Broadcast media has been suggesting that Elon Musk fanning the flames of violence is a social media problem. It is not.
To a degree, you can almost count on mainstream media to respond to tech issues in really bad ways – sometimes in the worst ways possible. Years ago, when the file-sharing lawsuits were spreading throughout the world via organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) or Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the mainstream media’s general response was to take all of the organizations press releases at face value and spread the misinformation that one download means one lost sale among other things. This prompted people like myself to help build news websites that point out that just taking the side of these organizations, rather than looking at the underlying issues, was a really foolish take. We did the research, we brought together the evidence, and basically did the media’s job for them to better understand the issues surrounding file-sharing, noting, among other things, that it’s a market problem, not a content consumer problem.
As the file-sharing debates started to peak, new debates started surfacing surrounding warrantless wiretapping, Lawful Access, and general government surveillance. For the mainstream media, their reaction was to take politician’s comments about safety at face value and even actively condemn those who had questions about this. This prompted people like myself to do a collective facepalm. So, we did the mainstream media’s job for them, gathered the evidence, did he research, and presented the common sense response to all of this. That being that mass internet surveillance does little to nothing to keep people safe and, further, it impinges on people’s right to privacy.
As social media’s rise continued in more recent years, the mainstream media’s response started off by advocating for its shut down (YouTube bore some of those slings and arrows early on with media types calling it “SueTube”). Then, when social media proved that it wasn’t going anywhere, mainstream media’s reaction was to call for government to basically regulate social media to death, demanding that everything should be subject to heavy moderation and insanely pushing for the removal of Section 230, using wild conspiracy theories like how Section 230 is somehow “outdated” and, thanks to the rise of “Big Tech”, is no longer necessary.
This, understandably, made people like us to give a collective eye roll. So, we did what we always do well. We did the research, gathered the evidence, and basically did the mainstream media’s jobs for them by presenting the facts. Among other things, eliminating Section 230 is only going to solidify the position of “Big Tech”, quickly dispatching with its competitors and killing off a huge swath of innovation in the process in the United States.
At around the same time, as mainstream media outlets kept taking repeated hits to their credibility (largely self-inflicted), their business model began to suffer. Readership began to move online and use other services. Large media companies that were used to having a general monopoly on audiences suddenly realized that they had competition. In response, the mainstream media began, in their actual reporting, demanding link taxes and regulation of online streaming platforms. At this point, people such as myself, knew the drill. We concluded that link taxes are counter-productive and would widely harm the publishers rather than give them a free pay day. Things like the Online Streaming Act is only going to harm the Canadian economy through economic sanctions and hamstringing creativity while solving pretty much nothing.
So, you can more or less see why I have gotten so critical of mainstream media over the years. It’s that long established track record of getting tech stories wrong and giving people the wrong impression about what is really going on. People like us have to constantly sit here and sit the record straight, so getting frustrated with the situation is more than understandable.
You can also understand my complete lack of surprise when the mainstream media found out about Elon Musk doing the usual move of acting like an idiot, the media’s reaction has been less than stellar. As many of you know, the far right in the UK has been engaging in violent riots, smashing windows and otherwise trying to tear the country apart. This over completely fabricated rumours that the ones that perpetrated a stabbing attack were immigrants. In response, Musk did the typical right wing asshole thing and actively encouraged the violence on his platform:
Why in the world is Elon Musk trying to stoke violence and disorder in the United Kingdom? Free speech, of course!
Following a stabbing last month in Southport in the northern U.K. that killed three young girls, disinformation quickly spread on Elon Musk’s platform, X, including the rumor that the attacker was an asylum-seeker.
On Sunday, hundreds of far-right anti-immigrant protesters attacked a hotel housing asylum-seekers in Rotherham, a town in South Yorkshire, England. From there, rioters continued to take to the streets in other cities and towns.
As violent mobs took to the streets, Musk tweeted that “civil war is inevitable” and blamed “open borders.”
There’s… really no debate here. Musk’s comments were stupid. The only response that is even remotely reasonable at this point is for Musk to take down the comments and issue an apology. Unfortunately, Musk seems to enjoy causing chaos and destruction, so the chances of that happening are very negligible.
