Musk's behavior, the sexual harassment, his like
crass jokes on Twitter is making us look bad and
it needs to stop. And they they say, and they

(27:01):
went to the n l RB saying this that they
were unfairly retaliated against for that. And so I don't know.
I have a hard time believing that Elon Musk is
this like champion for free speech when that those are
the kinds of climates that he has fostered at his organizations.
There's so much to all of that, including the fact
when we often hear people complaining about free speech, especially

(27:23):
today as you were talking about like the anti CRT
stuff as well as so many other things, don't say
gay bills, um that it seems very much coming from
the conservative side because they feel like since they think
they don't have the same privilege as they did two
years ago, they're now being imposed on and therefore no
longer having free speech. And we also know that that

(27:45):
in Tesla there was a lawsuit where many black employees
talked about the racism within that company. We've been concluding him,
including being called inward and all of that, and I'm
thinking that's what he's talking about when there's limiting free speech,
like Okay, white people, you are now allowed to say
that here because that's free speech, and not really not

(28:06):
not like crediting the type that that's you know, like
it's racist. That's not an issue of free speech. That's
about racism. But that's what I'm seeing as a pattern
as well as a fact as that the people who
have been defending Musk, like the dude was like, hey, dude,
don't be saying this to your boss are absolutely to
the level of like how close in ratio are we
to the in cell link here? You I have so

(28:31):
much to say about this. So one, I hadn't really
thought about this before, but you really put you really
laid this out nicely. I do think that the way
that people talk about contact moderation on a platform like
Twitter does kind of connect to conversations about like, oh,
because I can't say what I used to be able

(28:52):
to say it twenty years ago without repercussions. Therefore, I
am being censored. Therefore, the only way to protect free
speech is to allow specifically like racist or transphobic content
on these platforms. Like I, I hadn't really thought about
it in that direct of a line, but I think

(29:12):
that you're absolutely onto something. That the reason why so
many people when they talk about like free speech, free speech,
they're not talking about the free speech rights of like
you know, Palestinian activists, or you know, sex workers or
any of the other marginalized people who we know actually
are the recipients of crackdowns on their speech. They're talking

(29:35):
about the right to say the in word. And to
your point about Tesla, I would implore folks to read
up on this because some of the allegations are it's
not it's not just like, oh, this person made off
colored jokes. That allegations, some of which are against Musk
himself and the kind of climate that he ran our
sickening right. Like One of them that sticks in my

(29:56):
mind is that at the Tesla factory. One of the
last alleges that when Elon Musk would come to a
tour of the of the factories, that staffers knew that
Elon Musk had a problem with seeing black staffers on
the floor, and so when when on days when he
was coming, they would have the black staffers like essentially

(30:18):
hide because that they knew that, like, it would be
a better walk through for Musk if Musk did not
see black and brown faces on his floor. So like
it's not just like, oh, someone made a joke I
didn't like that would be bad enough. It's some some
of the allegations are really deep and really I think
reflect a real just a deeply culture. And it's interesting

(30:42):
because I read this. I can't verify if this is
an accurate thing or not, but I read this some
um thing where someone was like, oh, I used to
work at at SpaceX, and everybody knew that part of
the deal when you work for Elon Musk was so
much management went into managing Elon Musk specifically, and so
they would they would have all these like different window

(31:04):
dressing so that when Elon Musk was was there, he
could feel certain kinds of ways, and so they would
have like he talked about how they would have a
computer run code in a way that looks like the matrix,
so that Elon Musk, who is famously not an engineer
would think that really cool, super special tech stuff was
happening even though it was just first right. And so
I think some of that, some of the allegations coming

(31:25):
out of other Elon Musk run companies are so deeply troubling.
And I think that these are companies that were that
were that have an infrastructure to manage these these particular
ways that Musk has Twitter, it's not a company that
has that, And so what's it's interesting to think, like,
what will the vibe at Twitter be like when so

(31:45):
much of the staff has been gutted and it's not
a company that has been built to manage Elon Musk's quirks. Yeah,
that's I've heard that too, And that's so sad that
that's like people's mental energy is we gotta keep the
this guy calm and here's the word'll do it. I

(32:15):
think um as as we're discussing, he and a lot
of people on the right, very conservative people, would have
you believe that, uh, this sort of hard right free
speech in quotes, like they're being policed more, that they're
getting more, they're being more censored. Uh, they are very
much the victims in this conversation but that isn't the case,

