During the recent U.S. presidential election period, Twitter openly supported Joe Biden against Donald Trump. It went even further than support and banned Trump's Twitter account. Twitter's approach to freedom of expression was no different during the coronavirus pandemic. It censored scientific theses that have now turned out to be true. It limited the accounts of scientists such as biochemist Robert Malone, who discovered the infrastructure of mRNA technology. It blocked access to articles published in academic journals. It even closed accounts that supported truckers protesting against the COVID-19 measures in Canada.
The company management cited some vague criteria such as “public safety” or “public health” as the reason for all these clear examples of censorship. However, by saying it’s not interfering in the content of the legal processes related to tweets, Twitter indeed refutes itself with such censorship practices. Because, in the examples above, there is neither a legal crime nor a violation of a protected category such as hate speech. So, how could the allegations that Trump could publicly make about Biden on TV screens become a crime on Twitter? Or, how does Twitter decide which scientist’s thesis about the pandemic can be promoted and which should not be?
Shares of Twitter, a platform facing a lack of credibility due to censorship, fake users and algorithms, have been discussed for a long time. However, the power of manipulation still makes Twitter valuable.
In such a period of time, Elon Musk, who already owned 9% of Twitter, offered to buy the rest of the platform's shares. However, he faced great anger in response to a proposal much higher than the platform's market value. He has faced a demonization campaign that has once again revealed Twitter is not a commercial enterprise but the ideological device of the U.S. establishment. According to the defenders of the anti-Musk bloc, such a great power shouldn't belong to a single person. They must be thinking that an uncontrolled libertarian like Musk, who already said he would open algorithms and prevent censorship, shouldn’t run Twitter. God forbid then he might even unblock Trump's account! Chaos would come to Twitter, hate crimes would increase!
As I read such “apocalyptic” scenarios in the world media, including those in Turkey, and I look at the so-called liberals who demand the approval of the U.S. Congress for Twitter’s sale, I just laugh. Because no “chaos” can bring Twitter to a worse point than it is today. After all, who can provide only one reason to trust the collective will that governs Twitter's inalienable power? Is there anyone on Twitter whose name we can remember apart from Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey? A dark, obscure committee, whose representative is not even clear, has the sole say over our new public space.
In the face of this darkness and uncertainty, why should we doubt a real character like Musk, who has been transparent, successful and libertarian, and does not feel the need to hide his thoughts and lifestyle? A democratic transformation is a must for Twitter, which was united in the U.S. elections and the pandemic that swept over us, limiting our freedom of expression and deepening the spiral of silence. And in the current conditions, there is no name more reliable than Musk to do this hard work. We're behind you, Elon!
