(C) Alec Muffett's DropSafe blog.
Author Name: Alec Muffett
This story was originally published on allecmuffett.com. [1]
License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.[2]


Banning X/Twitter Would Do More Harm Than Good

2024-08-07 09:48:22+00:00

Hi, my name’s Alec, I’m a technologist and expert in Internet Security and Safety.

Back in 1993 British Telecom released the attached advert which, more than many other things, helped shape my perspective towards the (then) still-teenage internet and questions of “freedom of speech”. The principles are not bent by time, and with respect to current political debate they offer the following responses to current provocations:

Social Media is causing the riots

Actually, the riots are a result of years of social deprivation and poor education atop two or three decades of political lies that “immigrants are taking our jobs/benefits/etc”, not to mention both-sidesism “media balance” which has permitted the establishment of far-right figures in our political discourse, and has normalised, even made acceptable, “othering” hatred spouted in our print media.

Left: Andrew Pierce, "We had this allegation from that MP yesterday that my newspaper has been part of this and she had absolutely no evidence to sustain that"



Right: A collage of Daily Mail front pages posted by 'that MP' @zarahsultana after the interview on GMB pic.twitter.com/K6uaEiOR8Z — Farrukh (@implausibleblog) August 6, 2024

Even by the UK's low standards, the hypocrisy of our right-wing newspapers blaming social media for racist violence is off the scale pic.twitter.com/sAy0LLUgHb — Nicholas Guyatt (@NicholasGuyatt) August 7, 2024

Rioters are using Social Media to organise

Actually, they are largely using the standard tools of individual communication to organise, which means messenger technology such as SMS and anything popular which has supplanted that, notably Telegram which (as a corporation) historically does not do much to enforce polite behaviour.

BREAKING: screenshots of far right group chats reveal fascists using N word and P word, and talk of hanging Yvette Cooper.



These are the fascist thugs who have been rioting in the last week. Join us to build a movement to oppose them on the streets and stop them pic.twitter.com/bzQrox99iA — Stand Up To Racism (@AntiRacismDay) August 4, 2024

Rioters are using (specifically) Twitter to organise

See the above; most of the screenshots you are seeing on (all forms of social media, are of Telegram chats; but even if they were not using Telegram, they would be using something else. Most of what you are seeing surfaced by “algorithms” on social media is normal-people reaction to the rioter material, not the material itself.

Not to mention: raising awareness of counter-demonstrations is something that Twitter does do far better than the mainstream media who prefer to chase after Nigel Farage

Outside a hotel in Redcliffe, Bristol – the hotel is being protected by hundreds of Bristolians shouting ‘We are many, you are few. We are Bristol, who are you?’ to a group of around 100 protesters who had marched on the hotel pic.twitter.com/EbAqHzpzr9 — Tristan Cork Post (@TristanCorkPost) August 3, 2024

We are aware of speculation circulating about a protest in George Square, Glasgow, today. There is no intelligence to suggest any protest is planned. Please be wary of what you read on social media, and avoid speculation and sharing information which my be inaccurate pic.twitter.com/81z3DXKWS6 — Police Scotland Greater Glasgow (@PSOSGreaterGlas) August 7, 2024

"Always stand together, Greater Manchester."



A message from Andy. pic.twitter.com/ujGObh3vea — Mayor of Greater Manchester (@MayorofGM) August 7, 2024

Elon Musk is a horrible person and he fired the Twitter Trust & Safety Team

Yes, and he spouts some dire, thoughtless propaganda, too, mostly because he understands that fomenting outrage is a good way to get limelight thrown his way by the popular media. There’s a lot of that syndrome around at the moment.

Ian Dunt summarises this nicely:

Elon Musk is, at this point, quite obviously an online far-right campaigner. Those are the accounts he interacts with and those are the messages he transmits. The fact he liked the previous prime minister and despises this one speaks very highly of Keir Starmer. — Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) August 6, 2024

…and he continues:

Secret Algorithms on Twitter (Instagram, TikTok) are popularising riot material

“Algorithms” are what brought you “Black Lives Matter” and “Me Too” and other campaigns of positive outrage for change and empowerment. The problem is not with “algorithms” unless you would rather all social media be anodyne, where the words of our most compelling journalists covering real-time political change must equally compete with a neighbourhood argument over hedge-heights and reminiscence of a gig your mate went to in 2014.

Gosh, who would ever have expected that the result of publishing the algorithms would be that people would attempt to "game" the algorithms to the disbenefit of everyone.



This was not an obvious outcome at all. https://t.co/bxcJvZNkmW — Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) April 5, 2023

But Social Media Has Changed Everything About How We Communicate

So did the printing press, pamphlet, newspaper, novel, telegraph, gramophone, telephone, radio, television, fax, internet, email and web; this is not a new problem. It’s just “change”, and as such the old rules apply, such as human rights, unless you want to make exceptions such as those which Graham satirises:

6. Everyone has the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media, always excepting the internet and social media. — Graham Smith ? (@Cyberleagle) June 17, 2020

Make Sure We Keep Talking

Banning open communication is never a good thing. It is never a fix. Please take less than a couple of minutes to watch:
[END]

[1] URL: https://alecmuffett.com/article/110185
[2] URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

DropSafe Blog via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/alecmuffett/