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Tuesday, December 20th, 2022

The Finale of the Great Internet Grievance Wars Is Here

Author:     JUSTIN PETERS
Source:     Slate
Publication Date:     DEC 18, 2022 | 7:00 PM
 Link: The Finale of the Great Internet Grievance Wars Is Here
Stephan:   Here is another take on the weaponization of lies and the struggle it represents in today's American culture. I run it not because I agree with all that Justin Peters says, I don't, but because I think my readers need to be aware that this is a major emerging trend. I think it was quite notable that Elon Musk said he would run a survey amongst Twitter users to see if he should continue as its head, and they voted against him. It will be interesting to see if he honors his promise to abide by the vote. I also think we may see some effort in the Senate to address this complicated issue.

On Thursday night, the journalist Bari Weiss posted an article on the online magazine she edits, the Free Press, that purported to tell the story behind the Twitter Files—the investigatory series, based on a strategic leak, that Weiss has helped to author. “At dinner time on December 2, I received a text from Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, founder of SpaceX, founder of the Boring Company, founder of Neuralink, on most days the richest man in the world (possibly history), and, as of October, the owner of Twitter,” Weiss wrote. “Was I interested in looking at Twitter’s archives, he asked. And how soon could I get to Twitter HQ?”

These archives were a trove of internal company documents left behind from the previous corporate administration. They purported to show that, before Musk bought the company for $44 billion this fall, Twitter had engaged in surreptitious strategies of content moderation that suppressed certain right-leaning statements, opinions, stories, and individuals on its platform. Throughout the month of December, Weiss and a few other journalists—including former Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi […]

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