This is the first of several posts about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his authorising of key journalists to publish findings after their examination of Twitter’s files and email communication records to make public Twitter’s various methods used to constrain and even ban the free speech of mostly conservative account holders.
Twitter is perhaps the highest profile of all the giant social media companies. Whilst it is easily dwarfed by Facebook and even Instagram in terms of sheer numbers of Followers and does not host the volume of watchable content that You Tube does, Twitter’s power to shape public opinion more than any other social media platform comes from the type of people who are on Twitter; that is opinion leaders in the world of politics, media, entertainment and sport. Twitter is a site where the great debates of the age and the most important political and current affairs matters are quickly and vigourously aired. Anyone of any substance is on Twitter: politicians, prominent reporters, media companies, large corporations, influential intellectuals, think tanks, government agencies, sports stars, actors/singers/celebrities and writers. Twitter is where important narratives about the big political and social events are shaped and driven. A narrative forms first on Twitter and then is echoed by the large opinion leading mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, major broadcast networks, NPR, Fox , CNN, MSNC and outside the US; the UK’s The Times, Daily Mail, BBC, Sky News, Australia’s ABC and major metro dailies, Canada’s CBC and mainstream newspapers and in NZ; TVNZ, RNZ, NZ Herald and Stuff.
Twitter, like all social and regular media companies, always suffered from a liberal bias. With its headquarters in San Francisco and hiring the brightest but mostly progressive woke engineers and programmers, quickly a liberal oriented group think coalesced amongst management matching that found in the editorial rooms of all but Fox News in the wider mainstream media. When Donald Trump burst on the scene, his pugnacious, combative, take-no-prisoners and fight-his-corner style was tailor made for Twitter and Trump took to the medium with gusto and would easily engage in flame wars with his political rivals across both major parties and with many prominent left leaning journalists and garnered a huge following.
Twitter’s influence over the public square came sharply into focus as the Covid pandemic spread. It enthusiastically endorsed the various draconian measures taken to try and curb the spread of the virus and willingly encouraged and supported the various government health experts and administrators globally as lockdowns unfolded and mask mandates and other measures were enacted with varying degrees of severity depending on the country, state or province. As medical and other skeptics of the tactics used began to emerge, Twitter, along with other social and mainstream media companies, actively began to shape and control content through a variety of control mechanisms that included: shadow banning, de-monetising, adding warning tags for what their fact checkers deemed as misleading information, limiting reach via an inability to Like, re-Tweet, comment or forward offending Tweets through to suspensions and outright bans. Several doctors were early outspoken critics of the pandemic control measures including Stanford University scientist Jay Bhattacharya who was one of early drivers of the Great Barrington Declaration (a joint letter opposing lockdowns eventually signed by over 800,000 doctors and scientists), as well as renown Dallas, TX cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough (an early pioneer in effective non-vaccine Covid treatments), mRNA co-inventor Dr Robert Malone, Cameroon – American Physician Dr. Stella Immanuel (an outspoken proponent of successful treatment of Covid with Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine) and a host of other doctors and commentators all over the world who were all progressively subjected to the suite of controls Twitter could impose and most were ultimately removed from the platform.
In the run up to the 2020 election, Twitter began to restrict the content and reach of prominent conservatives such as Dan Bongino (former Secret Service agent and prominent TV/cable commentator), James O’Keefe (Founder of Project Veritas, an undercover journalism outfit exposing liberal excesses) and Charlie Kirk (Founder of Turning Point USA, the US’s premier conservative school/university outreach programme) along with a myriad of smaller accounts of conservative leaning contributors. Of course, the most high-profile conservative person restricted on Twitter was President Donald Trump himself whose tweets began to be restricted in May of 2020 when he commented that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud. Because of mainstream media reporting of the events of January 6, 2021 and the role MSM deemed Trump to have played in the protests, on January 8th Trump was removed from Twitter for supposedly promoting violence and he was permanently banned a few weeks later.
In early 2022, tech billionaire, and Tesla and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk began to talk about how Twitter’s moderation policies were restricting freedom of speech and that bot activity was skewering debate. In January 2022 he began buying shares and by early April, he had acquired just over 9% of the stock making him the single largest shareholder. For this he was offered a seat on the Twitter Board which Musk initially accepted but then later declined. On April 14th Musk made an unconditional offer of $44 billion to buy Twitter which was initially met with some hostility from the Board who opted for a ‘poison pill’ strategy treating Musk’s approach as effectively a hostile takeover but eventually the offer was accepted by the Board on April 25th.
