Elon Musk caused a major disruption when he bought Twitter for $44 billion.
But his ownership of the platform has not been smooth sailing.
And Musk is under fire after his CEO made one statement.
Elon Musk decided to take a step back from the daily operation of Twitter, which he inexplicably rebranded as X, to focus on his other companies.
In his stead entered Linda Yaccarino, a former NBC Universal executive.
Many were skeptical of the hire because of Yaccarino’s past dealing with “woke” initiatives.
And that skepticism only grew when Yaccarino announced that the company would be ramping up the practice of shadow-banning in adherence with its new speech policy.
This was always a worry
During an interview with CNBC, Yaccarino stated, “We have built brand safety and content moderation tools that have never existed before at this company. And we’ve introduced a new policy to your specific point about hate speech called ‘freedom of speech, not reach.’ So if you’re going to post something that’s illegal or against the law, you’re gone. Zero tolerance. But more importantly, if you’re going to post something that is lawful but it’s awful, you get labeled, you get de-amplified, which means it cannot be shared, and it is certainly demonetized, back to your direct point about brand safety. So they are protected from the risk of being next to that content. And it’s also why it’s really important to note that once a post is labeled and it can’t be shared and the user sees that, 30% of the time they take it down themselves. Staggeringly, they take it down. And that reducing that hateful content from being seen is one of the best examples of how X is committed to encouraging healthy behavior online. And today, I can confidently sit in front of you and say that 99.9% of all posted impressions are healthy.”
CNBC’s Sara Eisen asked, “How do you define healthy, though? Is porn healthy? Are conspiracy theories healthy?”
Yaccarino responded, “If it is lawful but awful, it is extraordinarily difficult for you to see it.”
CEO statement seems to echo Musk position on restoring Alex Jones account
Musk has been under pressure from advertisers in his attempt to make the platform profitable, but that mission is in conflict with his goal of allowing Twitter to be a free speech platform.
He also pointedly refused to restore the account of Jones last November when users petitioned for the controversial commentator’s return to Twitter, tweeting flatly “No.”
Twitter’s new speech policies will certainly be under the microscope moving forward.
Only establishment liberals want to go back to the old Twitter regime of mass censorship.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
