Due to the revelations in the Twitter Files, we now know how a small group of influential people with a shared progressive agenda restrict and control the flow of information to further their goals.
No new information has been uncovered from the Twitter Files. There is no bombshell information concerning political campaigns manipulating the government or censorship. All they do is make public the company’s internal discussions about how to approach difficult problems in a way that is in line with its core principles.
Assuming the first paragraph is accurate would make you part of a huge right-wing conspiracy to undermine our democracy. You’re a blind follower of the elite left-wing ideologues destroying our democracy if you believe the second.
If you believe both of these, then you are correct. You have an extraordinary mind for reading.
We should embrace Elon Musk’s attempt at transparency, in contrast to the majority of the media, which has chosen to ignore or mock it. When a powerful firm makes its internal records on critical matters available for study and publication by journalists, many journalists express disgust, which is a telling reflection of the state of modern media.
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However, I do have one criticism: rather than having the released information intermediated in ways that have enabled detractors to cry foul, it would have been preferable to be fully transparent and publish as many of the original documents as possible with context. Using Twitter’s “handling” of explicit photos of Hunter Biden as evidence of political bias rather than as enforcement of legitimate standards about privacy and decency undermines the bigger case and allows critics to dismiss the exercise as itself politically driven.
As a traditionalist, I think it’s important to be able to see behind the scenes of a powerful organization. True, these disclosures don’t tell us much we didn’t already know or assume; nonetheless, it now appears that Twitter’s past assertions that it engaged in shadow banning—quietly suppressing the propagation of particular users’ tweets—were, at best, an instance of being economical with the facts.
However, the records are not without value; they reveal insight into the thought processes of individuals who determine which voices are heard and which are silenced in public debate. There were some doubters within the firm, but ultimately most of the major decisions went as expected.
This reveals a disturbing epistemic disparity between progressive ideologues and the rest of us, revealing how our cultural elites approach knowledge.
It’s not that the heads of major media and internet companies, editors, reporters, and coders actively push their ideological nostrums, aware of and working to vanquish rival ideas. A lot worse, in fact. Executives at Twitter with Orwellian titles like “head of trust and safety,” at NBC as “disinformation” and “extremism” reporters, and at the New York Times responsible with imposing intellectual homogeneity aren’t just pushing a view of the world that they support.
You are spreading the One True Faith, a set of orthodoxies from which there can be no genuine dissent, which is a far more essential and effective endeavor.
The disparity manifests itself as follows: Most conservatives, and especially those with an interest in learning, would disagree. Someone who disagrees with them on an issue like immigration restrictions, the appropriate level of taxation, or the justification for affirmative action is not in their eyes expressing a demonstrably wrong and inherently illegitimate stance. People who hold these views consider the opinions of their opponents to be incorrect and the result of faulty reasoning or the use of faulty evidence. But they don’t believe there’s a single correct viewpoint and that any opposition is logically impossible, intellectually dishonest, and morally repugnant.
On the other hand, here is the thought process on the left. This is why they can regulate what people can see without guidance from the government or the public. They rule by virtue of being the rulers. When they do things, it makes me think of the clerisy’s pre-Enlightenment certainties. Their ethical and normative understanding of knowledge drives them to reject, silence, and eradicate heresy.
We media types give Twitter way too much credit, and I’m guilty of doing the same. Despite our fixation on its decisions to support or suppress certain individuals or groups, its actions have relatively little bearing on the daily decisions of the average American. It’s a private firm, thus it has the right to behave as it pleases within the bounds of free market principles.
However, these discoveries are not significant because of what they reveal about Twitter. Why do they matters so much? Because they reveal the views of an entire generation of influential individuals on what constitutes knowledge, truth, and opinion.
But that’s not all! When should citizens use FOIA to request records from their government? Shouldn’t all government records be open to the public, barring those that need to be kept secret? The idea that those who can tax, regulate, imprison, and execute others are able to do it anonymously and unaccountably is chilling. Perhaps the Founding Fathers erred by leaving out an amendment guaranteeing government transparency, which would have helped rein in the bureaucracy.
