The Media Research Center has a history of ignoring bad news about Elon Musk and Twitter, but if it must be addressed, their goal is to find a way to dismiss it. And so it was with the swift emergence of Threads as a Twitter competitor. Autumn Johnson was dismissive of Threads in a July 6 post, largely because it is trying to do something about hate and misinformation:
Meta’s new “text-based conversation app” seeks to challenge Elon Musk’s Twitter in the next battle in the war between the Big Tech social media platforms.
The new app, Threads, debuted Wednesday appearing on Apple’s App Store. The app will link to Instagram, Meta’s photo-sharing app. “Whether you’re a creator or a casual poster, Threads offers a new, separate space for real-time updates and public conversations. We are working toward making Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks that we believe can shape the future of the internet,” reads the Meta announcement blog.
“First tech titan owners challenged each other to a real-life, MMA-style brawl,” said MRC Free Speech America Director Michael Morris, “but now it appears that battle has returned to the digital octagon. In one corner, we have the Twitter owner who purchased the platform and appears to be pushing Silicon Valley toward free speech in what he called the ‘digital town square.’ And in the other corner, we have the Meta owner who once promoted the notion of free speech at Georgetown University but continues to wield a massive censorship hammer to crush user speech online. Musk should continue leaning into free speech to provide an alternative to censorship, and since Zuckerberg seems so keen on copying Musk’s moves, he should make a move to his previous pro-free speech ways.”
Johnson acknowledged that Musk made missteps that opened up the opportunity for Threads, but she also made sure to attack the competition (and dishonestly framing Musk’s refusal to stop hate and misinformation on Twitter as being “pro-free speech”)
The new Meta app is looking to capitalize on rival Twitter’s conversation-based design and potentially win over new users, especially since some of Musk’s recent pro-free speech changes at Twitter have appeared to enrage some on the left. Recent quota limitations for nonsubscribers, a temporary block on unregistered users and an upcoming TweetDeck paywall have also seemingly opened the way for Thread’s launch.
But Threads’ reputation is already under fire as a data security hazard, as TechCrunch has labeled the new app a “privacy nightmare.”
When Musk decided to change the name of Twitter to X for no apparent reason other than he always wanted to run a company named X, Johnson expressed concern on a July 25 post:
Elon Musk purchased Twitter under the auspice of maintaining free speech in a global town square, but amid news of a company rebrand, could the platform’s other anti-free speech policies and questionable leadership appointments taint Musk’s initial vision?
“It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” Yaccarino tweeted. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”
Although Musk himself has called for a pause in artificial intelligence development, according to Yaccarino, the new Twitter brand will be powered by it.
Johnson then huffed about “recent anti-free speech policy developments under Musk” that purportedly “paint a bleaker picture of his commitment to his original pro-free speech vision”:
For example, Musk pushed forward with the troubling Twitter Community Notes, which are a crowdsourced alternative to professional fact-checking. And while some on the right appear to like the results better, the warning labels are still a form of censorship, albeit by a different name.
In November of last year, Musk described the social media platform’s speech policy as “freedom of speech, not reach,” implying some would be censored for certain views vaguely described as “hate speech.”
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach,” he tweeted at the time. “Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
It should be noted that Musk’s comments seem to mirror views expressed by [Twitter founder Jack] Dorsey.
We’ve noted how the MRC loved Community Notes when liberals were fact-checked under it, but decided it was “censorship” when conservatives were targeted.
Despite all the fretting, the MRC continued to default to Musk-fluffing. A July 20 post complained that one of the MRC’s most hated reporters pointed out how Musk’s Twitter is paying far-right influencers:
The Washington Post cry-bully Taylor Lorenz did not hold back her extreme leftist complaining about Twitter’s new influencer payment program paying conservatives as well as liberals, and Twitter users did not hold back their criticism of her.
In a hysterically biased article published July 13, Lorenz lamented that “the first beneficiaries” of Twitter’s payment program “appear to be high-profile far-right influencers.” Lorenz further claimed, without evidence, that Twitter was “bribing” users to stay on the platform. Lorenz’s hissy fit came as many prominent Twitter users began to publicize their earnings. Lorenz’s article attempted to mislead its readers by completely ignoring the leftist Twitter users who also received payments from the social media giant. It wasn’t long, however, before she got caught.
Prominent Twitter users, including leftist journalists Ed and Brian Krassenstein, took to Twitter to call out Lorenz’s complaints as detailed in The Post article. “This article was very bad reporting on behalf of the Washington Post and Taylor Lorenz, and that’s coming from someone who normally likes the WaPo,” said Ed Krassenstein, known for his tirades against Republicans, on July 14. Brian Krassenstein echoed his brother’s remarks, saying, “You might be reading the Washington Post article by Taylor Lorenz and be thinking, ‘But Brian Krassenstein made $24k from Elon and he’s not far right’. All I can say is… I work out”.
Twitter owner and CTO Elon Musk had a short but sweet reaction to Lorenz’s piece on Twitter. “Liar Lorenz,” he tweeted in reply to the article’s headline. Twitter user End Wokeness also responded to Lorenz’s tantrum, tweeting: “Looks like we triggered Taylor Lorenz.”
Schau failed to mention that one of the far-right influencers cited by Lorenz as a beneficiary of Musk’s largesse is Andrew Tate, recently arrested on rape and human trafficking charges.
P.J. Gladnick parroted the MRC’s dishonest framing of content moderation of falsehoods and misinformation as “censorship” in a July 21 post:
It’s not hard to figure out what is keeping USA Today “domestic security correspondent: Josh Meyer awake at night. The gnawing fear that a lack of censorship could lead to disinformation being spread during the 2024 election. This is reflected in his sprawling 2,618-word USA Today article on Wednesday, “Amid Elon Musk’s Twitter changes, why 2024 presidential election threats now pose bigger risk.”
Their shortened version of the headline: “The 2024 election on Twitter: Are Elon Musk’s changes posing a danger?”
What is the danger? “Misinformation,” according to nebulous unnamed “lawmakers and regulators, former Twitter executives, national security officials and other analysts.”
[…]Of course, “misinformation” and “disinformation” often means just information that liberals and their media stenographers want to keep from the public. A two-sided exchange of information is “divisive.”
The biggest throbbing example of this is the Hunter Biden laptop that was labeled as “disinformation” by 51 former intelligence officials which was used as justification to censor the New York Post story on this topic in the middle of the 2020 election. And yet despite this example of how censorship was used as a form of election interference, Meyer makes it clear that he wants to continue this odious process.
As we’ve pointed out, there was no reason to take the Hunter laptop story at face value given the partisan forces promoting it — including the Rupert Murdoch-owned pro-Trump New York Post, which failed to offer any independent verification of the laptop that might have alleviated such concerns.