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(JTA) — The information Monday that Elon Musk’s bid to purchase Twitter had gone from what appeared like a joke to a $44 billion buy settlement despatched shockwaves throughout the worldwide media panorama.
Additionally it is elevating the hopes and fears of customers and critics who’ve lengthy been distressed by the proliferation of hate speech, together with antisemitism, on the social media platform — and by the corporate’s perceived lack of urgency in tackling it.
Musk’s acquisition will possible take months to finish and might be derailed in any variety of methods. And whereas the serial entrepreneur is thought for appearing rapidly and decisively — typically on issues way more picayune than CEOs sometimes attend to — there’s no assure that he would make sweeping adjustments even when he does assume possession.
Nonetheless, some Jewish customers and advocates are hoping {that a} change in management at Twitter may shake up dynamics that many have decried — or at the very least not set again efforts which might be already underway to deal with these dynamics. The top of the Anti-Defamation League, which has publicly pressed Twitter to determine and flush out antisemitism on the platform, raised alarm in a tweet thread shortly after the information broke.
“Twitter has made some strides in tackling this hate in recent times,” the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, tweeted on Monday. “So whereas we need to be cautiously optimistic about how @ElonMusk will run the platform, he hasn’t demonstrated any deal with these points thus far. We fear he may take issues in a really completely different route.”
Right here’s what you might want to find out about Twitter’s Jewish historical past, Musk’s (murky) imaginative and prescient for the corporate and the way Jewish teams hope he’ll change the platform.
The standing of Twitter immediately for Jews
Like all social media platforms, Twitter is full of a mix of good-faith customers, unhealthy actors and bots. However over the previous decade, Twitter has appeared to take care of as many or extra antisemitism controversies within the public eye than every other platform.
The subject exploded into public consciousness in 2016, amid the runup to that 12 months’s presidential election. Jewish journalists grew to become prime targets of bots that unfold misinformation and of antisemites emboldened by the rise of white supremacist teams that collectively made up a brand new motion often known as the “alt proper.” Jonathan Weisman, a politics editor at The New York Occasions, known as the abuse “omnipresent.” Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, mentioned the platform had turn out to be “a cesspool for anti-Semites, homophobes, and racists.” Reporter Julia Ioffe detailed how the antisemitism she was inundated with on Twitter translated into actual dying threats.
Antisemites started figuring out distinguished Jews on-line with what’s known as an “echo” image, or a gaggle of three parentheses. The echo was typically highlighted on Twitter, and Jewish customers ultimately acted to reclaim the image and proudly trumpet their Jewish identities, voluntarily placing the parentheses round their names on their Twitter profiles. (Weisman wrote a ebook with it within the title: “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America within the Age of Trump.”)
Twitter acknowledged the issue however didn’t resolve it. In January 2018, the ADL — which ultimately joined Twitter’s Belief and Security Council and has developed an “On-line Hate Index” software to detect antisemitism on social media — estimated that over the earlier 12 months, greater than 4 million antisemitic tweets had been revealed in English alone, despatched by over 3 million distinctive Twitter handles.
The corporate has additionally been dogged by widespread allegations that it doesn’t prioritize combatting antisemitism and banning antisemitic customers — or at the very least in a speedy sufficient style. In a single instance, from 2020, after the British rapper Wiley tweeted a sequence of antisemitic messages, a gaggle of distinguished British Jews (and non-Jews) boycotted the platform in protest of Twitter’s response time. Twitter “allowed [Wiley] 48 hours of pure race hate,” mentioned actress Tracy-Ann Oberman.
On the similar time, the platform has been a fertile area for Jewish concepts and dialog, even facilitating new areas of debate between Jews and non-Jews and throughout Jewish denominations. A number of rabbis have additionally discovered giant audiences on Twitter, equivalent to Danya Ruttenberg and Jill Jacobs.
However within the wake of the Musk information, Ruttenberg pointed her followers to her Substack e-mail publication, within the occasion that Twitter’s new proprietor may exacerbate its points.
“I can guarantee you that rampant antisemitic harassment already exists on Twitter — as does rampant racist harassment, transphobic, homophobic, sexist, ableist harassment and plenty of intersections therein — and that Twitter already does an atrocious job of managing this, or taking vital threats to individuals severely,” she advised the Jewish Telegraphic Company.
What we find out about Musk and what he may do
His first title might sound just like the Hebrew title Ilan, however that’s the extent of Musk’s private Jewishness. He was raised in South Africa, the place he attended an Anglican Sunday college, and moved to the USA to attend the College of Pennsylvania within the mid-Nineties. From there, he started working in Silicon Valley, amassing wealth and affect as he developed a sequence of pioneering expertise firms. He’s the founder and CEO of Tesla, the electrical automotive firm, and of SpaceX, which is creating a spread of spacecraft and different area journey tech. He has a web price of over $240 billion and has at varied instances been topped the wealthiest individual on earth.
