With the benefit of ample hindsight, it has come to feel inevitable that
Twitter would turn into a cesspool of abuse and misinformation and that the
powerful — governments, politicians, corporations, celebrities — would find
ways to control and manipulate it to their own benefit.
اضافة اعلان
But as I have
watched the platform descend into chaos over the past couple of weeks, I have
been thinking a lot about how being on Twitter felt back in May 2009, when I
arrived in India as a correspondent for the New York Times. I had signed up for
an account about six months earlier, but it was not until I landed in Delhi
that I truly understood the platform’s potential.
Twitter was an
intoxicating window into my fascinating new assignment. Long suppressed groups
found their voices and social media-driven revolutions began to unfold.
Movements against corruption gained steam and brought real change. Outrage over
a horrific gang rape in Delhi built a movement to fight an epidemic of sexual
violence.
“What we didn’t
realize — because we took it for granted for so long — is that most people
spoke with a great deal of freedom, and completely unconscious freedom,” said
Nilanjana Roy, a writer who was part of my initial group of Twitter friends in
India.
“You could
criticize the government, debate certain religious practices. It seems unreal
now.”
Soon enough,
other kinds of underrepresented voices also started to appear on — and then
dominate — the platform. As women, Muslims, and people from lower castes spoke
out, the inevitable backlash came. Supporters of the conservative opposition
party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and their right-wing religious allies felt
that they had long been ignored by the mainstream press. Now they had the
chance to grab the mic.
And grab it they
did. By 2014, when the BJP first won national elections, driven in no small
part by its innovative use of social media to tap into middle-class discontent
with the status quo, Indian Twitter was well on its way to becoming one of the
world’s most vitriolic online spaces, filled with ad hominem attacks and
incitements to violence. And having used social media so adroitly to win power,
the new government realized that controlling platforms like Twitter would be
crucial to suppressing dissent.
Into this stew
steps Elon Musk.
In buying
Twitter, Musk has garbed himself as a free-speech warrior. He had been deeply
critical of the company’s content moderation decisions, the most controversial
of which was blocking Donald Trump from the platform after the January 6 attack
on the Capitol.
Viewed from the
US, these skirmishes over the unaccountable power of tech platforms seem like a
central battleground of free speech. But the real threat in much of the world
is not the policies of social media companies, but of governments.
Nowhere is that
clearer than in India, where before Musk’s acquisition Twitter had been
fighting a legal battle to protect its users from government censorship. The
real question now is if Musk’s commitment to “free speech” extends beyond
conservatives in America and to the billions of people in the Global South who
rely on the internet for open communication.
Last month,
Freedom House released its annual report on freedom on the internet. Allie
Funk, one of the researchers who wrote the report, told me that while much of
the focus has been on countries like China, which overtly restricts access to
huge swathes of the internet, the real war over the future of internet freedom
is being waged in what she called “swing states”, big, fragile democracies like
India.
As Twitter plunges into ever more mayhem under Musk’s erratic management, the big question is whether it will survive at all.
The winning side
will not be decided in Silicon Valley or Beijing, the two poles around which
debate over free expression on the internet have largely orbited. It will be
the actions of governments in capitals like Abuja, Jakarta, Ankara, Brasília
and New Delhi.
Across the
world, countries are putting in place frameworks that on their face seem
designed to combat online abuse and misinformation, but are largely used to
stifle dissent or enable abuse of the enemies of those in power.
“Some laws are
introduced with good faith to tackle disinformation and harassment,” Funk said.
“But other
governments are passing laws just to increase their power over speech online
and to force companies to be an extension of state surveillance.”
For example:
requiring companies to house their servers locally rather than abroad, which
can make them more vulnerable to government surveillance.
Over the summer,
when Musk was still trying to wriggle out of buying Twitter, his lawyers filed
a countersuit against the company that included a grab-bag of justifications
for scuttling the deal. One of the claims went largely unnoticed in the US but
caught my eye: his lawyers argued that Twitter had engaged in “risky litigation
against the Indian government”, and put one of the largest markets in jeopardy.
Twitter had
indeed sued the Indian government in July — and for good reasons. In 2021,
India had created a raft of rules that gave the government much more power to
order technology platforms to remove content on command, and also hold employees
of tech platforms criminally liable for speech that appears on their services.
Exactly the kind of laws Funk was referring to.
India’s
government had demanded that Twitter block tweets and accounts from a variety
of journalists, activists and politicians. The company went to court, arguing
that these demands went beyond the law and into censorship. Now Twitter’s
potential new owner was casting doubt on whether the company should be defying
government demands that muzzle freedom of expression.
Maybe Musk was
just trying to escape a purchase that he knew would be disastrous. (And it
certainly has been disastrous, at least so far.) But it seems that this is
actually what he believes. In April, he tweeted: “By ‘free speech’, I simply
mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond
the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws
to that effect. Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the
people.”
Musk is either
exceptionally naïve or willfully ignorant about the relationship between
government power and free speech, especially in fragile democracies. That
should worry anyone who cares about the future of free expression on the
internet for billions of people. The combination of a rigid commitment to
following national laws and a hands-off approach to content moderation is
combustible and highly dangerous.
Independent
journalism is increasingly under threat in India. Much of the mainstream press
has been neutered by a mix of intimidation and conflicts of interests, created
by the sprawling conglomerates and powerful families that control much of
Indian media. Like the US, India has a big election coming up in 2024.
Preserving a free and open public square for debate will be critical to
protecting India’s democracy.
Twitter has
historically fought against censorship. Whether that will continue under Musk
seems very much a question. The Indian government has reasons to expect
friendly treatment: Musk’s company Tesla has been trying to enter the Indian
car market for some time, but in May it hit an impasse in negotiations with the
government over tariffs and other issues. India’s Economic Times reported last
month that one of Musk’s other companies, SpaceX, would seek government permission
to offer its Starlink satellite internet service there.
As Twitter
plunges into ever more mayhem under Musk’s erratic management, the big question
is whether it will survive at all. I hope it does.
Social media have
absolutely deepened polarization and abetted extremism across the globe. But
they did so by breaking sclerotic and easily manipulated monopolies on speech.
Musk is right that the world needs a digital public square; unfortunately, he
seems to have little idea that creating one involves balancing free speech
against abuse, misinformation and government overreach. Twitter had just barely
managed to get the hang of that difficult, important work in the past couple of
years. Musk has left little doubt that rather than continue that work, he would
rather burn it all down.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