Musk began due diligence and in July, he announced his intention to terminate the offer due to his research unearthing more spam bots than the 5% Twitter had disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in their most recent filings required by all US publicly listed companies. Bot activity has relevance to the placement rates sold to advertisers as the rates are based on the number of views linked to the percentage of accounts that are actual real people. For instance, if bot activity was say 25% (as some of those advising Musk had estimated) rather than less than 5%, then the incoming advertising revenue would be slashed as the rates would have to be adjusted to match the actual true number of eyeballs viewing Tweets on the platform. Twitter’s Board then sued Musk for non-compliance of the sale contract and a trial was set down for October 17, 2022. A few weeks before the trial, Musk indicated he would proceed with the purchase and the sale settled on October 27th.
Musk took the company private and fired the entire Board, CEO and other key executives and began the process of firing almost 50% of the total staff of 7,500. Other staff resigned either in protest over his stated intention to ease the strict moderation policies that had largely targeted conservatives or over the his demand that almost all employees return to full time work at the office. A good percentage of Twitter employees had relocated to less expensive cities and/or worked from home and yet enjoyed the high Bay Area salaries needed to attract staff to such a high-cost city. Gradually Musk began to restore the accounts of many of the conservatives (including former President Trump) and Covid/vaccine narrative critics that had been suspended or banned. He dispensed with the blue check mark system designed for exclusivity of higher profile accounts whose profile and market presence could be verified in favour of a monthly fee payable by anyone who applied. Musk courted controversy when he suspended the accounts of a number of prominent journalists who he accused of doxxing his family by linking to the banned account of a young college student who accessed confidential and public information about the whereabouts of Musk’s private jet. This activity had led to someone threatening Musk’s teenage son whilst driving.
As part of his takeover of Twitter, Musk promised greater transparency around Twitter’s moderation policies, and he agreed to allow selected journalists into Twitter headquarters to examine Twitter’s files and internal communications around their controversial moderation decisions. Elon cleverly chose several mostly left leaning (or former left leaning) but fair-minded journalists used to investigative reporting, many of whom had been hostile to Donald Trump, to go over the records and produce Twitter threads reporting on their findings. They are:
* Matt Taibbi – left leaning former Russia based journalist then political writer for Rolling Stone Magazine and long-time critic of conservatives but a more recent critic of cancel culture and skewered and politicised journalism. He also runs a popular Substack and freelances on a number of topics on modern culture.
* Bari Weiss – left leaning journalist who quit her political writer’s job at the NY Times in 2020 due to her belief that the NYT was caving to Twitter mobs who criticized her for not woke and left enough coverage. She now runs her own Substack and is Editor of The Free Press.
* Alex Berenson – former NY Times investigative and financial journalist then novelist, Berenson wrote a book opposing marijuana legalisation and was an early critic of the pandemic response writing a book called Pandemia and regularly covers Covid and vaccine harm related issues on his Substack.
* Michael Shellenberger – a mostly environmental journalist, author and supporter of nuclear power as the fastest and cleanest way to a green environment and a Time magazine “Hero of the Environment”.
* Lee Fang – a left leaning reporter and investigative journalist and blogger formally of left leaning Think Progress and The Nation and then at The Intercept. Seen as fair and balanced, he provoked a Twitter firestorm for reporting black fear about crime from a George Floyd memorial. Also prominent on Substack.
* David Zweig – a left leaning freelance journalist and author who has published in liberal publications such as the NY Times, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. He has published articles asking probing questions on Covid related matters.
To date there have been 15 Twitter File releases each one authored by one of the above journalists. I will cover a summary of the non-Covid related Twitter Files in Part 2, and I will do a Part 3 once all the various Covid related Twitter File releases have concluded as this aspect of Musk’s disclosures has only just begun.
An interesting article citing eight reasons why Ron DeSantis won Florida with a huge 20% margin. The summary is:
No 3 is especially important.
Stuff reports:
The use of thin asphalt for resurfacing roads has almost doubled since 2018, which ACT says shows the Government is doing more road resurfacing jobs “that aren’t built to last”. …
Greenwood said the question for road users was if they were willing to pay more in order to fund an increase in road maintenance.
