It is undeniable that Elon Musk controls Twitter. Musk fired three top executives in his first action as the “Chief Twit.” The quick notification that their services were no longer needed was given to CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. It makes sense that way. Why continue to employ the individuals who brought Twitter to the point where Musk felt obligated to take over?
But everyone is talking about the third now-retired executive. The head of legal policy, trust, and safety at Twitter, Vijaya Gadde, was told to leave. Given that Ms. Gadde has been referred to as Twitter’s chief censor, this is noteworthy.
She was the one who ultimately decided to take Donald Trump off the stage. She was also in charge of the most egregious case of electoral meddling in recent American history—the choice to suppress, ban, and remove the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The Babylon Bee’s account was suspended as a result of a sarcastic joke regarding a government official and Gadde’s policies. She also implemented policies that resulted in the suspension of thousands, if not millions, of other accounts for making jokes that were similar or for expressing viewpoints or claims that disagreed with the orthodoxy established by her office, informed by her peers in Silicon Valley, the legal profession, and occasionally at the direction of the Biden White House.
As stated in the business strategy and goal statement of the organization that generously compensated her, her policies and conduct were detrimental to free expression and the free exchange of ideas.
The most convincing proof that Musk wants to uphold his free speech commitments from when he initially declared his plan to acquire the company is the fact that he fired her.
Gadde’s supporters are already vocal in their opposition to her firing, arguing that having her in the C-Suite of the massive social platform helped to keep website visitors “secure.” Gadde’s position as head of legal policy, trust, and safety even suggests from her title that her responsibility was to ensure the users of her company’s product were safe.
Just bizarre, this. also a falsehood
To be clear, Twitter is not a flight service. Their product cannot possibly be used in a way that causes personal injury. When used in the context of describing policies for a website where millions of users exchange paragraphs with one another and the rest of the world, the word “safety” is strange and deceptive.
The term “unsafe Tweeting” does not exist.
Though formerly exclusive to the campuses of America’s liberal arts universities, the idea that “words are violence” has now permeated the top levels of corporate America. The firm had to give Ms. Gadde the authority to “offer safety” for people who couldn’t handle competing opinions… or even jokes—because of the false claim that “your Tweets brutally damaged me,” which was typically made by left-leaning Tweeters.
However, it would be too simple to dismiss Gadde’s propensity for biased filtering as simply an excessive desire to “protect” snowflake liberals from reading hurtful Tweets. Oh, how I wish that were the case.
For someone as educated as Gadde, safety was never the real focus of this.
The justification that “words are violence” was only ever intended to assure a one-sided discussion on the platform through emotional manipulation.
Because it would seriously hurt Joe Biden’s chances of winning the 2020 race (and, even worse, help Donald Trump’s), they would never be able to get away with suppressing the Hunter Biden story in the New York Post. They were forced to justify their filtering as a patriotic effort to counter Russian disinformation.
Censors never explain to you why they are silencing you in full. They must always justify their dictatorial behavior in terms of virtue. They’re acting to keep you and other people safe.
The left played it since that was the game, of course. They did have home field advantage, after all.
Trump must be suspended in order to prevent additional people from dying since his refusal to concede the victory sparked violence that resulted in injuries and fatalities.
The Bee must be halted in order to protect the lives of anonymous transgender people who might harm themselves since it is claimed that transgender people are more likely to commit acts of self-harm and that jokes (based on biological fact) are damaging to them.
But of course, none of this is true. No actual threat ever existed. People don’t need to be shielded from ideas or language. In a free society, no conversation is “hazardous.”
Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is the world’s largest state-sponsor of terrorism, and Gadde’s moral compass was so damaged that she justified the silence of voices on her platform by labeling them “right-wing, domestic terrorists.” She also maintained an account featuring his hateful rants.
In the eyes of Gadde, Twitter, and the American left, people who wear MAGA hats are terrorists whose voices must be suppressed in order to prevent them from inflicting actual, physical harm on unwitting readers, whereas Iran’s blood-soaked murderous mullahs are merely eccentric, fanatical clerics. They can tweet.
Gadde has left. The deceptive tool that “words are violence” should also be eliminated from Twitter’s policies and procedures.
Freedom should ring. That is not risky in any way.
