The controversy surrounding Twitter’s censorship against The Daily Wire due to alleged “misgendering”, escalated Thursday evening, with Ella Irwin resigning as the Head of Trust and Safety.
It’s likely that she and her department made the decision to flag tweets from Matt Walsh for violating Twitter’s policies on “hateful behavior”. A warning label was placed on the post along with sharing being disabled. Jeremy Boreing CEO of The Daily Wire revealed on Thursday morning that Twitter had backed out from a deal for the popular documentary What Is a Woman about the militant transgender movements.
Irwin’s fate is still unknown. It appears that Musk forced Irwin to resign. She either resigned out of protest or because Musk told her to change the policy (which wasn’t supposed to exist).
Twitter is better with Irwin gone, no matter what the details. If Irwin truly believed that Twitter should censor posts for “misgendering”, a concept so anti-scientific that it demands that people confirm mental illness, then she had to leave. This policy is also absurd, given that Musk bought Twitter to end the censorship against The Babylon Bee. The account was suspended almost a full year under the previous Twitter ownership for “misgendering”.
Irwin’s departure is welcome, but the damage has not been repaired. The censorship regime struck again 20 minutes into the Thursday night’s screening of What Is a Woman. It closed comments and prohibited sharing.
Musk responded on Twitter by saying an update would be released tomorrow that would correct the issue. Musk also said that The Daily Wire posts that are alleged to contain “misgendering”, will be throttled, and advertisers will no longer be able to reach them.
This is a serious problem. I can understand why Twitter does not allow advertising on posts, as it is a commercial site. You can’t advertise on something that the company doesn’t want seen as promoting or representing.
Why will it take a whole day to uncensor these posts? Why would they be throttled so much that the algorithm does not recommend them? The algorithm is a daily recommendation of all kinds of controversial material. This is all because The Daily Wire acknowledged biological reality?
Musk’s actions are at best muddled. He has put himself in a dangerous situation. He would do well to rectify the situation in full. Any less will only build distrust and, given Twitter’s recent successes, I would hate to see this happen.
