Check out this week's Business Briefs, an encompassing look at top business news this week from the Associated Press, with a special spotlight on national business and the economy.Cesspool or civility? Elon Musk's Twitter at a crossroadsThe discourse was never all that civil on Twitter.
It's one thing for the CEO of Wendy's or Chick-fil-A to endorse a political party, said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who studies social media and politics. It's a whole other thing, though, for the owner of one of the world's most high-profile information ecosystems to do so.
But in their platform policies and content moderation, tech companies such as Facebook , Google and even Twitter have taken great pains to appear politically neutral, even as they are routinely criticized — largely by conservatives but also by liberals — for favoring one side over the other. The suspended accounts include that of Nikolas Ferreira, who garnered more votes in the October race than any other candidate for a seat in the Lower House. According to orders issued by the electoral authority, Ferreira’s account and most others were blocked for sharing a live video from an Argentinian digital influencer questioning the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system.
In early 2016, a tech blog quoted an anonymous former Facebook contractor who said the site downplayed news that conservatives are interested in and artificially boosted liberal issues such as the “BlackLivesMatter” hashtag. The blog did not name the person, and no evidence was provided for their claim.
Musk's tweet garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and many retweets Monday on the day before the final votes are cast in thousands of races around the country. But in replies and retweets, many prominent Twitter personalities expressed criticism for the Tesla CEO — often poking fun at him. For Smith, that's a sign Musk may not quite be a billionaire political kingmaker that some of his peers, like venture capitalist Peter Thiel, are aspiring to be.
The developments are causing concern as the U.S. midterm elections culminate on Tuesday. Though millions of Americans have already cast early and absentee ballots, millions more are expected to go to the polls to cast in-person votes. Election watchers fear the platform may not be equipped to handle hate speech, misinformation that could impact voter safety and security, and actors seeking to cast doubt on the legitimate winners of elections around the country.
Musk gutted teams working on marketing, communications and editorial curation of what people see on Twitter. But his decision to retain most of Twitter’s content moderation team came as a welcome surprise to some inside and outside the company. Musk, after all, promised to let free speech flourish by loosening Twitter's content restrictions and restoring accounts banned for violating those rules. He has also pledged to end the current user verification system in favor of a $7.
Roth has become the public face of Twitter's content moderation since Musk took over and has regularly defended Twitter's ongoing efforts to fight harmful misinformation. Musk, a prolific tweeter with more than 110 million followers, has frequently pointed to Roth's Twitter feed as the most reliable account of the company's adherence to integrity standards.
Franks said there's always been a tension within Twitter and other social media companies between making money and protecting democracy and freedom of expression. She said that's only getting harder under Musk, who has shown Twitter can act quickly in banning a comedian who made fun of him by impersonating his account, but who has otherwise expressed hostility towards Twitter's anti-abuse standards.
In fact, “any name change at all” would compel the temporary loss of a verified checkmark, the world's richest man said. Before the stunt, Bertinelli noted the original purpose of the blue verification checkmark. It was granted free of charge to people whose identity Twitter employees had confirmed; with journalists accounting for a big portion of recipients. “It simply meant your identity was verified. Scammers would have a harder time impersonating you,” Bertinelli noted.The $8 verified accounts are Musk's way of democratizing the service, he claims.