Elon Musk is a risk-taker who changed the car industry against the odds, and the indications are that he will also try to change Twitter’s business model. He claims he wants to make it a platform for ‘free speech’ and that too many opinions have been restrained.
More opinions means more advertising revenue and the concern is that relaxing rules in this digital wild west will mean even more hate speech. Musk had to reassure advertisers by saying he wanted Twitter to be ‘welcoming’ and not a ‘free-for-all hellscape.’ His mixed messages have caused speculation.
Like traditional media, social media is a channel that can transport useful ideas or deadly ones. Given the antisemitic heritage of western culture, it is unsurprising that new tech for creating content led to antisemitic material pouring out.
Over 500 years ago the new tech of the printing press was introduced and created the roadmap to the Holocaust. Protestant reformer Martin Luther’s popular 1543 pamphlet ‘On Jews and their lies’ inspired Kristallnacht. Left-wing journalist Georges Dairnvaell’s 1846 Rothschild conspiracy pamphlet helped create Nazi propaganda, and the Russian Tsarist ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ in 1903 helped define Nazi ideology.
But social media is even more powerful than the printing press because it is instant, global and anyone can create content. It is also more accessible - almost everyone has a smartphone.
A 2021 analysis by the Woolf Institute, Community Service Trust and Antisemitism Policy Trust showed that every year UK users on Twitter are exposed to double the number of antisemitic tweets than there are British Jews. We know that what happens online doesn’t stay online - it powers contemporary antisemitism. For example, the deluge of hate against Jews in the summer of 2021 was incited on social media and the myth about Jewish power repackaged as activism. A report by the Anti Defamation League showed more than 17,000 tweets used variations of the phrase ‘Hitler was right’ in just one week.
Elon Musk is known for being the unpredictable billionaire who posts provocative tweets, such as challenging Putin to a dual over Ukraine and comparing Trudeau to Hitler. In 2018 Tesla investors even told him to ‘shut up’.
He bought Twitter in the wake of antisemitic comments by Kanye West, who he has been friendly with since 2011 and called his biggest inspiration. Then, after Hilary Clinton denounced the conspiracy theories which emboldened a QAnon adherent to assault US politician Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer, Musk replied by posting a conspiracy theory claiming the victim played a role. He tweeted this from a site that had previously claimed Hilary Clinton was dead and had been replaced by a body double. He was widely condemned for it, as he was in 2020 for spreading coronavirus misinformation.
It’s almost as though Musk is keen for society to regress back into hearsay and conflict. He says he wants civilisation to have a ‘digital town square’ but I’m not sure I want him as the mayor. I think of him as someone like a Bond villain rather than the face of content moderation. Proposed UK, US and European regulations for social media platforms cannot arrive soon enough.
Social media is rife with conspiracy theories, and antisemitism is the conspiracy theory to rule them all. The prospect of more of this being unleashed is terrifying.
Since Elon Musk took over, basketball star LeBron James has voiced concerns about the sharp rise in racism, General Motors said they will pause advertising to asses the situation and the EU commissioner warned Musk to “fly by our rules”.
Are Elon Musk’s tweets an alarm bell? Time will tell.