Lately, Musk has additionally turn out to be often known as one of many web’s most puzzling populist provocateurs. He supported the grassroots group of buyers behind the Gamestop inventory saga; grew to become shut mates with fellow agitator Kanye West; and has turn out to be fast to troll any distinguished detractors with anti-establishment rhetoric that may at instances really feel pulled straight out of a raucous Reddit thread.
His politics have remained a thriller, however one in all his massive pet points is obvious: He’s a staunch advocate of seemingly unfettered free speech. The specifics of what meaning precisely, particularly on Twitter, are but to be seen.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO, espoused a perception in absolute free speech that regularly collided with the corporate’s efforts to handle hate speech. It was not till late 2020 that Twitter mentioned it could ban Holocaust denial, a choice it introduced weeks after Fb did the identical factor.
“We strongly condemn anti-semitism, and hateful conduct has completely no place on our service,” a Twitter spokesperson mentioned in an announcement on the time. “We even have a sturdy ‘glorification of violence’ coverage in place and take motion in opposition to content material that glorifies or praises historic acts of violence and genocide, together with the Holocaust.”
However Dorsey appeared to undermine that dedication throughout a Senate listening to later that month, when he mentioned Holocaust denial would represent “deceptive info. However we don’t have a coverage in opposition to that kind of deceptive info.” Dorsey stepped down as Twitter’s CEO final fall.
Musk sees Twitter as a stand-in for a vanished public sq., the place individuals with differing views and ideologies can have interaction in open dialog. As some vowed to depart Twitter over his buy, he mentioned he wished they might stick round.
“I hope that even my worst critics stay on Twitter, as a result of that’s what free speech means,” Musk tweeted on Monday.
Musk has supplied few particulars, and in reality recommended that he doesn’t have a crystal-clear imaginative and prescient for among the firm’s most vexing questions, together with methods to deal with tweets that some cost are hateful.
“If it’s a grey space, I might say let the tweet exist,” he mentioned earlier this month. “However clearly in a case the place there’s maybe a whole lot of controversy, you’re not essentially going to advertise that tweet. I’m not saying I’ve all of the solutions right here.”
Greenblatt acknowledged Musk’s framing of social media as a public sq. — however he lamented the constant consolidation of its homeowners.
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“It strikes me as deeply troubling & doubtlessly harmful that 2 individuals — Musk & Mark Zuckerberg — primarily management the general public sq.. Looks like a tragic day for democracy,” Greenblatt tweeted on Monday.
What Jews need to see
Jewish teams are already clamoring to convey to Musk what they wish to see him change on the platform.
The Council of European Rabbis issued an announcement calling for Twitter to undertake the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism — which has drawn its personal scrutiny — to be used in its content material moderation.
“A fast win and a transparent break from the previous could be the adoption of the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, utilized by governments and police forces across the phrase,” the group mentioned. “The adoption of the definition, alongside its rigorous enforcement, will go an extended strategy to making Twitter all that it may be.”
A number of the definition’s examples of antisemitism embrace sure criticisms of Israel, together with ones that decision the Jewish state a racist endeavor. Critics say it shuts down components of free speech.
Many Jewish customers have additionally lengthy needed Twitter to completely boot Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme chief who commonly requires the violent destruction of Israel, amongst different antisemitic issues. Dorsey had deemed Khamenei’s tweets “saber-rattling” and by no means firmed a coverage on controversial statements by worldwide leaders.
“We imagine it’s essential for everybody to listen to from international leaders, and we now have insurance policies round world leaders,” Dorsey mentioned in 2020. “We need to be sure that we’re respecting their proper to talk and to publish what they want.”
Yossi Klein Halevi, a distinguished American-Israeli writer who typically writes about Jewish-Muslim coexistence, argued in a tweet after Musk’s purchase announcement that “pro-Israel voices are arbitrarily eliminated” from Twitter and known as on Musk to “degree the taking part in discipline and allow us to debate” on Israel. He didn’t elaborate on why he believes pro-Israel activists are silenced.
(Musk personally has not commented on Israeli politics or coverage, at the same time as he weighs in commonly on issues of public curiosity. His engagement with the nation seems to be restricted; he climbed Masada and visited then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his dwelling throughout a 2018 go to that Musk mentioned was largely private in nature.)
A lot of the Jewish dialog aimed in Musk’s route centered on his promise of unrestricted free speech, and the anxieties that the idea has unleashed in relation to hate speech.
Ruttenberg mentioned, “I, as are many different individuals of extra marginalized backgrounds than I, very — realistically, I believe — am involved that Musk will take away what few protections presently exist and make Twitter a spot the place harassment, abuse and presumably even doxxing is rampant and tolerated.”
And Greenblatt’s predecessor on the ADL, Abraham Foxman, tweeted a message for Musk.
“Unfettered speech is nearly as harmful as yelling fireplace in a crowded theatre! Jewish custom teaches us that life and dying is within the energy of the tongue,” he wrote. “We should discover steadiness between civility and freedom of speech.”
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