TheQuartering [10/20/2022]
On Friday night, Elon Musk took to Twitter to seemingly decide whether or not to reinstate Trump. In a Twitter poll, he simply posted “Reinstate former President Trump” with “Yes” or “No” as an option for users to click. At the time of this article, the tweet had more than 500,000 votes in minutes.
Unsurprisingly, Musk is coming up with new rules for Twitter faster than the kid in class who loves cheating at Uno.
On Friday, the Chief Twit announced new rules about “negative/hate tweets,” and that he’d allow Kathy Griffin, conservative satirical outlet The Babylon Bee, and Jordan Peterson, back on the app — but that a decision had “not yet been made” about Donald Trump’s return to the bird app. (Musk, however, stated simply “No” when asked if Alex Jones would be reinstated on Twitter as well.)
“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter,” Musk tweeted. “You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”
He followed it with a tweet about the “reinstatement” of some suspended accounts, while misspelling both Griffin — who was banned for making fun of Musk and his Twitter Blue initiative — and Peterson, who was banned for being transphobic about Elliot Page.
Understandably, his replies were filled with questions about what these new rules would look like. “Tf is a negative tweet,” replied Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein. “And who decides what constitutes said ‘negative’ tweet?” asked Fred Joseph. “Especially seeing as you’re a fan of things that are deeply problematic.”
Muske previously said that he’d allow Donald Trump back on the app, saying it was a “mistake” to ban him. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” he said upon purchasing the platform earlier this year. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
The news about the new “hate/negative comment” rules comes as all Twitter offices were closed following Musk’s layoffs and the mass resignation of employees.
Musk asked Twitter employees to either commit to an “extremely hardcore” culture at the company that involves “long hours at high intensity” or leave with severance, the Verge reported. Anyone who did not sign the pledge by 5 p.m. ET Thursday would reportedly receive three months of severance pay, The Washington Post reported.