“Fundamentally, it comes down to a discussion of service levels – road users can’t expect a five-star service if they are only willing to pay for a three-star service. The potholes of this past winter are a good means of adding to that discussion of what is acceptable, and what isn’t”.
If all of the money paid my motorists was spent on roads, then it would be fair enough to say we need to pay more, to fix the potholes. But it isn’t.
The 2023/24 planned spend for the National Land Transport Fund is $4.9 billion of which only $2.6 billion is marked for roads. So barely 50% of petrol taxes and road user charges go on roads.
I don’t advocate the spend on roads should be 100% of the NLTF, but it should be say at least 80%.
Stuff reports:
Business confidence has sunk to its lowest level since the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research began surveying sentiment in 1970, on a seasonally adjusted basis, the research firm says.
NZIER said its latest quarterly survey of business opinion made for grim reading, with a net 73% of businesses expecting conditions to worsen over the coming months.
This means business confidence is lower today than it was during the oil crisis of the 1970s, the sharemarket crash of the 1980s, the Asian Financial Crisis of the 1990s, the GFC of the 2000s and the Covid pandemic.
It might even be lower than during the Suez crisis of the 1950s or the Great Depression of the 1930s, but the data series only goes back to 1970!
Stuff reports:
An empty Wellington building cost taxpayers nearly $2.4 million over four months.
The Ministry of Education closed its head office in May last year, after an engineering report rated it to be at 25% of the New Building Standard (NBS) due to its concrete floors. More than 1000 staff members worked in the building.
In answering questions from National education spokesperson Erica Stanford, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said the Ministry “continues to honour the lease and pay ongoing operating costs for the building which include rent, insurance, energy, cleaning, maintenance, and security for the building”.
Why are taxpayers still paying $500,000 a month for a building deemed too dangerous to occupy?
Surely the Government didn’t sign a lease that doesn’t have an exclusion for earthquake safety?
This data is very interesting to me.
First of all it shows the average UK voter has become slightly more left leaning since 2006.
Tony Blair was seen as very centrist (and the only UK Leader to win an election since 1974).
David Cameron won in 2010. Both he and Gordon Brown were seen as fairly moderate, and Cameron partially won on time for a change in 2010
Miliband was seen as more left than Brown and they lost in 2015.
Corbyn was seen as so far left that Boris Johnson won easily in 2019 despite Johnson also being seen as not moderate.
Rishi Sunak is seen as around where David Cameron is, but Keir Starmer is seen as more centrist and closer to the median voter. I expect him in 2024 to become the first UK Labour leader since Blair to win.
Two interesting facts in these charts. The first is that retail thefts have gone from around 2,000 to 6,000 which is a tripling since 2018 (and was steady before that).
The second is that less than 8% of retail thefts have resulted in court action. This probably explains why retail crime is out of control – no consequences for the criminals involved.
I said that I thought the book would push Harry’s net approval to around -40%, and that was pretty close to it. His brother has dropped also, but from a much higher base so he is at +49% compared to -38% for William.
Back in 2017 Meghan Markle was at +35%, Prince Harry at +70%. It shows that actions have consequences.
On Wednesday I posted this: (please sure further beneath it)
In early March I have the privilege of a short speaking slot and being on an Education Panel at the NZ Economics Forum hosted by Waikato University.
The topic for the Education Panel is: Schools under the Microscope – How do we turn them around?
Many of the problems have become very clear over the last five years and include – but are not limited to – attendance, retention until 17 years old, huge ethnicity and socio-economic achievement gaps, significant decline against international metrics, attracting high quality teachers.
I have no shortage of data and a number of ideas for rapid and significant improvement. I am also consulting with some very high quality researchers and educators to produce a high quality take-away document.
However, I am still many years away from the situation where in my tombstone it will say – “Here lies Alwyn – and wisdom dies with him.” In fact – I will be lucky to outdo Spike Milligan’s last joke.
I would very much welcome views from Kiwiblog people – either in the comments/discussion – or by direct email (no word limit – I will read them all). I also welcome counter arguments to what you think my views might be.
Initial themes would be:
Anything I use directly I am very happy to credit back to the writer (or not – as you prefer). Your views are important – not least because you pay for our education system.
Please don’t hesitate to share the post on to those you think may be interested.
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE: I am reading all of the comments and finding them interesting. Also have a good number of well thought through emails. Much appreciated. Education has to be a major 2023 issue.
