Hate speech spikes on Musk’s watch; another internet blackout in Myanmar; Egypt’s paranoia on show at COP27
The pile of problems wrought by Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover is growing by the minute. When staff tasked with keeping harmful speech off the platform were suddenly locked out of internal systems, reports of violent, hateful, and otherwise bad speech immediately spiked. This is troubling on the eve of U.S. midterm elections, but as I wrote last April, the ramifications could be much worse in other parts of the world — indeed, my colleague Kofi Yeboah reports that Twitter’s Africa team is “gradually dissolving.” Soon after he “sank” into Twitter’s HQ, Musk began promising to form a “content moderation council” in the near term. But coming from the notorious Twitter troll who has already fired the company’s best brain on the issue, this doesn’t bring much comfort. I’m also wary of the reported plan to charge users a monthly fee to maintain their “verified” status — research has shown how this feature provides important protection against impersonation for journalists in high-risk environments.
The only comic relief I’ve found in this whole nightmare so far has come from The Verge’s Nilay Patel, whose searing smackdown of Musk covers basically everything that experts are worrying about, but with more zeal than anyone else can muster. Don’t miss it.
After months of fearmongering and unsubstantiated online rumors of voter fraud fueled by incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro and his supporters, Brazilian voters elected Lula da Silva in last Sunday’s runoff election. Meanwhile up north, the fearmongering and lies are ongoing as we approach midterm elections in the US. Far-right groups are using fringe platforms like Truth Social (and less fringey platforms like Telegram) to organize everything from vigilante surveillance of ballot drop boxes to all-out civil war in the lead-up to U.S. midterm elections. In a departure from what we saw in the lead-up to the 2021 attack on the U.S. capitol, it seems like at least some of these groups have moved to smaller platforms that don’t have the kinds of content moderation rules that Facebook and Twitter are known for. This doesn’t mean that their efforts won’t have dangerous real-life consequences, but by using these smaller, niche platforms, they simply will not reach as many people as they would on Facebook or Twitter. Media Matters has put together a list of prominent groups, most of which go by deceptively mainstream-sounding names like “Honest Elections Project” and “Audit the Vote PA.” Dig into it if you dare.
After Myanmar’s military junta-led government bombed a civilian gathering in Kachin state on October 24, killing 80 people, authorities instituted a communication blackout, leaving residents without access to Wi-Fi, in a state where mobile internet connections have been shut down for more than a year. “When the bombs dropped on Sunday evening, the mostly-civilian crowd was left isolated, unable to contact friends and family to seek help and urgent medical attention,” said Wai Phyo Myint, Asia Pacific Policy Analyst at Access Now.