It was a near certainty that whoever replaced Jack Dorsey as the CEO of Twitter would be worse than him. Given what we know about new CEO Parag Agrawal, it looks like that possibility has been realized.
Last year, Agrawal said in an interview that Twitter should “focus less on thinking about free speech.” He also said that “our approach is rooted in trying to avoid specific harm that misleading information can cause.”
Agrawal cites COVID-19 or what day elections are held as examples of misinformation that causes “harm.” But between that and his dismissal of free speech, he shows he isn’t going to address Twitter’s two biggest problems.
The first problem is misinformation and harassment but not the kind that a random “blue check” Twitter user might complain about. The problem is videos, stripped of context, being embraced by a large chunk of Twitter users and brought into the real world. The most obvious example is Nicholas Sandmann, a high school student falsely accused by major media outlets in 2019 of taunting a Native American protester based on a video posted on Twitter.
The website has given mob power to hoaxers and race-baiters to accuse random people of misconduct, accompanied by mere seconds of video of a confrontation with no context, and get them fired from their jobs. That’s the real “harm that misleading information can cause,” but Twitter has shown no interest in addressing it yet — and Agrawal doesn’t seem interested in it either.
Then there is censorship, but not the kind that random right-wing Twitter users will complain about. Twitter’s policies may be subjectively applied, but the problem is not that ridiculous characters such as conspiracy theorists Alex Jones or Laura Loomer get banned. The problem is when it hits outlets such as the New York Post.
The Post, in the lead-up to the 2020 election, posted a story about Hunter Biden’s emails and his lies to Chinese businessmen. Twitter then throttled that story, banning users from posting it and locking out Post’s Twitter account until they deleted the link to the story. Of course, the Post’s story was backed up by later reporting. But Twitter wanted to help Joe Biden win the election, so it stifled a legitimate news story.
Dorsey admitted Twitter’s handling of the story was “a total mistake,” for whatever that’s worth (and it’s worth very little). It’s not clear what Agrawal’s view of the story was, but he has shown that he doesn’t recognize the real issues that Twitter should address. Considering the company is already implementing more vague rules that will be selectively enforced, it’s safe to say the website is only going to get worse.
