How Musk’s Twitter takeover is playing out
worldwide
Digital rights campaigners, human rights activists and
fact-checkers from Argentina to Iraq are confused, worried and angry about
what’s happening at the social network.
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in
late October, online rights campaigners and fact-checkers have been trying to
figure out what's happening with the Blue Bird |
BY MARK
SCOTT
DECEMBER
29, 2022 4:21 AM CET
Confusion.
Frustration. Bewilderment.
Ever since
Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late October, online rights
campaigners, fact-checkers and other groups from Nigeria to India have suffered
from a severe case of digital whiplash trying to figure out what's happening
with the Blue Bird.
In the
United States, the billionaire reached out to activists and advertisers, trying
to calm nerves about mass layoffs, a "free speech-above-all" ethos,
and concerns Twitter would become a hot mess of hate and trolling. Yet in
countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia, there was radio silence from
Musk.
Amid
Twitter’s wholesale job cuts, digital rights groups have resorted to sending
encrypted messages to the company's local public policy teams to check if they
are still employed, while fact-checkers don't know who to alert to flag spikes
in hateful and false content.
"It's
a very toxic place for many people," said ElsaMarie D’Silva, founder of
the Red Dot Foundation, a Mumbai-based organization combating violence against
women. A Twitter spokesperson did not return requests for comment.
To
understand how Musk's ownership has affected people in different countries,
POLITICO talked to groups across the world to find out what the social network
means to them, and how Musk’s takeover has changed the powerful platform.
India: The
free-speech advocate
Akriti
Bopanna was pessimistic.
Until
recently, she was the Indian-based co-head of the digital sovereignty project
at the Internet Society, a nonprofit organization. In that role, Bopanna has
seen Twitter actively take on efforts by Narendra Modi's government to rein in
online speech.
Among
social networks, Bopanna says, Twitter had been the most aggressive in
championing free speech, suing New Delhi in July over government efforts to
block dozens of local accounts. Where Meta and Alphabet have been more willing
to placate India's government, Twitter eagerly poked back.
"Twitter
doesn't just pass the government questions. They are trying to make it better
for the citizens," she said. "I have a feeling that's not going to be
the game anymore. I have a feeling Musk is not so interested in that. He is
interested in making money. Why would he go against the government?"
Under the
billionaire's new leadership, all but one of Twitter's local policy executives
were fired. The last man standing, Samiran Gupta, had been at the company for
less than a year. Campaigners say roughly 90 percent of the tech giant's local
staff — primarily engineers and other techies — have now also left.
Digital
rights groups have resorted to sending encrypted messages to the company's
local public policy teams to check if they are still employed | Samuel
Corum/AFP via Getty Images
Bopanna
said her biggest concern is whether Musk's Twitter will go along with Modi's
plans to wield greater control over the internet.
Most
Indians don't use Twitter. But the platform’s impact is outsized given how
local politicians and other celebrities use it, mostly in English, to spread
messages to an online audience that are then picked up via more popular
services like WhatsApp.
The Indian
government has removed social media accounts critical of Modi's regime. It also
wants foreign companies like Twitter to set up a local office so that
politicians can put pressure on local executives to bend to their will.
"The
relationship [between Twitter and the government] has got better in the last
year and a half," she said. “Twitter started complying with whatever new
rules were. Their relationship isn’t as bad with the government as it once
was.”
Iraq:
Online hate, offline harm
In Iraq,
there's Twitter before 2019, and Twitter after 2019.
Before the
nationwide protests against corruption and political sectarianism, the platform
was an also-ran compared to bigger networks like Facebook and YouTube. But as
millions of locals took to the streets three years ago, Twitter was flooded
with tens of thousands of new Iraqi users eager to coordinate their offline
activities.
Not
everyone was a good guy.
Among the
online protesters were local sectarian militias that quickly realized the power
of Twitter to radicalize supporters and attack opponents, according to Hayder
Hamzoz, founder of the Iraqi Network for Social Media, an organization of local
bloggers and citizen journalists. These military groups targeted campaigners
and other activists, spreading false rumors about them, which sometimes led to
people being killed.
"They
put the picture of the activist on Twitter with a post offering like $1,000 or
$5,000 for anyone who knows where he lives," said Hamzoz, who was
similarly targeted by militias active on the network. "They sent me that
kind of message. 'We will find your family, we will make you stop, we will take
care of your brother and your sister.'"
