Column: Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter Could Totally Remake Politics

It was the stock buyout heard ‘round the world. Tesla owner Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter could save the whole concept of online free speech and alter politics and elections globally for years to come. 

Musk’s move might be the biggest political event since the 2020 election. L. Brent Bozell is President and founder of Media Research Center tweeted about the offer, “It’s finally free. Free at last. Conservatives may be free at last!” 

Musk’s interference with media and leftists’ ability to restrict content was shocking news for them, both in the U.S. as well worldwide. Twitter consistently ranked as the worst social media site for restricting conservative content. MRC’s CensorTrack database tracked 1,954 examples of Twitter censorship, over half of the total 3,636 entries of Big Tech censorship logged. 

It was targeted at the top names of conservative media such as Dan Bongino, James Woods, James Woods and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), along with Hollywood icons James Woods and Donald Trump Jr. A MRC study in October 2021 found that Big Tech corporations censored Republican congressional members by a 54-to-1 rate compared to the rates of congressional Democrats. Vice, a liberal media outlet, learned that several Republican leaders including the RNC chairwoman were censored in 2018. Ronna McDaniel, were shadowbanned from Twitter’s search function. 

Big Tech censorship wasn’t limited to Americans. It was not just Big Tech that used their insane censorship capabilities overseas. Big Tech censors attacked Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, and David Davis (a conservative member of British Parliament), both members.  

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every major Big Tech platform — Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, TikTok and more — censored conservatives. Tech executives repeatedly deny that they have restricted conservative content until proven guilty. They also won’t release the details of the algorithms they use to control content. 

Musk’s purchase could lift the veil of censorship that hangs like a shroud over the conservative movement. The pending purchase could also mean former President Donald Trump’s long-awaited return to Twitter. He used his superpower on social media to defeat former Senator Hillary Clinton (D.NY) in 2016. This helped to offset his overwhelming bias in legacy media. 

Big Tech rebelled after Trump’s victory. Breitbart posted a video that featured Google executives talking with large groups of employees one day after Trump’s victory. Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the company that he was “deeply offended” by the results of the election, which posed “conflicts with many of the company’s values.” 

Other platforms were “offended” too and were determined to destroy Trump’s social media presence going into the 2020 election. Twitter censored Trump’s campaign 625 times in the period between May 31, 2018, and January 4, 2021. President Joe Biden and his campaign weren’t censored at all during that time period.

After the election of 2016, social media companies and their news media colleagues spent each day trying to stop a Trump repeat. Twitter, Facebook and other sites massively increased their anti-conservative censorship during Trump’s term. Twitter and Facebook also blocked the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop scandal just prior to the election.

One of Congress’s most powerful committees was responsible for the worst instances of censorship surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop scam. On Oct. 14, 2020, the GOP House Judiciary Committee sent the following tweet: “Twitter blocked users from tweeting the @nypost story about Hunter Biden. We put the article on our site for everyone to see and share. 

GOP House Judiciary provided a link on their website to a press release that included a republished version originally published in The New York Post. Also, the press release linked to the original article. The warning message that warned users about the dangers of clicking the link to the official media release was displayed when the user attempted to click it.

Kayleigh McEnany was a former White House Press secretary. She locked her Twitter account when she tried sharing the article. New York PostHunter story. McEnany claimed to Fox’s Sean Hannity, that Twitter was holding Hunter “at gunpoint”, refusing her access until she deletes the tweet.

One of a series of content restrictions that eventually led to the election of President Joe Biden in 2020 was the censorship of Hunter Biden stories. An MRC poll of 1,750 Biden voters found that 45 percent of them weren’t fully aware of the Hunter Biden Because the media and Big Tech wanted to make it seem less serious, this story was fabricated. “Full awareness” would have led 9.4 percent of Biden voters to abandon him, flipping all six of the swing states he won, and giving Donald Trump 311 electoral votes. 

Twitter, along with nine other Big Tech companies, banned President Trump following Jan. 6 Capitol Riots. YouTube, Instagram and Twitch were some of the first to ban Trump.

It wasn’t always that way. Twitter’s former General Manager Tony Wang claimed “we remain neutral as to the content” and called the site “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” That was only in 2012. In ten years, the site had made an entire reversal. 

The safe-space-loving left pushed the site toward far worse content moderation shortly after Wang’s comment. This battle culminated in the 2016 election.

Trump’s dominant use of social media, especially Twitter, was key to his election in 2016. Before the vote, Trump had 13 million Twitter followers and was able to use his internet megaphone to create a news agenda. 

Trump handled social media in a Twitter equivalent of The Incredible Hulk. It gave him the power to virtually smash critics and leftist journalists alike — defining the campaign. The Washington Post noted at the time that, “Trump used social media, and Twitter in particular, to build relationships with voters and create a word-of-mouth buzz for his brand.” The paper added, “this strategy helped Trump build attitudinal loyalty, the degree to which a customer prefers or likes a brand, rather than behavioral loyalty, when a customer buys a product out of habit.”

Ohio University Social Media Analytics Research Team Lab Director Laqeeq Khan also noted in 2016 that “Trump won social media. Simply put, Trump’s campaign was more engaged with voters.” Khan added that Trump “mastered Twitter by embracing immediacy (right now), transparency (unvarnished expression), and risk (rather than caution).” 

Then-Facebook Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth told BBC in 2016 that “Mr Trump was not elected because of ‘misinformation,’ but ‘because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period’.” 

Trump used Twitter to influence the major news media organizations and built his Twitter following to as high as 88 million. Trump’s tweets were retweeted by even journalists that hate him. 

Musk is now in a position to make a complete reset. Journalists and Leftists from Big Tech will attempt to stop him. 

 

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