OPINION:
The hyperbole coming out of the left over Elon Musk’s potential purchase of Twitter is proof positive they’re scared witless over the fate of their preferred vehicle for information management. Changes that turn the company on its head may very well be coming.
However, the famously disruptive entrepreneur can’t solve the platform’s biggest problem. He can’t change the tone.
Mr. Musk’s helming of the most impactful social media company in the world, should that come to pass, could have a range of positives. He can use his genius to help eliminate the Russian and Chinese bots that push propaganda that contributes to growing discord. Ending the shadow-banning of conservative voices and the arguably fascist practice of monitoring for terms that offend the political ideology of the company’s staff will send a powerful message to other platforms.
Opening up the algorithm will expose years of sleight of hand and a censorship regime that has tirelessly advanced a left-wing political agenda. Exposing the inner workings of the company may also lay bare coordination between the deep state and Twitter’s censors.
Mr. Musk may want a more open, freewheeling platform, but Twitter has already created an environment too often marked by hate, rage and the worst of humanity. It’s a daunting problem and not even Mr. Musk can make a dent.
Twitter, perhaps more than any other platform, has given agency and influence to people who don’t care about productive discourse. It has given outsized power to the Monday morning quarterback and armchair general. It has become the home of the attention-starved, who crave validation because their lives lack real meaning. It has become a grievance factory that often lacks any substance and proper perspective.
Twitter has become pulp and a platform that feeds the salacious interests of the voyeur. It’s become a place dominated by the far left’s victimhood, moral relativistic culture, devoid of social standards.
The tone is fueling anxiety and mental health issues, according to psychologists. In 2019 a Washington Post headline blared that “Twitter is eroding your intelligence. Now there’s data to prove it,” citing an Italian academic study that found that Twitter not only fails to enhance intellectual attainment but substantially undermines it. The negative impacts of social media on young people are becoming more widely understood.
Big Tech’s oligarchs have often heralded the creation of a truly democratic and inclusive digital town square as justification for their exploits. But that digital town square is a myth. It isn’t a town square any of us would recognize.
In any real town square, you have the cranks and complainers. You have the haters and hyper partisans. You have those who opine to give themselves a false sense of validation. You have those who are ignorant and the self-certified experts of everything. Yes, you even have your drunk or two.
Even at its worst moments, though, the town square is governed by certain basic rules of morality and decorum. Those rules are largely enforced because of the in-person and intimate nature of the old town meeting or local activist group.
Those rules vanish on social media. Basic tenets of human decency have evaporated on Twitter and other social media platforms that are tearing at the fabric of our society.
Twitter may be a medium of the moment, but its power rests in how it drives traditional media and the national dialogue. That clearly cuts both ways. Just ask former President Donald Trump. The biting, intolerant tone of Twitter influences the editorial decisions of newsrooms across the country. It is translated to those mediums and conversations as well.
Just like how a Black woman on the Supreme Court and legal gun control won’t do anything about the streets stained with the blood of urban warfare, a new owner for Twitter won’t fix the cultural rot often encouraged on the platform.
No computer algorithm can do what human beings must of their own volition — restore some semblance of respect and understanding to our discourse. Perhaps in that way, this is a greater test of our republic than any other in recent memory.
Our national unity and the pride of purpose that has made “the Great Experiment” a success will continue to be put to the test whether Mr. Musk controls the company or not. Bringing standards of civility to the Twitterverse will depend solely on us.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax Television, an author and a former Bush administration official.
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