Letting it burn
Musk’s Twitter wants the world to burn.
Some of the UK’s top scientists are struggling to deal with what they describe as a huge rise in abuse from climate crisis deniers on Twitter since the social media platform was taken over by Elon Musk last year.
Since then, key figures who ensured “trusted” content was prioritised have been sacked, according to one scientist, and Twitter’s sustainability arm has vanished. At the same time several users with millions of followers who propagate false statements about the climate emergency, including Donald Trump and rightwing culture warrior Jordan Peterson, have had their accounts reinstated.
Climate scientists say the change has been stark, and they are fighting to make themselves heard over a “barrage” of often hostile comments.
“There’s been a massive change,” said Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science at University College London and the author of popular books including How to Save Our Planet. “I get so much abuse and rude comments now. It’s happening to all of us, but I challenge the climate deniers so I’ve been really targeted.”
Maslin says he used to have regular meetings with Sean Boyle, Twitter’s former head of sustainability, who was laid off in Musk’s mass cull of staff shortly after he took over in Aprll 2022. Maslin said Boyle discussed the platform’s work to develop ways of ensuring that trusted information was pushed to the top.
“They were using climate change as a good test bed, because it was fairly clear who the good and bad actors were,” Maslin said. “But he was sacked and Twitter became the wild west.”
That’s ok. There’s no reason not to err on the side of “deny deny deny until everything is scorched and dead.”
H/t Tim Harris
Calling Jordan Peterson a “culture warrior” is giving him too much credit. He’s a culture gadfly, at best.
I largely agree about Peterson. But (in connexion with Peterson’s ideas about male lobsters, and not climate change) I do recommend a book I am now reading: ‘Of Boys & Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About IT’, by Richard V. Reeves.
See that Spiked article I just posted about, which is pretty much about the same thing.
And thank you for the link to the article, Tim.
There’s a 45 minute or so interview with Reeve’s on The Bulwark podcast with Charlie Sykes. Actually quite good.
And thank you, Ophelia, for the Spiked article, which I have just read in full and thought excellent.
And thank you, Rob – I hadn’t noticed that on Bulwark. I shall listen to it.
According to the very good website Popular Information, Musk has been censoring Twitter with respect to the presidential election in Turkey. So much for free speech.
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Musk is not just censoring content in Turkey. He is also censoring domestic content, including this newsletter. We publish Popular Information on the Substack platform and, in recent weeks, Musk has restricted “writers’ ability to share their work by hiding Substack previews and limiting the distribution of Substack links.”
This is a significant issue because, historically, about half of Popular Information’s subscribers have found out about this newsletter through Twitter.
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Musk bows to Turkey’s autocratic government, censors Twitter before critical election
JUDD LEGUM
MAY 15
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) shakes hands with Elon Musk on November 8, 2017
Elon Musk, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” agreed to censor Twitter in Turkey on Saturday, the day before a critical election, at the request of the nation’s autocratic government. The decision is a sharp break from how Twitter responded to the censorship requests of the current regime, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, before Musk bought the company. Musk has lucrative business dealings with the incumbent Turkish government through his company SpaceX.
Oh good god.