(32:39):
is it. It is not the case. And this is
something that I think really points to the kind of
ship that Musk is going to be running at Twitter,
is that he gets on Twitter and repeats this thoroughly
debunked claim that Twitter has been quote censoring the right
more than the left. And there is an entire body
of research debunking this. Like I could do a whole
episode digging into some of the studies that have come

(33:01):
out about this. It's it's fascinating to me. But all
this run through a couple so researchers from m I. T.
Yale and the University of Exeter published a study that
found that while right leading accounts are banned more frequently,
it is not because of anti right wing bias, but rather,
as the researchers put it, they found that users misinformation
sharing was as predictive of suspension as was their political orientation. Thus,

(33:23):
the observation that Republicans were more likely to be suspended
the Democrats provides no support for the claim that Twitter
showed political bias in its suspension practices. Instead, the observed
asymmetry could be explained entirely by the tendency of Republicans
to share more misinformation. And so basically this idea that
like when they were looking at misinformation and who was
banned more for for spreading it, Republicans or right leading

(33:43):
accounts were banned more, but because those were the accounts
that were more likely to be spreading misinformation in the
first place. UM. And this is actually backed up by
Twitter's own in house research team. In the pre musk
days after Trump was banned on Twitter. UM, the Twitter
internal team was facing a lot of criticism that they
were censoring the right, so they put together a team
to look into it, and the internal research team at

(34:05):
Twitter found that folks on the right are actually amplified
on Twitter more often globally. From the report, our results
reveal a remarkably consistent trend. In six out of the
seven country studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic
amplification than the mainstream political left. Um. You can read
this report on their website. It's twenty seven pages long. UM.
And So this idea that people on the right have

(34:28):
been censored by Twitter or or are you know, getting
a raw deal, it just is just not born out
by the facts or the or the you know, the
research has been done. And I also think that it
really speaks to this like wid er misconception about social
media more generally, that there is no real body of

(34:49):
academic study or academic thought with regards to social media,
and that everything that we know about it is either
anecdotal or like unknowable, so people can just say whatever
and be like, oh, yeah, you know how people on
the right are censored on social media platforms and not
really have it challenge, And so I think that it

(35:09):
really speaks to this. I don't know. I think it's
an holdover from a time when people just saw social
media as the Internet and not the real world, and
thus it was not really worthy of serious examination. But
there's entire schools of research and bodies of evidence about
social media platforms, and all of them say the same thing,

(35:30):
that people on the right are not being censored or
cracked down on or anything like that, and that if
anybody tells you that they are, maybe that's there and
maybe they feel that way, maybe that's the anecdotal evidence,
but they're not. And also, like even beyond Twitter, people
say the same thing about Facebook, when in reality, you know,
Mark Zuckerberg was personally intervening to keep people like Alex

(35:53):
Jones on the platform and personally meeting with right wing leaders,
and so it's not going both ways, and so yeah,
I think it must. Repeating this claim really shows how
easy it is to like stoke this victim complex, like like, I,
of course I am the one being victimized here. What
else could be happening. I'm not excited about what's coming

(36:13):
up because there's conversations about how Facebook is prepping for
the next election, presidential election, and they are way too
excited for the return of Donald Trump, and I hate things.
But you know, I find it interesting too because even
with the COVID misinformation, it took forever for them to
even recognize the misinformation and even talked about, Okay, how

(36:35):
are we going to do that without banning everybody because
they didn't want to, and so first they put the
little warning things to all of it, And you're like,
it took a lot for a person to be banned.
It took a lot to even have any of that
warning to be put on there, because we went through
a full year. I feel like so much misinformation, so
many bad advices about how you can treat yourself to

(36:55):
get rid of COVID. It was, I feel like an
ongoing battle and it's still kind of is. And it's
kind of ironic that they were like they actilutely hate
us when they were so much fight to be put
up from the people, especially scientists, be like, can you
please control this because this is really bad for the
health of our nation totally. And what's so interesting about

(37:16):
that is that something that people say a lot, like well,
meeting people will say a lot. It's like you in
the early days of COVID, we didn't know about masks.
Like it was like we were getting a lot of
like for a while it was like, oh, only medical
professional need them, or only this into like and then
eventually it was like, oh, it's masks. We on the masks.
People will I think kind of understandably conflate medical professionals

(37:37):
getting more familiar with how the virus worked and all
of that, which is confusing, right, Like it's like having
one day having someone be like, oh, you don't need
to wear a mask, and the next day it hasn't
gonna be like, oh, wear a mask. Like I can
understand why people are confused and why that looks like,
you know, like, oh, so, why is that? Why is
that not misinformation? You know? And it's like there's a

