| Friend,
Tomorrow marks one long year since billionaire Elon Musk initiated his purchase of Twitter.
When his plan went public, Free Press Action sounded the alarm about his tendency to suppress speech he doesn’t like and rally mobs of loyal fans to go after anyone who disagrees with him. We warned that a Musk takeover of Twitter would be a complete disaster. Spoiler alert: We were right.
Since Musk officially took over at Twitter, he’s: - Fired thousands of people, including core teams who worked on content moderation and human rights;
- Removed long-standing content-moderation rules and Twitter’s ban on COVID-19 misinformation;
- Reinstated tens of thousands of accounts — including accounts belonging to Donald Trump, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, misogynists and conspiracy theorists;
- Banned several prominent tech journalists covering the billionaire's mismanagement of the platform, and;
- Launched a pay-for-verification subscription service, ushering in a slew of imposter accounts, pornographic accounts and white-supremacist accounts paying for the badge of authenticity.
That’s not all. More recently, Twitter added a “government funded media” label to NPR’s and PBS’ official accounts in an attempt to tarnish these trusted news sources1 — and restricted interactions with Substack links, presumably in response to the newsletter platform’s new Twitter-like “Notes” feature.2
We can’t sugarcoat it: Watching the deterioration of a social-media platform that so many of us rely on to communicate with one another, keep up with news and organize is nothing short of depressing.
But the good news is that the #StopToxicTwitter coalition, which Free Press Action helps lead, has pushed half of the company’s top-100 advertisers to pause their spending on the platform. (To no one’s surprise, Musk has blamed the coalition for the company’s steep drop in revenues.)
And we won’t stop. Not for a single second. If you’re still with us in this fight to hold tech dictators like Musk and social-media platforms accountable for the real-world harms they cause, donate to Free Press Action today. Free Press Action has been working for years to make Twitter a safer place — and we made a lot of progress before Musk took over the platform. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but support from people like you makes it easier for us to sustain our organizing.
Thanks so much,
The Free Press Action team
freepress.net
1. “Musk’s Twitter Rolls Out New ‘Government Funded Media’ Label Amid NPR Squabble,” The Daily Beast, April 9, 2023 2. “Twitter Restricts Users from Liking or Retweeting Posts That Link to Substack,” NBC News, April 7, 2023  |