Alwyn Poole
[email protected]
Friday Update
I have received a remarkable response – both in the comments and many high-quality emails. I am well and truly open to more. As a summary response to a question by Ian Boag I have posted:
Hi Ian
Yes I have thought through a lot of this previously but the responses on here – and extensive ones on email have provided food for thought.
I am also talking and getting great responses from a good range and depth of people who think on such things for professional reasons (and whom I have been in discussion in one way or another for a while) – e.g. John Hattie, Cameron Bagrie, Dame Wendy Pye, etc.
There is huge mood for change and one of the key things in 2023 is that we don’t allow people who will attempt to negate the change to play wac-a-mole. When I have put together the full document I will make it widely available.
I hear what you say re “parents as first teachers” but – in view of what we know now about human development (refer David Eagleman) – unless we get pre-birth and the first 3 – 5 years right – the rest is uphill. Difficult? Extremely – but it is an imperative. If NZ is to be the country it ought to be in 18 – 30 years then we must work that out.
The one glaring piece of consensus: The Ministry is far more responsible for the decline and current debacle than their spin doctors will allow to be public to realise. The bureaucracy is no longer serving its purpose and their email footer: “We shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes” is fodder for a Yes Minister remake. Many of the front-line Ministry providers are excellent but the 4000 person behemoth is as outdated and as unfit for purpose as a medieval castle in modern warfare. Maybe it is time for NZ families and schools to simply drive around them – until there is the political will to make the necessary, and massive, changes.
Alwyn
[email protected]
ps: There is a way for the Ministry to prove the consensus wrong and that would be to have an external 360 degree from stakeholders done (including parents and taxpayers). I am sure Curia would do a great job.
Stuff reports:
A controversial crossing and speed limit lowering has cost $2.4 million, with more than $500,000 going to consultants, in a bid to improve safety near Wellington’s airport and the ASB Sports Centre.
Incredible. They have to install a couple of traffic lights and paint some lines on the road and it costs not $25,000, not $250,000 but $2.4 million.
Stuff reports:
The Justice Department is reviewing a batch of potentially classified documents found in the Washington office space of US President Joe Biden’s former institute, the White House says.
Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber said Monday (NZT Tuesday), “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center.
It was where the president kept an office after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019. The documents were found on November 2, 2022, in a “locked closet” in the office, Sauber said.
Sauber said the attorneys immediately alerted the White House Counsel’s office, who notified the National Archives and Records Administration – which took custody of the documents the next day.
Will this be a get out of jail card for Trump? One was accidental and one was deliberate, but this does make it harder for the Justice Department to prosecute Trump.
Hello Kiwiblog people and all the best for 2023.
In early March I have the privilege of a short speaking slot and being on an Education Panel at the NZ Economics Forum hosted by Waikato University.
The topic for the Education Panel is: Schools under the Microscope – How do we turn them around?
Many of the problems have become very clear over the last five years and include – but are not limited to – attendance, retention until 17 years old, huge ethnicity and socio-economic achievement gaps, significant decline against international metrics, attracting high quality teachers.
I have no shortage of data and a number of ideas for rapid and significant improvement. I am also consulting with some very high quality researchers and educators to produce a high quality take-away document.
However, I am still many years away from the situation where in my tombstone it will say – “Here lies Alwyn – and wisdom dies with him.” In fact – I will be lucky to outdo Spike Milligan’s last joke.
I would very much welcome views from Kiwiblog people – either in the comments/discussion – or by direct email (no word limit – I will read them all). I also welcome counter arguments to what you think my views might be.
Initial themes would be:
Anything I use directly I am very happy to credit back to the writer (or not – as you prefer). Your views are important – not least because you pay for our education system.
Please don’t hesitate to share the post on to those you think may be interested.
Thanks in advance.
UPDATE: I am reading all of the comments and finding them interesting. Also have a good number of well thought through emails. Much appreciated. Education has to be a major 2023 issue.
Alwyn Poole
[email protected]
Luke Malpass lays out the challenges for Chris Luxon in election year. They are:
YouGov had the following net approval ratings for members of the Royal Family in December:
This poll was before his book was leaked and before his disastrous interviews, so one can only imagine where Prince Harry will be in the next poll. I guess -40% or lower.
The Herald gallery team made predictions for 2023. They include:`