(37:58):
difference between medical professional, you know, getting more up to
date on a novel virus and people who are spreading
clearly provably false information. And I think that unfortunately, with COVID,
because it was like a new virus, it created a
climate that really made it easy to conflate those things,
and so I think it made it easy to not

(38:19):
challenge provable, demonstrable lies about COVID and lies about COVID
that we're intentional, so like disinformation spread by malicious intent
by bad actors. I think that the climate of having
a novel virus where people were still getting up to
date on what was going on with it, made it
easy to not crack down on it. And I think

(38:40):
it's just like a reality of the way that inaccurate
information on social media works is that there's always gonna
be that grain of truth. It's like, oh, well, why
is this not misinformation? And I can understand why people
raise that, but I think it like, did us a
real disservice to cracking down on things that we know
are just provably incorrect statements? That that makes sense I

(39:02):
feel like I'm kind of rambling, but hopefully all know
what I mean. I mean that virus we didn't know,
no one knew, no one knew where it came from,
what to do, how to handle it. And I got
like that definitely was We definitely were told don't wear masks. Please,
don't buy these masks. We're running out. That's a whole
different conversations. But to like everybody wearing a mask please,
for the love of all things, and then having to

(39:23):
be like, hey, they learn new things because they're researching
new things, and then also like political stuff, but like, yeah,
that makes perfect sense that things would change, And of
course the naysayers would be like do you remember this,
they're lying because they didn't say this the first time around.
It was like this is what means to learn into
research and to grow. But there was a whole lot
of stuff. Yeah, And I think that's one of the

(39:46):
things that I makes me really sad about what's happening
to Twitter, as we were talking about at the beginning,
because um, there was a tweet that went viral a
couple of weeks ago from a reporter that was like,
you know, world War three could be breaking out and
here I am not sure what is reality on Twitter
anymore because it is such a big, a big source
for news and that whole thing with COVID it did

(40:07):
get really messy, and it was an example of an
interesting and kind of like terrifying example I guess of like,
how do you how does this platform manage this information
perhaps misinformation and our disinformation? Um when you know the
scientists are researching and it is changing, And I think, um,

(40:30):
because it gets so a lot of it gets convoluted,
and there's so many like bad faith conversations that can
happen on platforms like that. UM that it is. It's
just like one of the it's an interesting case study
to see how Twitter kind of did deal with that
how long it took. And I think that's another thing

(40:50):
that's really upsetting about this is, as you alluded to, Samantha,
it felt like we were making progress and it was
so hard fought and now we're seeing like a a
reversal of all of these things that were It felt like, oh,
this is a step forward. It's going to be a
platform where a lot of this misinformation, it won't be

(41:12):
as prevalent as will still be there, but not as prevalent,
but as getting reversed. It's upsetting. I mean, I not
to get too personal, but like in my day job,
I do a lot of work trying to make platforms safer.
And you know, I've met with the team at Twitter
many times. I don't know who's still there, but like
two advise them to be like, oh, here, like here

(41:36):
are steps that you can take to make the platform
more hospitable for marginalized people, women, people of color, whatever.
And so it does feel like a lot of the
work that I have to personally, like personally done in
the last few years, it's now being all race. So
like it's a little it's a little bit like, oh, well,
glad I spent the last three years on this. But
Musk reinstated a bunch of previously suspended or band accounts

(41:59):
that have been picked off the platform for things like
spreading COVID misinformation or harassment, and he signaled that he's
planning on doing more of that in the following week.
So some of the folks who have been welcomed back
to the platform include the Babylon b who we were
talking about earlier, Jordan Peterson, who was banned after repeatedly
dead naming the actor Elliott Page. Um and miss gendering
Elliott Page. Kanye West, whose account was locked after numerous

(42:22):
anti semitic comments. Uh, Andrew Tate, who is If you
don't know who he is, He's like a like an
I don't even know what you would call him, like
a men's rights kind of misogynistic influencer slash coach. Um.
He Andrew Tate was banned from pretty much all platforms
for saying things like women need to be held accountable
if they are raped. Um. Marjorie Taylor Green's personal account,

(42:44):
not her official account, was banned for spreading COVID misinformation,
and of course Donald Trump. You may recall that Donald
Trump was banned after using Twitter to foment insurrection, which
is sus a weird thing to say. Since having his
account reinst aided, Trump has actually not tweeted, and he
is signaled that he is perhaps not going to be

