Elon Musk, left, and Kanye West. Photo by Getty Images

Elad Nehorai August 3, 2023

Kanye West is back on Twitter (now named X, but who actually calls it that?).

For those who missed it, West, who now goes by “Ye,” was booted from Twitter eight months ago when he famously claimed he would be “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”

In the big scheme of things, Kanye’s reinstatement feels a bit like an inevitable drop in the bucket: Elon Musk’s Twitter has been exploding with bigotry and antisemitism since he took over. And the biggest spreader of bigotry on the platform is Musk himself, whose impact at more than 150 million followers (half of Twitter’s active user base) puts West’s 31 million to shame. Combined with the way Musk has decimated the moderation team and reinstated some of the most influential neo-Nazis and antisemites in the world over his tenure, it’s hard to feel like West is the real problem.

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The real problem is that Twitter/X itself is broken. The question is no longer whether Musk is a bigot but whether we should see actions like West’s reinstatement as a time to leave the platform if we haven’t already.

For many, it feels like a morally compromising choice to stay somewhere that is essentially a hate site, and through their simple presence helps to enrich one of the world’s richest man. It is abundantly clear that Musk isn’t changing, X isn’t improving and the bigotry there is only beginning to ramp up.

For others, it has become a common refrain that they “shouldn’t cede ground” to the bigots, the implication being that by their staying on Twitter, they can ensure they don’t lose the power of the platform, giving the bigots sole access to still-powerful social media infrastructure.

The second argument is pretty much a circular fallacy: It is the presence of others that makes social media powerful. Leaving a social media platform by definition would make the bigots worse off by giving them fewer targets, fewer people to radicalize and a smaller megaphone.

But the moral argument also isn’t perfect either. Unfortunately, every major social media company is run by deeply immoral people. Meta knowingly allowed a genocide to be instigated in Myanmar on Facebook, in only one of the many major ways the platform has contributed to bigotry on a once-unimaginable scale. TikTok’s owner ByteDance has operated at the behest of the Chinese government to censor and ban topics, which is only the tip of the iceberg of what it could one day do.

Of course, no other company besides Twitter/X has a CEO who subscribes to an account on his own platform that spreads conspiracy theories about Israel orchestrating 9/11, claims that the term “cis” is a slur, and promotes David Icke’s book which claims Jews are lizard people — shortly before reinstating an account that shared a video of a child being abused.

So, there are degrees of evil.

At the end of the day, the thing the group of people who are against “ceding ground” understand is that ultimately, social media is a critical part of communication infrastructure today. For many of us, it is one of the main ways we can amplify and spread our activism, shape opinions, spread ideas that are not as acceptable in the mainstream and connect with others who wish to do the same.

For many users with disabilities, Twitter has become an essential tool for community. Sex workers often depend on platforms like Twitter for their incomes. For journalists, Twitter in particular was once (and still is) one of the best ways to dig up real-time information on breaking events. Twitter was the home of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and the Ukrainian Euromaidan revolution.

As a marketer who specializes specifically in using the digital world to help improve the world, I strongly believe these social media platforms are essential, and despite the dangers they represent, can be used responsibly.

Asking people to decimate networks and audiences they have developed for years, especially when it directly affects their material livelihood, is not only unfair, it’s not practical. No matter how many Kanyes get reinstated.

Ultimately, well-meaning Twitter users are facing a pragmatic question: How can you maximize your positive effect on the world through social media while minimizing the negative fallout of the platform itself?

It would be far more effective for people to continue to develop their voices and build their networks on the new alternative platforms such as Threads and Bluesky, while also working to influence the companies that are still buying ads on Twitter/X. Ultimately, a massive drop in revenue is far more likely to affect Musk, while still allowing users to find their own exit ramps in the most practical way they can afford.

To zoom out still further, the actual answer to our social media woes is to not let a bunch of power-mad, rich megalomaniacs run things without any accountability. The lack of regulation and accountability by the federal government when dealing with social media is the literal source of the problem. Until that’s fixed, all of us will likely be jumping from platform to platform in an attempt to stay empowered, while the maniacs try to stomp out our voices.

To contact the author, email opinion@forward.com.

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