He's now
anxious these sectarian groups will gain even more courage after Musk announced
the reinstatement of scores of accounts previously banned from Twitter. Jawaher
Abdelhamid, the only public policy executive left for all of the Middle East
and North Africa region, is based in Dubai and Hamzoz has not heard from her
during the Musk era despite his organization cultivating close ties with
Twitter.
The idea of
banned accounts returning to the platform "scares me,” he said. “We did a
lot of campaigning to close some hate speech accounts belonging to the
militias, so imagine all these accounts back on Twitter."
Croatia:
Canary in the coal mine
Ana Brakus
doesn't spend much time on Twitter.
The
executive director of Faktograf, a fact-checking organization in Croatia, is
too busy debunking false claims on Facebook (which pays her organization for
this work) to worry about a social network that has few users in her country.
What she does see via Twitter, Brakus adds, are fake or harmful posts coming
from Serbian users that eventually find their way into the Croatian zeitgeist
after they are picked up by the country's media or on other social networks.
That
doesn't mean she's happy with how Musk is running Twitter.
His
willingness to cut the company's trust, safety and online content moderation
teams fills her with dread. "It really is a cautionary tale about how
regulators sometimes move too slow, especially compared to these
platforms," she said. "When the leadership of a company wants to
implement big changes, it can do it."
Platforms
have struggled to combat falsehoods in non-English languages, and Brakus is
worried that other networks — including fringe sites like Telegram, the
encrypted messenger service — will see Twitter's pullback on content moderation
as a playbook to follow. Brakus worries that Twitter won’t deliver on its
commitments to clamp down on disinformation.
Musk’s
focus is on Twitter’s activities in the U.S. but “a huge percentage of their
user base, probably well over 80 percent, comes from non-English speaking
countries," she said. "What they are saying is that the hurt your
users are going to go through in a certain place is more important than somewhere
else."
Nigeria:
More of the same neglect
When it
comes to Nigeria, Twitter — even before Musk's takeover — didn't pay much
attention.
In the West
African country with a population of more than 200 million, local campaigners
say the social network has failed to respond to their repeated requests to
clamp down on fake accounts, remove suspect content and even engage with
democracy groups. That matters ahead of Nigeria’s nationwide election next
year.
“Our
experience of Twitter does not look anything like that of the user in the
United States," said Rosemary Ajayi from the Digital Africa Research Lab,
which tracks misuse of social media across the continent. Case in point: Local
Nigerian users have successfully bought verified blue ticks on Twitter for
roughly $5,000 in direct violation of the company's current rules, according to
the Nigerian researcher.
"We
have bad actors, including those engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior
and others evading suspension, repeatedly being verified, even after we flagged
these accounts," she added.
Ajayi has
done her part to make Twitter a better place in both Nigeria and other West
African countries. She worked at the company for two years and campaigned
internally to remove a fake verified account, which impersonated the country's
ruling political party and racked up more than 1 million followers.
Nigeria’s
government also banned the platform for seven months until early 2022 after it
removed tweets from the country’s president. Twitter agreed to set up a local
office and pay taxes in the country to be reinstated.
After
leaving Twitter, the digital rights campaigner said she had written to
Twitter's heads of public policy and human rights three times since May to urge
them to combat online threats to Nigeria's upcoming election. At the time of
writing, Ajayi had yet to receive a response.
Argentina:
Awaiting its Trump moment
Pablo M.
Fernández doesn't have much to complain about — yet.
As
executive director of Chequeado, an Argentine fact-checking group with ties to
similar organizations across Latin America, he has connections with Twitter's
public policy team despite the mass layoffs.
"We
still have contact directly with two people," he said. "It is
complicated because what are you going to do? Write to the person say, 'are you
OK?' That's what we did."
In
Argentina, most people prefer using WhatsApp, where user groups in the tens of
thousands share news and gossip with a few swipes of a smartphone. But Twitter
still plays a vital role. Politicians rely on Musk's network to feed
information to news outlets, which then spread those messages via newspapers
and television. What's trending on Twitter still can make it onto the
television news.
Yet just as
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's outgoing right-wing president, has used the social
network to sow discontent and division, Fernández sees similar trends with some
Argentinian politicians — though no one has yet to go as far as Bolsonaro or
Donald Trump in their use of Twitter to inflame local voters.
Fernández's
organization is now playing cat-and-mouse with Twitter to figure out what
Musk's new regime will be like. "We have elections next year, so for us,
it is really important to know what is going to happen with Twitter," he
added.
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