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......(3) Speaking of being fascinated by people who thought the Twitter Files were a legitimately big deal, a couple weeks ago, I participated in an online debate with Jonathan Turley about the state of Twitter under Elon Musk. I’m linking to the debate below.
It was… interesting, I guess? I’m not familiar with ZeroHedge, the organization that hosted the debate. The website listing their past debate participants includes more than a couple red flags.
But, on the other hand, I’ve taught at GWU for over a dozen years without ever having the chance to say to Jonathan Turley’s face the sort of things I say about him online. And the debate question was literally “has Elon Musk’s management of Twitter/X been net positive or net negative for society?”
I could have prepared a little better for the debate. Turley’s latest book, apparently, is all about how the Hunter Biden laptop story proves that Twitter was suppressing speech, and that this was some terrible violation of the First Amendment. So there are basically two approaches one can take:
-You can accept the terrain he sets, and absolutely demolish the argument on the merits. That’s not hard to do. But one should, at a minimum, probably at least skim his book. And ell-oh-ell, friends, the stakes of this debate did not justify doing that to myself.
-You can reject his debate frame, and instead offer an alternate frame. Which seems appropriate here, since we were invited to discuss whether Elon has made Twitter better or worse, not to rehash late-2020 conservative fever dreams.
I chose the latter, and basically spent 90 minutes saying things like “this hasn’t gone well for anyone,” and “I get that the New Twitter has been good for you personally, but isn’t because speech is More Free. It’s because you’re saying things Elon chooses to amplify,” while also explaining some very basic concepts about how algorithmic amplification works.
I do think I could’ve fit a few more clever insults in.
I don’t think I could’ve convinced Turley or his supporters of anything, for the same reason that formal debate settings aren’t the setting to convince Trumpists that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen.
Still, overall, it was a pretty fun way to spend an evening.
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