November 20, 2022
Time for celebration, Donald Trump's famous account restored on Twitter
By
Rajan Laad
It all began the day before yesterday, when Twitter's new boss Elon Musk announced the platform's new policy.
Musk
claimed that the policy is 'freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.'
He further expounded that ‘negative/hateful’ tweets will be ‘deboosted’ and demonetized; also there would be no advertisement or other revenue to Twitter for such tweets. He added that unless Twitter users specifically seek those ‘negative/hateful’ tweets out, they won’t find them.
This is deeply troubling because the definition of hatefulness is subjective. The definition of negative is even murkier and will differ from person to person. Musk seems to be repeating the blunders committed by the former management of Twitter by allowing subjective preference to be the criteria to allow or disallow speech.
Musk may claim that the speech is allowed, it's just that certain tweets will be ‘deboosted.’ Deboosting seems like a euphemism for suppression.