Part of the response from officials and the media were quite understandable. Condemning the comments is more than reasonable. After all, Musk is using his paid for megaphone to try and fan the flames of chaos and destruction. What’s more, I’m perfectly OK with people getting arrested for the violence, looting, and property damage. In fact, I am perfectly OK with officials going after users who are actively using various platforms to provide material support for these crimes. Are they directing cash to the violent looters? Are they providing logistical support? Arrest ’em all. I’m OK with that. The simple fact is, these kinds of activities are not supported by free speech. These are crimes, plain and simple.
The problem is some of the subsequent reactions that I have been seeing in broadcast media. That is the talking point that social media, in general, is out of control and needs tight regulations. To put it another way, the fault in all of this is social media itself and not necessarily a Musk problem. This is where I disagree with the mainstream media’s response.
Among the broadcasts that I’ve seen, the mainstream media’s reaction is to push to support things like the UK Online Harms Act as well as the Canadian Online Harms Bill. Now, as we earlier noted with the UK Online Harms Act, one of the objectives was to crack down on encryption and give government access to people’s communications unprotected regardless of the encryption employed. When applying this to this case with Musk, it’s hard to see the connection here. The comments weren’t made by some random individual or anonymous user. We know who made those comments (Musk). So, in that regard, it’s hard to see how breaking encryption would somehow be a difference maker in holding Musk accountable for his actions.
What might be more relevant is looking into laws surrounding incitement. Did Musk break any laws in the UK for incitement by making those comments? If so, I’d say, “throw the book at him”. If not, I’m OK with getting angry at the comments, but at that point, leave well enough alone and go after the people who were actually on the streets causing property damage.
The simple truth in all of this is that Musk doing this is a Musk problem, not necessarily a social media problem. Too often, social problems are pinned on platforms. At times, the platforms themselves are unfairly blamed for social problems. A popular example is mental health. There’s plenty of examples of mental health issues surrounding what happens on social media. The problem there is that those who pretend to know everything wrongly conclude that this is all social media’s fault when, in fact, the real issue lies with things like lack of access to social services. Do we have enough social workers working in the area in question or not?
Time and time again, I see examples of mainstream media and politician’s simply relying on easy solutions to complex problems. Are people feeling bad about how they look? Blame social media. Do people do stupid things? Blame social media. What’s the solution to everything? Create laws that do little to address the actual issues and pretend to hold social media “accountable” for problems they have little to do with. The default solution is to rely on easy scapegoats and easy solutions without taking into consideration what the overall impact these “solutions” might have in the first place. This while disregarding hard questions like issues surrounding mental health in society, for instance (and, yes, these are, in fact, hard debates to have).
Yet, it’s this effort to find an easy (and ineffective) solution to a complex that gives rise to narratives such as how there are no laws governing any of this. What’s more, there are those who jump to conclusions such as this idea that the real problem is the fact that America has the right to free speech. Mike Masnick of Techdirt noted this as well and had some counterpoints to that:
Edward Luce, a long-term journalist and commentator, and scion of an aristocratic British family, is currently the “chief US commentator” (what a title!) for the Financial Times. On Friday he published a piece claiming that Elon Musk is a danger to democracy. And that might well be true (or might not). But the column is so full of wrongness that you won’t learn much about it one way or the other.
It is true that the UK government and Elon Musk have been engaged in a stupid battle of words over Elon’s propensity to promote and spread bigoted nonsense that is encouraging violence. As I’ve written elsewhere, this whole approach seems entirely counterproductive and only plays to Musk’s advantage.
But Luce is quite sure the problem is really American free speech laws. Or, at least, as he totally misrepresents them. On top of that, he tries to distinguish Musk pushing his political views via ExTwitter from other billionaires who own media empires pushing their own views, which makes no sense:
The key question is what, if anything, democracies can do to address the danger from Musk. It is one thing having a newspaper proprietor, or the owner of a television station, pushing their biases in their outlets. This has always happened and it is protected speech. Depending on the democracy, there are also laws against concentration of media ownership. Musk has freest legal rein in the US, where the First Amendment protects almost all speech. Moreover, internet publishers are exempt from liability under the notorious Section 230 of the misleadingly named Communications Decency Act. But even in America you cannot falsely shout fire in a crowded theatre.
