ELON MUSK has caused a lot of noise last week when he released secret information about Twitter’s activities regarding elections and censorship. It’s too early to guess what this information will lead to, but from what I can tell, it has made a lot of people very angry, including some powerful people in power, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Most of the information involves the 2020 US presidential election, particularly news involving the shady dealings of Hunter Biden (President Biden’s son), but they’re not the only one.
In one tweet, Musk wrote, “I’ve seen a lot of concerning tweets about the recent Brazil election. If those tweets are accurate, it’s possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left-wing candidates.”
I personally don’t think this will cause any major changes, nor will there be prosecutions in the United States or any other country mentioned in the leaks. It will, however, further erode social trust among people targeted by Twitter’s censorship, which is quite a lot.
The leaks will prove to them what they already know: That certain powerful groups outsourced their censorship to Twitter and social media companies because they couldn’t do it legally, because of that pesky freedom of speech.
For countries that are concerned about the influence of social media on election and political discourse, Elon Musk’s leaks matter. It reveals factions with certain interests which push to censor certain views with the goal of “fortifying” elections and censoring certain sections of public debate.
Social media is soft power, and what Musk has done has removed a portion of that soft power from those who had an informal access to it.
For Filipinos, just remember that what the Pre-Musk Twitter has done to political discourse in other countries can be used on us, too. What they did to other elections can be done here, too. They are already doing it to some extent, but even more important, it reveals how they frame political reality through control and censorship./PN