(43:04):
returning to Twitter, even though he can yes his his
account back um, saying instead that he's going to stay
on his own social media platform that he owns, called
Truth Social. I've heard that there might be some kind
of like contractual obligation there that Trump might be contractually
obligated to only tweet on truth social but I actually
don't know the incidents. That's why I can't really speak

(43:26):
to it personally. But um so, all these people who
are who had to leave the platform for things, like
I would say, there are like fairly serious offensive Listen,
nobody is permanently suspended from Twitter for a one time
offense unless it is something egregious, right, And so I

(43:46):
can I can speak from personal experience. Margerie Taylor Green
had numerous warnings and this was like a consistent thing
with her. Right. Kanye West is the same. It doesn't
just come out of the blue unless you're doing something
really egregious. So these are the people that Elon Musk
is going to be welcoming back. And he says that
he's declaring amnesty next week for band accounts. Um But

(44:07):
at the same time he is also cracking down on
accounts that are you know, associated with like lefty politics
as well. So for instance, Chad Loader, the founder of
the cybersecurity especially company called Habituate, his account was banned
from the site after he used Twitter on November twenty
three to warn users about an alleged data breach on Twitter.

(44:27):
Um loader is known for like researching and reporting on
right wing extremism, including unmasking a Proud Boy member who
attacked a police officer during the instruction UM and that
report was actually cited by the Department of Justice. So
like a fairly you know, known person who writes about
things like cybersecurity and how to be safe on Twitter
and right wing extremism was one of the first accounts

(44:50):
banned while Musk was talking about this amnesty and you know,
having Twitter be this place for free speech um. Interestingly enough,
when Sam harry Us asked Elon Musk about bringing back
Alex Jones, who you might remember made up egregious lies
about babies who died in Sandy Hook and the parents
who grieved them, you know, said that they were paid
actors and all of that. Elon Musk tweeted, my firstborn

(45:14):
child died in my arms. I felt his last heartbeat.
I have no mercy for anyone who would use the
deaths of children for gain politics or fame. And I
actually think that that was one of the more transparent,
honest statements from Musk about how he sees his role
in moderation right like he can personally identify with the
pain of losing a child, because Elon Musk unfortunately has

(45:37):
lost the child, and so it allows him to have
a sense of how painful it would be to be
a grieving parent grieving that loss and then also be
harassed and called a liar on top of it, and
so he's gonna make those moderation decisions based on that
lived experience. It's interesting because I think it totally puts
to rest that Elon Musk is like a free speech absolutist,
because it reveals what's pretty obvious that these decisions are

(46:00):
made up by him based on like what he does
or doesn't like, which is fine. But I also think that, like,
because he can personally identify with losing a child, he
is going to moderate from that lived personal experience. But
what about experiences that Elon Musk has not personally had, Right, So,
like the experience of somebody like Elliott Page or somebody

(46:21):
like Dr Rachel Levine who was just a trans person
trying to live their life, or the experience of being
like a woman of color on a platform like Twitter,
who we know are more harassed than than our counterparts, right,
Or what about being a person with disabilities who relies
on the platform to build community, right Like, because Elon
Musk has no personal, lived experience with those marginalized identities,

(46:42):
it seems like he really can't see those perspectives as
as real as his own perspective. And it really it
reminds me so much of this, like classic George Carlin
jokes that I've gotten so much mileage out of in
my life. Have you ever noticed that other people's stuff
is in your is stuff? Right Like? He can only
see like his lived experience as real and everybody else's

(47:04):
it's just theoretical or trivial or doesn't really matter. And
I don't think that platforms like Twitter should be moderated
based on a white billionaire what what is within the
scope of his personal lived experience, because there's so many
lived experiences out there that he has no idea of.
I mean, not everybody gets to experience having people on

(47:27):
your staff to make you feel comfortable, including like avoiding
the color orange. I guess, um, that's a whole different
level of experience. And you know, not to delegate the
fact that he did lose a child and that was heartful,
like his wife ex wife came back and was like, dude,
you didn't hold that child. I held that child through

(47:48):
this entire process, and now who's using the death of
a child for publicity. That's interesting. I mean, I'm glad
he's acknowledging that's a bad thing, so I guess I
have a point for that. But it's quite interesting that
even that he couldn't be truly honest about and he
couldn't actually see beyond his own like, I'm gonna make
myself look really big by doing this, when in actuality, again,

