Topic: Media Research Center
There was a lot of unfavorable news regarding Elon Musk and Twitter (well, X) in recent weeks:
- Musk rushed to the defense of credibly accused rapist, sexual assaulter and groomer Russell Brand.
- In yet another attack on George Soros, Musk spread the racist right-wing "great replacement theory," which posits that nefarious interests (i.e., Soros and Democrats) want to replace white people in the U.S. with non-white immigrants.
- He helped incite harassment and death threats on a Las Vegas neswpaper and its journalists by falsely accusing the paper of hiding that the death of a bicycle rider killed after being hit by a car was intentionally caused.
- He smeared tech journalist Kara Swisher, blaming her for the disastrous performance of Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino in an interview at a Swisher-hosted tech conference.
- Musk was sued for defamation by a man whom he falsely described as a federal agent posing as a neo-Nazi (the man is actually Jewish).
Rather than tell its readers about any of this -- even though it too has defended Russell Brand and has insisted that replacement theory isn't racist or a conspiracy theory -- the Media Research Center instead was annoyed that Musk wasn't letting anti-trans hate spread on Twitter even more than it already does. After vicious homophobe Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok complained that her hate wasn't spreading, Musk was compelled to respond, as Tom Olohan stated in an Sept. 28 post:
After the woman behind Libs of TikTok uncovered inexplicable censorship of content on the X platform, owner Elon Musk promised to look into it.
Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik wrote in a post on Thursday that X (formerly known as Twitter) would not run ads on posts that contained words such as “Gr**m*er”, “Dr*g qu**n”, “In*0c**ce/in*0ce*t”, “Tr*ns” and even “Am*n”, but would run ads on her posts if she self-censored. Later that day, X owner Musk mentioned her by name and promised to cut that list down to size. Musk said in a video, “There’s a list, I think, Chaya Raichik was pointing out. Like, the system, you know, and I have looked at this list. And some of the terms on the list, I’m like, ‘Look, if that’s a bad word, I clearly need to look up, ge Urban Dictionary or something,’ you know, because that one I didn’t realize was a bad word. So that list needs to be trimmed. That’s the, sort of, not safe for advertising list.”
[...]
Immediately preceding these remarks, Musk strongly suggested that much of the current censorship that occurs on his platform is a holdover from the past Twitter regime that is being eradicated. “We do lots of dumb things, but these dumb things, you know, as the saying goes, ‘One should not attribute to malice that which easily can be explained by incompetence,’” Musk added before discussing demonetization. “We do lots of foolish things, but, and we want to fix that. And a bunch of these foolish things have been in place for a decade, you know, and I can’t fix them all at once. And we are fixing them.”
Noting that both Elon Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino have embraced the expression “freedom of speech, not of reach,” MRC Vice President Dan Schneider challenged Musk to go further, “How about instead of trimming the list of unacceptable words, you just protect all constitutionally-protected speech?”
Olohan added that "Previously, Musk has reversed the platform's bans on 'deadnaming' and 'misgendering' two leftist words used to describe telling the truth about 'transgender' individuals." If Ohohan is putting "transgender" in scare quotes, he clearly doesn't care about truth.
Because Musk cares so much about gaining the approval of right-wing haters and extremists, he acquiesced to Raichik's demands, which Olohan gushed over in a post the next day:
After promising to take action against demonetized terms on his platform, X owner Elon Musk ended censorship of several key words the next day.
Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik posted on Sept. 29 that seven out of ten of the demonetized words she discovered on a day prior no longer triggered post demonetization. Words like drag queen, groomer, innocence, innocent, LGBTQ, police, non-binary and Amen no longer result in post demonetization, but trans and ugly will, noted Raichik. However, Musk promised Friday to end the demonetization of tweets with the word(s): trans, transgender and ugly.
Musk, who thanked Raichik for flagging the censorship, addressed the censorship issue in his posts and during a discussion hosted by The Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro, where he said that the list of demonetized terms found by Raichik should be “trimmed.” He also suggested that these shadowbanned words were an example of “foolish things” from the past that his employees were in the process of fixing.
In an article published Thursday evening, Raichik discussed her discovery and broke down why the terms were demonetized. Raichik pointed out that drag queen, groomer, innocence, and innocent were likely demonetized to disincentivize conservative organizing against gender theory in schools and children at drag queen events.
Or, you know, it could be about disincentivizing vicious and irrational right-wing hatred of anyone who's not a heterosexual. Olohan and Raichik don't seem to consider that possibility.
In another Sept. 29 post, Luis Cornelio cheered how Musk opened the door to even more election misinformation on Twitter by firing much of its election integrity team, under the sneering headline "Bye Felicia!":
X owner Elon Musk announced he was doing away with part of his platform’s infamous “election integrity” team—sort of.
According to The Information on Sept. 27, the social media platform reportedly ousted five anti-free speech activists from its contentious election integrity team. Musk took to Twitter to react to the reports, confirming that the individuals were “gone.”
Among those affected by the purge was notorious disinformation chief Aaron Rodericks who came under fire last month in mid-August for undermining Musk’s promise to protect free speech.
Cornelio didn't explain how lies and disinformation equaled "free speech." Instead, he whined that Yaccarino "chimed in to dispel rumors that the company was completely getting rid of the group, effectively dousing pro-free speech advocates with a bucket of cold water":
Yaccarino warned that the best of their election integrity — whatever that means — is yet to come. “It’s an issue we take very seriously,” she claimed while speaking at a conference hosted by leftist outlet Vox. “And contrary to the comments that were made, there is a robust and growing team at X that is wrapping their arms around election integrity.”
The election integrity faction at X first came under scrutiny after political commentator Kristen Ruby found that X — under Rodericks’ oversight — sought to hire new disinformation experts, marking what Foundation For Freedom Online executive director Mike Benz described as a “new crop of censorship shills.”
Again, Cornelio wouldn't explain how trying to stop lies and misinformation is "censorship." Does he think lies and misinformation must never be fact-checked or criticized?
