Twitter's Real Free Speech Enemy Isn't the New CEO, Supreme Court Decisions Cause Mass Inter-State "Political Migration"? Ex-CIA Officer Cor in World Cup Scandal (The Five for 11/30/21)
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Now, let’s dive into the news.
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Podcaster Joe Rogan, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, YouTube Journalist Tim Pool and Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vejaya Gadde debate Twitter’s policies on the Joe Rogan experience on
Note:This is perhaps the most dense, info filled story I’ve ever covered in The Five. It’s also one of the most important. I’m asking you to hang with me as I unpack the current changes at Twitter, and why they have far-reaching ramifications for free speech in the U.S.
Yesterday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (who grew up one neighborhood over from my current home, for the record) stepped down as CEO and will leave the board in 2022.
Dorsey also founded Square, a payment processor and social payment company (which recently got into the music streaming game by purchasing Tidal, an also-ran music service Jay-Z founded that serves as a kinda-competitor to Spotify and Apple Music), so it’s likely he’s going to focus all his efforts there.
The dual CEO role is likely why Dorsey resigned (was fired?), as much of Twitter’s core functionality…doesn’t work that well. You may remember that I tried to move The Five to Twitter’s Revue platform, but I abandoned the efforts when the review tech team couldn’t make the product work. Twitter has tried (and abandoned) too many half-baked features to count in three years. Dorsey trying to run two independent multi-billion dollar companies simultaneously is a probable culprit.
Twitter under Dorsey suffered from working too well. Specifically, society responded to Donald Trump’s Tweet-driven 2016 presidential campaign as if it revealed a defect in the platform that needed fixing when actually Trump’s election was proof that Twitter was working much as intended. Our political establishment just wasn’t looking for that sort of functionality.
The original concept of Twitter was egalitarian, flattening, and iconoclastic: “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas, instantly, without barriers.” That mantra fit with then-CEO Dick Costolo’s 2010 claim that “We’re the free speech wing of the free speech party.”
After Trump rode a passionate Twitter following all the way to the White House in 2016, Twitter changed the rules of the platform in 2020, limiting retweets and adding “content warnings” heading into the 2020 election.
At the time, Twitter called these accusations unfounded and blocked the story from being shared on it’s network in 2020, which Jack Dorsey apologized for.
Dorsey was heavily criticized during his tenure at the helm of Twitter, but in my opinion, Jack was a moderate caught in an impossible cultural trap.
As Taibbi points out, Twitter has been criticized for things the mainstream media has never had to answer to, like when every major news outlet falsely reported there were Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD’s) in Iraq:
Propagandists ran a hell of a game on people like Dorsey. After fiascoes caused by official lies like the WMD affair, no one in government called for tighter regulation of media or the Internet, or told the executives of private communications firms they had blood on their hands. WMDs, after all, were approved disinformation. The unapproved variety, in the form of, say, anything Trump thought, inspired a different reaction. People like Dorsey were now told by Senators and other figures they had responsibility to prevent “misinformation” and “harm” in ways no one else had ever been asked to assume. The message was hammered everywhere, so pervasively that it permeated the ranks of firms like Twitter, where employees began to push their bosses even harder to accept what was, in essence, more outside control of their company.
After the January 6th events, Dorsey came under even more fire from within, receiving a letter from Twitter employees that read in part: “We play an unprecedented role in civil society and the world’s eyes are upon us… Our decisions this week will cement our place in history, for better or worse.” Dorsey acceded and shut down Trump’s account. The move took place among other under-publicized actions by tech firms that spoke to an increasingly organized, top-down system of corporatized speech restraints, like the moves by Apple and Google to bully Parler into tightening up its discourse codes.
In my view, who sits in the CEO chair at Twitter isn’t particularly relevant as long as Cheif Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde is still in the C-Suite.
After a flurry of negative press in 2019, Dorsey took Vijaya with him for an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, where the pair debated YouTube journalist Tim Pool on free speech issues, and why Twitter bans certain users:
For example, when it was pointed out that by tweeting, “men aren’t women,” Meghan Murphy was simply expressing a (well-reasoned, scientifically unassailable) statement of belief, the Twitter execs appeared unable to fathom the idea that such a statement could be anything other than an abusive insult aimed at the person with whom Murphy was arguing. Both Pool and Rogan tried to explain that reasonable, non-ban-worthy people disagree with the notion that the concepts “men” and “women” should be unceremoniously severed from their biological origins without so much as a public debate on the topic. The ensuing discussion felt like watching someone try to explain to a two-year-old that not everyone likes chocolate ice cream. Eventually, you just give up. “Context,” Gadde insisted, required that such a statement be classified as “harassment.” Buh-bye, Meghan!
When Pool brought up the topic of banning people simply for using the phrase “#LearnToCode,” Gadde spiraled into a fragile narrative about how some reporters received a deluge of tweets and some of them contained “#LearnToCode,” and some of them contained “coded language that was wishes of harm.” And some of them were from known bad accounts. And she heard a (false) rumor about real life attacks against reporters. And, had she mentioned the phrase, “looking at context” lately? And hey, maybe “#LearnToCode” secretly means, “I’m going to steal Oliver Darcy’s ham sandwich tomorrow at 12:37 EST.” You never know. So, naturally Twitter had to suspend the Editor in Chief of the Daily Caller when he retweeted the Daily Show and wrote “LearnToCode” underneath. Capiche?