The difference between X and say the right-leaning GB News in the UK, or whatever platform the far-right radio host Alex Jones is using in America, is that the latter two are siloed channels. X claims to be the public square. In some respects, people are right to point out that “Twitter is not real life”. It isn’t. But when racist thugs falsely learn on X that refugees are child killers then gather to burn down refugee hostels — the site becomes all too real. At critical moments, X has become a key vector for potentially lethal untrue assertions. That its owner would endorse some of them ought to be a matter of public interest.
But, of course, almost everything in these two paragraphs is wrong. Biased newspaper owners used their own publications to push all sorts of false and misleading journalism to shape their own interests for decades. What Musk is doing is honestly no different than what Rupert Murdoch has done, or others like William Randolph Hearst have done. Henry Ford bought a newspaper just to push antisemitic nonsense. It’s just that Musk is dumber, more gullible, and has more sycophantic fans.
Still, more to the point, almost all the claims in the first paragraph are wrong. Using the “fire in a crowded theater” line should disqualify anyone from being taken seriously on any discussion about free speech. There is a pretty short, and pretty well-defined set of classes of speech that are not protected. But, when people are using the “fire in a crowded theater” line, they are almost universally saying “well, because this other speech is not protected, surely it’s fine to add in this other speech I dislike to make it unprotected.
But, in this case, everything else is still wrong. Some of the concern about the speech on ExTwitter is that it’s incitement to violence. And we do have an exception to the First Amendment for incitement to imminent violence. Arguably, some of the comments that have been of most concern may apply there.
Still, the comment about Section 230 is wholly out of place. Elon owns ExTwitter. The company receives no Section 230 protections for Elon’s speech because it’s seen as the company’s speech itself. So Section 230 has literally nothing to do with what Elon is saying. The whole point of Section 230 is that you put the liability on the proper party — the speaker, rather than the platform. But when the speaker and the platform are the same, there can absolutely be liability.
This could have easily been explained to Luce or the FT’s fact checkers or editors, if anyone had bothered to ask an actual expert.
Sadly, despite things like this, mainstream media is going to mainstream media. The Guardian, for its part, argues that we should have even more restrictive laws surrounding content considered “harmful”:
Elon Musk should face “personal sanctions” and even the threat of an “arrest warrant” if found to be stirring up public disorder on his social media platform, a former Twitter executive has said.
It cannot be right that the billionaire owner of X, and other tech executives, be allowed to sow discord without personal risks, Bruce Daisley, formerly Twitter’s vice-president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, writes in the Guardian.
He said the prime minister, Keir Starmer, should “beef up” online safety laws and reflect on whether the media regulator, Ofcom, “is fit to deal with the blurringly fast actions of the likes of Musk”.
“In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines,” Daisley writes, arguing such sanctions could impact the jet-setting lifestyles of tech billionaires.
Daisley says: “The question we are presented with is whether we’re willing to allow a billionaire oligarch to camp off the UK coastline and take potshots at our society. The idea that a boycott – whether by high-profile users or advertisers – should be our only sanction is clearly not meaningful.”
He continues: “In the short term, Musk and fellow executives should be reminded of their criminal liability for their actions under existing laws. Britain’s Online Safety Act 2023 should be beefed up with immediate effect.”
Referring to X’s algorithm, which he said prioritised Musk’s own tweets, he writes: “Musk might force his angry tweets to the top of your timeline, but the will of a democratically elected government should mean more than the fury of a tech oligarch – even him.”
The answer to “Elon Musk said something I don’t like” should never be, “let’s do away with free speech”. Yet, this is the thinly veiled response certain media types are using. It’s ironic because the media’s livelihood depends on there being robust laws protecting free speech in the first place. Sadly, this lack of self-awareness is nothing new. As we’ve seen in the past, the mainstream media has become increasingly hostile towards free speech in general because someone might have said something they don’t like.
Anyone who says that we must do away with free speech to protect society should be immediately discredited. Yes, Musk is an idiot, but arguing that we should get rid of free speech is not the answer. If you can, hold Musk accountable because it is clear that such speech was his own. Saying what Musk did is entirely the fault of social media in general is completely disingenuous as well. As long as media outlets continue to spew nonsense about how we should crack down on the internet in general, it’s difficult to even have an honest discussion about how to move forward in any of this.
