The “Free-Speech Twitter” PSYOP

Elon Musk Smiling

I’m writing this column because, maybe, now that folks are starting to face the fact that the whole “free-speech Twitter” thing was an elaborate con, or a trap, or a PSYOP, maybe, now, they can knock off the “Elon is our savior!” crap and try to pay attention to what is actually happening.

X CEO, explaining how the new censorship system works. And here’s my favorite Yaccarino quote:

“Since acquisition, we have built brand-safety and content-moderation tools that have never before existed at this company. And we’ve introduced a new policy to [address?] your specific point about hate speech, called “Freedom of speech, not reach.”

What she’s talking about is the future of Internet censorship. Not the ham-fisted government-initiated censorship that people tend to think of when they think about censorship. Corporate censorship. “Free-market” censorship. What she’s talking about is the virtually imperceptible moment-by-moment manipulation of social-media content, search engine results, “reference” platforms like Wikipedia, everything most people see on the Internet. The corp-speak term is “visibility filtering.”

From now on, instead of being suspended or deplatformed — which is bad PR, and only draws more attention to the deplatformed party — dissident voices will be “deamplified.” We will be “free” to post whatever we like, but we will be talking to no one, in a digital void, which most people won’t even know exists. “Red/blue” culture-war mud-slinging content, and other such harmless entertainment that keeps the masses infuriated and at each other’s throats, will of course be allowed, and will be “amplified” and “monetized.” But any serious form of political dissent or deviation from official narratives will be labelled “hate speech,” “disinformation,” “malinformation,” or simply “unhealthy.” Corporations like X, Meta, Alphabet, and Tencent will decide what is “healthy.” They will do so with algorithms, but not only with algorithms.

Here’s Linda Yaccarino again, talking to CNBC this time …

“… X is committed to encouraging healthy behavior … 99.9% of all impressions are healthy … and we have an extraordinary team of people who are overseeing, hands on keyboards, monitoring, all day, every day, to make sure that that 99.9% of impressions remain at that number.”

I don’t know how much clearer she could make it. A team. Of people. Monitoring everything. Moment by moment. Every day. Not some badly-written algorithm. Not some secret cabal of mutinous Wokesters sabotaging Elon’s vision. Not the FBI. Not the CIA. Not the WEF. Not the Rothschilds. Just Twitter. Just X.

This isn’t one of my “conspiracy theories.” There is absolutely nothing secret about it. It’s all explained right here, and here, and here, and here, on the Twitter Safety blog.

https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-free-speech-twitter-psyop