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I appeared on “The ReidOut” with Joy and my NBC News colleague Brandy Zadrozny earlier this week to discuss the proliferation of misinformation and propaganda across social media — particularly, the Elon Musk-owned X.
I’m a true fan and avid follower of Brandy’s work. As someone very concerned about the potential for a dystopian future brought about by Big Tech, I find her reporting on disinformation and the bad actors behind it to be heroic. On Monday’s show, she was highlighting a story she wrote about how a handful of X accounts are dominating users’ feeds when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war, as well as Musk’s role in the platform’s current state.
Friday will mark the one-year anniversary of Musk’s official acquisition of the site formerly known as Twitter. The platform had many problems prior to Musk’s takeover, but he seems to have accelerated its demise.
So I wanted to compile a quick “year in review.” I’ve been open about my belief that some of the wealthiest tech executives in the world are at war for the public’s attention. In my view, Musk has illustrated the harmful influence that a maniacal social media mogul can have over free and civil dialogue.
Here’s a glance at the mess Musk has made:
- He helped spread misinformation about the violent attack on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their San Francisco home.
- He tried — and failed — to prove that Twitter, under its previous leadership, had suppressed conservative voices and engaged in election interference with the federal government.
- He has suspended the accounts of journalists who cover the platform.
- He has helped foreign governments, including Turkey and India, censor content.
- He has overseen a spike in hate speech on the platform under the guise that he’s a “free speech absolutist.”
- He overturned Donald Trump’s suspension from the platform, which had been imposed after the then-president used it to foment an insurrection on Jan. 6.
- He helped promote a once-banned parody account impersonating Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
- He engaged in discussions about banning the Jewish-led Anti-Defamation League from the platform, threatened to sue the group for “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic,” and blamed the ADL for the site’s loss of ad revenue.
- He has sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a group that monitors hate speech on social media.
- He gutted his platform’s election integrity team, which devises ways to combat election-related misinformation, ahead of crucial elections around the world in 2024.
On top of all that, X appears to be burning through investors’ money at a rapid pace.
It seems safe to say the platform has become a burden of some sort for nearly everyone involved with it.