(48:11):
his motive in buying this is hurtful for one child,
and then to lie about that specific thing against the wife,
who apparently had a lot of issues with Elon Musk
in general, and to literally dismiss her experience as it's
there's so many things to this man that I'm just like,
what is wrong with you other than you are a
narcissistic sociopath. And I don't know what else to say

(48:33):
except for, oh my god, you're ruining this totally. So
if anybody out there, like, if you want to read
a heartbreaking account of a divorce where you're like that
man is awful, look into the look into Elon Musk's divorce.
I read it. It's like haunts me. The things that
were alleged that happened in that divorce haunts me. Um,

(48:57):
so yes, yes to all of that, and think like
the kind of person who like requires their staffers to
do so much labor and energy to have the workplace
be to their liking in this in these like really
particular ways, is the kind of person who sees themselves

(49:17):
as the main character of life and doesn't even really
question that, Like, I think that's really what's going on here.
I think that people like Elon Musk, you know, I
don't know him. This is my opinion. I think it's
hard for them to see other people's perspectives as real.
And so the kind of person who requires staffers to
go around making computers look super cool and science e

(49:37):
so that he you know, gets warm fuzzies and and
doesn't even see that that is what's is what's happening.
Isn't even able to see that labor. So he just
thinks like, Wow, my company is so great, and he
doesn't see the like twenties frustrated staffers like I've been
the staffer who has to go out of my way
and do a lot of emotional labor to accommodate a
person in power who will never even see that labor,

(49:58):
doesn't even know that labor has happened. And it's really hard,
and it speaks to this perspective of really not being
able to see other people. Everybody else is just a
side character to your main character. I guess that's how
I'll play it. Yeah, you always do such an excellent

(50:28):
job of pointing this out, Bridget, But people forget sometimes that,
you know, technology is not without bias because somebody programmed it,
somebody's moderating it. So I think with Elon Musk, without
this team of people, with all of these changes, um,
and he's kind of like declaration that, oh well, I'm

(50:50):
gonna make it somehow less biased. Like that's just false.
That's just such such a lie. And um, I know
we've been talking about this throughout, but what for you know,
everybody who's listening, it's like, oh, well, you know I
don't really use Twitter. I always kind of didn't like
it or whatever. What do we stand to lose? Why

(51:10):
does this matter? Yeah? I'm so glad that you asked
because you might be thinking, Okay, I get it, but
why do I care. I don't work at Twitter. I'll
never work at Twitter, right and use it? Why do
I care? Well? First, is the most basic, you know,
just Twitter as a place to get quick information. Um,
like we're talking about earlier. You know, it is functioned
as this in this way for a long time. You know,

(51:30):
when Joe Biden needed to announce the specifics of like
student loan debt relief, he didn't go to Reddit or
Tumbler or Instagram. Twitter is how you get information out quickly.
And so like when there's an emergency, Twitter is how
you get information out about it. Like I have a
friend who works for the State Department. It's Twitter that
is being used right now to get important information out

(51:52):
to Americans who are traveling to the World Cup, for instance, right,
And so if the platform is going to be full
of thoughts and hate speech and accounts and persanding other
people and bad actors, that whole thing breaks down. Like,
think about it, if there was an emergency in your
neighborhood right now and you wanted up to date, real
time information about it, we don't really have a place
to really get that other than Twitter. And like, I

(52:14):
think it really goes to show that we need better
public interest communications platforms. But like, if you like, when
there's been emergencies in my neighborhood, I'm looking at Twitter
to see who is talking about and what is developing,
you know, quickly, And so that's just the most like
basic reason why folks should care. But it's also more
than that. You know, Earlier I was talking about the

(52:34):
massive influence that Twitter has and sort of how it's
been used to drive progress. I could give get so
many examples of the way that Twitter has been used
to push conversations forward to get us someplace better. You know,
if not for Twitter, we wouldn't have movements like me too,
you know, which was not just something happening on Twitter.
It shifted our entire culture and our entire you know,
the progress of our culture. I would say, for instance,

(52:57):
you'll have probably heard of shan Quilla Robinson, who was
a t a five year old black clubman from North
Carolina who traveled to Mexico on vacation with a group
of people and ended up dead. The people that she
traveled with tried to say that it was alcohol poisoning,
but later a video emerged of one of them getting
into a pretty brutal physical altercation with her. Now there's

