Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has been complaining for a while now that even though Elon Musk has given right-wing hate more exposure on Twitter, the platform has continued to flag anti-transgender hate -- it even issued a report complaining that anti-transgender hate was being blocked. Kevin Tober seemed to express hope that things might change in a May 23 post under the headline "HUGE":
Conservative media & entertainment company The Daily Wire announced Tuesday that starting May 30, they will be streaming all nine of their podcasts on Twitter for free. The move comes after Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing revealed a massive censorship campaign by YouTube which demonetized many Daily Wire videos and podcasts in the platform, including The Matt Walsh Show.
“At this moment, Twitter is the largest free speech platform in the world,” Boreing announced. “The overwhelming amount of positive feedback from our advertisers and audience after putting ‘The Matt Walsh Show’ on Twitter signals to us there is tremendous opportunity, which is why we’ve decided to distribute the rest of our shows on Twitter."
Walsh, of course, is a raging homophobe and transphobe whose lies the MRC has helped to spread.But when Walsh's anti-trans film ran into Twitter policies, a June 1 post by Luis Cornelio helped the Daily Wire to complain about it and play the victim:
Twitter can’t make its mind up on the radicalized gender ideology of the left and initially “canceled” a deal with The Daily Wire to promote a documentary.
The Daily Wire Co-CEO Jeremy Boreing slammed Twitter, accusing the company of thwarting a partnership to premiere What is a Woman? free of charge on the platform. Boreing said Twitter alleged that the documentary violated the platform’s policy on “misgendering” and it threatened to censor the film if shared on its platform.
Twitter apparently backed out of the deal after it had already signed a deal with the news outlet, which included a package that permitted the movie to be hosted on a dedicated Twitter page.
Boreing declared in a tweet: “After reviewing the film, though, Twitter let us know that not only could we no longer purchase the package they offered, they would no longer provide us any support and would actually limit the reach of the film and label it as ‘hateful conduct’ because of ‘misgendering.’”
Musk responded to the reported bombshell claiming that “[t]his was a mistake by many people at Twitter. It is definitively allowed.” The Twitter owner also added that not using preferred pronouns is “at most rude” but warned that misgendering individuals “certainly breaks no laws.” Musk condemned threats of violence as a result of deadnaming, saying in his tweet: “However, for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used.”
MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider reacted to Musk's response, stating, "It's more clear than ever before that Elon Musk is fighting a civil war within his own organization. Many of his employees refuse to follow his leadership to make Twitter a platform for free speech. We applaud Musk for standing up for the First Amendment and American values."
Cornelio then tried to frame Musk as pro-transgender despite his behavior clearly indicating he's not:
Twitter’s blatant threats of censorship mark a stark reversal of Elon Musk’s dubious promise to make Twitter 2.0 a free speech platform. However, these developments should surprise no one. Twitter previously removed parts of its policy that barred “deadnaming” and “misgendering” transgender individuals. The move was championed as a victory for free speech, but the platform still considered “gender identity” a “protected category” against its so-called hateful conduct policy, as MRC Free Speech America reported in April.
The new policy echoed Musk’s publicly announced support for the transgender community. “I absolutely support trans, but all these pronouns are an esthetic [sic] nightmare,” the Twitter owner said in a tweet on Dec. 16, 2020. Musk also tweeted, “What is a woman?” on May 29, 2023, responding to a question from Spotify Founder and CEO Daniel Ek, who asked in a tweet, “If aliens were to visit us right now, what’s one thing we’ve chosen to do as a society (that feels relatively simple or obvious) that would be super hard to explain?”
Cornelio didn't mention that Musk is such a bad father to his transgender child that the child has moved to sever all ties with one of the richest men in the world -- more evidence that he really doesn't "support the transgender community."
(This wasn't the only simping the MRC did for the right-wing Daily Wire. A June 12 post by Cornelio asserted that YouTube "censored" videos from Daily Wire personnel like Candance Owens, Michael Knowles and Jordan Peterson because they "push[ed] back against the left’s radicalized gender ideology," followed two days later by a post from Autumn Johnson noting YouTube's explanation that the hosts violated the platform's "hate speech" policies and Knowles denying that his transphobia is hate speech.)
Well, all that right-wing whining paid off for the haters. A June 15 post by Gabriela Pariseau touted a new MRC study showing how more anti-transgender hate and disrespect is spreaing on Twitter:
Many have suspected an internal rebellion at Twitter against owner Elon Musk’s vision of a free speech platform. And now we have evidence to show that Musk’s moves to make Twitter more of a free speech platform have been successful despite attempts by his disgruntled anti-free speech employees to thwart him.
In recent weeks, Twitter has begun to slow its censorship of those criticizing the “transgender” movement. The shift came after the platform changed its “deadnaming” and “misgendering” policy on April 18, and following several staff resignations, including the head of Trust and Safety chief Ella Irwin’s departure on June 1.
Twitter saw a 261 percent drop in censored users and posts critiquing the left’s radical “transgender” ideology in the month after the policy change (April 18 through May 17, 2023) compared with the month prior (March 18 through April 17, 2023), according to data found in MRC Free Speech America’s CensorTrack.org database.
The month prior showed an unprecedented spike in censorship of content related to the “transgender” issue. Although it is too soon to tell whether this recent free speech win will last, the drop from 142 cases of censorship the month before the policy changed to just 37 cases after shows considerable promise.
Pariseau touted how Musk himself touted Walsh's transphobic film in the wake of the controversy. She then gave the game away by effectively admitting that getting others to hate transgender people is the point, and that Twitter was an obstacle to that agenda:
Musk’s efforts to promote free speech on the “transgender” issue have come just in time. A new Gallup poll found that “A majority, 55%, consider ‘changing one’s gender’ to be more ‘morally wrong.’” In October a similar poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found that 75 percent of voters “believe that the transgender movement has gone too far by encouraging underage minors to use drugs and surgery to transition to the opposite sex.” Now the majority of Americans can enjoy true free speech and speak their minds on Twitter.
Musk standing his ground is a good start to making Twitter a free speech platform, but it is impossible to ignore the massive amount of censorship that has occurred under his watch to date.
Censorship of those who speak out against the left’s radical “transgender” ideology tripled over the last year, largely because of unchecked censorship on Twitter. Using the MRC CensorTrack.org database, MRC Free Speech America found that Big Tech collectively silenced 689 accounts or posts from users who dared critique the left’s “transgender” narrative between June 10, 2022 and June 9, 2023. That’s a 359% increase from the year before when platforms censored users 192 times between June 10, 2021 and June 9, 2022. The overwhelming majority of this year’s cases (635 of 689, or 92%) were a result of Twitter censorship.
The platform silenced mothers concerned about children being indoctrinated by the left’s woke, “transgender” narrative and detransitioned women sounding the alarm about the horrific reality of medical transition. The platform also halted users from exposing which children’s hospitals offered transition treatments to minors.
[...]
Obviously, Twitter, although the primary culprit, is not the only platform with a censorship problem. Video platforms particularly targeted those attempting to share their personal experiences with gender “transition.”
Pariseau didn't mention that those transphobic attacks on chidren's hospital resulted in violent threats against them, nor did she explain how being transgender is an "ideology." She also didn't disclose that McLaughlin & Associates is a right-wing pollster best known for doing polls for Donald Trump's 2020 campaign with whom ther MRC worked to manufacture a narrative that the 2020 election was "stolen" from Trump.