If you’re not familiar with the “Learn to Code” scandal, in 2014-2015, multiple media personalities and mainstream publications suggested that coal miners learn to code, as the coal industry would be (presumably) regulated out of existence in the U.S.
In 2019, Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post laid off a large percentage of their respective workforces, and some Twitter users were tweeting “learn to code” at the newly unemployed journalists.
Which is…completely fair. If coal miners are expected to retrain (according to journalists), then journalists should be held to the same standard.
But Twitter was permanently banning users for simply tweeting “learn to code” at journalists…which Vijaya Gadde defended as perfectly ethical.
Argawal may be the named CEO of Twitter, but unless he can stand up to Gadde (Dorsey apparently couldn’t) it’s Vijaya who’s truly at the wheel of one of the nation’s most vital hubs for free speech.
For those who know the inner workings of Twitter, it was another sign of the rising influence of Gadde, the connected, liberal-leaning lawyer who has helped drive the company to more heavily regulate what users can say and post. Twitter’s new rules, from the ad ban to its deletion of controversial Covid-19 tweets, have rippled through Silicon Valley and caused huge blowback in American politics, where many—especially conservatives—now see Twitter as unfriendly territory.
Gadde isn’t hiding the ball…she wants to be in charge of what a nation of people can (and can’t) say, and has no justification for her decisions (at least from what we can judge from her arguments on the Joe Rogan podcast) aside from appearing to be drunk on power.
This week, the world is watching Twitter to see how changes to the network could impact free speech.
They’re probably watching the wrong person.
I have a feeling Argawal is simply a figurehead as the new CEO.
Gadde was apparently running the show during the Dorsey era, and I bet she still is.
The social network that started as the “free speech wing of the free speech party” is more or less being run by a woman who hates free speech.
The original debate between Pool, Dorsey and Gadde is an exhaustively long podcast episode, but well worth it if you can find the time.
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Two upcoming Supreme Court cases could change state laws around guns and abortion and (according to Yahoo) result in more people moving to states that align with their political leanings:
Blue states will get bluer, and red redder, in coming years, as more Americans factor political issues into their relocation decisions and head for places with like-minded tribes.
That’s the forecast from real-estate brokerage Redfin, which included “more migration for political reasons” in its outlook for the housing market in 2022. The deepening political polarization of the country includes new city- and statewide laws likely to attract adherents and repel detractors, driving political issues deeper into community life. Texas this year passed the nation’s strictest anti-abortion law, for instance. A Mississippi anti-abortion law could lead the Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal everywhere. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, states will once again be free to set their own abortion statutes, creating a drastic dividing line between permissive and restrictive states.
Another Supreme Court case, involving gun rights, could make it easier to carry concealed weapons in New York and 7 other states, eroding gun-control efforts propagated largely by Democratic governors and mayors. On the other hand, marijuana is now legal in 19 mostly blue and purple states. Cities such as Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York are experimenting with police reform meant to cut down on lower-level arrests. Public-school curricula is a new flash point between parents who want racial and social justice taught in schools, and traditionalists who feel threatened by “wokeness.”
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Darrel Brooks, the man accused of driving his SUV into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin, will now be charged with a sixth homicide, as another victim of the attack has died from injuries:
Prosecutors formally charged Brooks with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide on Nov. 23. The sixth charge was brought against Brooks after another victim, 8-year-old Jackson Sparks, died last Tuesday.
"Our sweet little boy is now under the care of Jesus," Sparks' obituary says."Jackson loved baseball and played for the Waukesha Blazers. When not playing baseball, or slam-dunking basketballs throughout the house, Jackson enjoyed fishing, catching frogs, and playing with his brother Tucker and his dog Qi’ra."
Jackson is the first underage victim of the attack, with the other parade victims ranging in age from 52 to 81.
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The killing of Minnesota resident Duante Wright, who died while resisisting arrest in 2020, was a massive media story at the time (which happened shortly after George Floyd’s death).
The officer, Kim Potter, yelled “taser, taser” before drawing her pistol (not her taser) and shooting Wright.
A jury will now decide whether or not Potter is innocent, guilty of manslaughter or possibly even murder.
Jury selection began Tuesday in the manslaughter trial of a former Minnesota police officer who fatally shot a Black man while yelling "Taser" during a traffic-stop-turned-arrest earlier this year.
Prosecutors say Potter, 49, was a veteran officer who recklessly handled her firearm and should have known better. Defense attorneys say she made an "innocent mistake,"according to court filings.
The tiny Arab nation of Qatar has for years employed a former CIA officer to help spy on soccer officials as part of a no-expense-spared effort to win and hold on to the 2022 World Cup tournament, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
It’s part of a trend of former U.S. intelligence officers going to work for foreign governments with questionable human rights records that is worrying officials in Washington and prompting calls from some members of Congress for greater scrutiny of an opaque and lucrative market.
The World Cup is the planet’s most popular sports tournament. It’s also a chance for Qatar, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, to have a coming-out party on the world stage.
The AP’s investigation found Qatar sought an edge in securing hosting rights by hiring former CIA officer turned private contractor Kevin Chalker to spy on rival bid teams and key soccer officials who picked the winner in 2010. Chalker also worked for Qatar in the years that followed to keep tabs on the country’s critics in the soccer world, the AP found.