(53:18):
actual movement in the case, and her mother says that
it's because of Black Twitter. She says that if not
for black folks tweeting about it, raising the alarm about it,
generating awareness about it, she said, she said that she
was having a really hard time getting any kind of
national attention on the story of her daughter's death, and
so she actually says it was Twitter that did that.
And so in that case, this rapper Amina Caine shared

(53:40):
Shanquilla's photo on Twitter on November night. Her message went viral,
got almost twenty retweets, and then later spread to other
social media platforms and got so much more attention to
her death. And um Sherry Williams, who was a professor
of race media and Communication at American University, she put
it really well in this interview with NBC new She says,
Black folks know that mainstream news media has a history

(54:01):
of completely ignoring our stories. So we've been using these
tools to amplify our stories ourselves, and it works. We
see the cycle of mainstream news media basically following the
chatter on black social media like Twitter, and so it
really goes to show the real world impact that platforms
like Twitter can have. Twitter was not perfect, It is
not perfect. I have had my issues with it. But

(54:24):
we lose so much if we don't have platforms like Twitter.
Marginalized communities lose so much and our ability to push
that culture forward and have those conversations that get us
someplace better. We there is so much at stake if
we do not have social media and digital communications platforms
where those kind of conversations can happen. Yes, yes, yes, um,

(54:46):
I totally agree. And I think that that's one thing
that kind of gives me anxiety is when I when
I hear people like, well I didn't like Twitter, and like,
but that can be a very privileged thing to just
be like, oh, it goes away, because there are people
in other countries that use it to organize and to communicated,
Like it's a very powerful tool, especially if you're kind
of isolated and maybe you don't have a lot of

(55:07):
people in your community or like where you grew up
to talk to you, to share ideas with, Like, it's important,
it's really really important. Um So I think I'm glad.
I'm glad you you bought this today. I'm glad that
you brought these points because I just feel like there
is so much at stake, and a lot of it's
getting kind of lost in the chaos of like what's

(55:31):
happening with Twitter and why it matters is getting lost
in all of this chaos. So thank you as always
bridget Oh of course, and if folks listening, like if
you have questions about Twitter alternatives, like let's chat like
us where can we? So let's aggressive great question I have.

(55:53):
I guess I I the platforms that I see people
going to our Hive and last it on, I'm still
trying to figure them all out. They all have their issues.
But yeah, people have been talking about moving to Hive,
massdon Post. All of these different platforms all have their issues,
Like there's been big conversations about the funding structure and

(56:15):
the moderation structure. So I will be trying them all
out myself, and I'm happy to report back and let
y'all know, like what worked, what didn't work, what's a flop?
What's a bob? Ya know? T that's amazing? Yes, please
please let us not because like mass didon, seems super
confusing and very specific. Hive may not be ready for
the mass movement, is what I'm reading. Um, but and

(56:38):
then also that no discord is a thing, which I've
been told that we should have one, So Bridget, let's
have any Let's have a discord for us Smith Bridget
and then having like questionnaires with the people and then
deciding where to go. Maybe I love this. Yes, so
I actually even before Twitter was about my musk, I've
always loved discord. Uh, it's super fun. Um, yeah, let's

(57:00):
have a discord channel. We can like pass all this out.
Let's oh my gosh, yes, let's let's make it a thing.
Get online. I'm gonna I'm gonna do it. We are
the coolest obviously. This reminds me of the Britney Spears

(57:24):
interview where she's like, everyone's talking about the emails. Yeah,
like Britney Spears, that's me. Yes, yes, um well, Bridget
the actual coolest. Where can the listeners find you? You
can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie and d
C you can find me. I still have a Twitter account,

(57:45):
but tweeting a lot less these days. At Bridget Marie.
You can listen to me on my podcast There Are
No Girls on the Internet, and my new limited series
with cool Zone Media called Internet hat machine, or we
dive into all the ways that the Internet can be
a not so fun play us for women and people
of color. Yes, super important to this conversation and definitely
listeners go check it out if you haven't already. Um,

(58:09):
thank you again Bridget for being here. Always a delight,
and thank you for listeners for listening. If you would
like to contact us, you can or emails stuff and
your mom stuff at I heeart me. Yeah, you can
find us on Twitter at most of the the podcast all right,
Instagram and stuff I've never told you. Thanks, it's always
to your super producer Christina, thank you and thanks to
you for listening stuff I've never told the respection about
high radio. For more podcast on my heart radio, you

(58:30):
can check out the heart radio app, Apple podcast, orherever
you listen to your favorite shows