For years, a vocal group of self-described “contrarian” Substackified pundits warned about a supposed “censorship industrial complex” involving collusion between the White House and social media companies to set content moderation policies. There was just one problem: it wasn’t even close to true.
Now, with Elon Musk owning ExTwitter and Donald Trump heading back to the White House, we have a situation that actually matches what those contrarian chroniclers claimed to fear: powerful tech moguls with direct ties to the administration in a position to influence online speech. Suddenly, the grave concerns about “creeping authoritarianism” have evaporated. The double standard couldn’t be more blatant.
So, I figured it was worth calling out the hypocrisy, and MSNBC kindly gave me the space to do so:
The so-called Twitter Files, hyped by Elon Musk and handpicked journalists, were touted as smoking-gun proof of a vast conspiracy between social media and the government to violate the First Amendment. Testifying before Congress, these reporters called it a “grave threat” and evidence of “creeping authoritarianism.”
Flash forward to today. Donald Trump is heading back to the White House. And Musk, owner of the social media company X (formerly Twitter), is a top donor, surrogate and soon-to-be government “efficiency” overseer. Musk has openly used his platform to boost Trump, attack his opponents and shape the political narrative. The collusion between government and Big Tech is no longer a conspiracy theory — it’s out in the open.
Yet suddenly, all those grave concerns about the threat to democracy have evaporated. Most of the same voices who warned of shocking government overreach in the pre-Musk Twitter era are either silent about this turn of events or they’re in wild celebration of the Trump-Musk alliance. This reveals the issue wasn’t a matter of principle; it was a matter of party.
The limited space in the MSNBC piece prevented me from delving into the additional hypocrisy around how swiftly Elon Musk banned a reporter and links related to the leaked JD Vance dossier. This action was an even more extreme version of what GOP pundits have baselessly claimed Twitter did with the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.
Yet, even as the completely exaggerated claims about what happened with Twitter and the Hunter laptop are still regularly brought up by the MAGA faithful, the story about Elon and the Vance dossier disappeared after, what, two days?
But, really, the piece takes aim at the Elon/Trump enablers. The Sophist Substackerati who position themselves as brave truth tellers, standing up to government overreach: the Matt Taibbis, Michael Shellenbergers, and Bari Weisses of the world, who all seem to have forgotten what they were saying not too long ago about the hallucinated story of coziness between the White House and social media.
Taibbi called it “a grave threat to people of all political persuasions.” Shellenberger called it “the shocking and disturbing emergence of State-sponsored censorship.” A reporter from The Free Press — a publication created by Bari Weiss (another Twitter Files reporter) — Rupa Subramanya, testified in one of these hearings warning that the American government was heading down a dangerous path of censorship, calling government connections to social media “creeping authoritarianism.”
But, oh, how things have changed.
Elon Musk still owns X. Donald Trump still owns Truth Social. These are two social media networks that can drive the news and conversations about important events in the world.
Unlike before, when there was conjecture (without evidence) of grand conspiracies and connections between the White House and important social media companies, now it’s completely explicit and out in the open.
Yet, all talk of the “grave threats” and “shocking and disturbing” connections between the White House and social media have disappeared entirely. Shellenberger has called the new administration “cathartic.” Taibbi has posted numerous articles celebrating the results of the election. The Free Press has a bunch of articles praising the new Trump administration and celebrating how the election was “a win for a new generation of builders like Elon Musk.”
The “Twitter Files” pundits built their brands on a false narrative of anti-establishment rebellion against the “elite” trying to control social media. But when faced with the real thing, they’re too busy high-fiving each other to care. Their “grave concerns” about government collusion with Big Tech have suddenly evaporated now that the administration and the tech mogul are their ideological allies.
Or, as I note:
Turns out for the “Twitter Files” crew, “creeping authoritarianism” isn’t so creepy when it’s your team doing the creeping.
There’s a lot more in the piece, but I want to point out why it’s so important to call out this hypocrisy. I know that there are a bunch of cynical “too savvy for school” folks who always respond to things like this by saying “what, it surprises you that they were full of shit?”
No, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve been calling out this kind of nonsense for years. But people who don’t follow this stuff closely don’t know this. There are so many times where I hear something these nonsense peddlers pushed over and over again pop up in the mainstream media or among random people who just assume what they’re saying is accurate.
Calling out the hypocrisy isn’t to impact those in the Intellectual Derp Web. They have their captured audiences and have made it clear they don’t give a shit. But it’s important to remind everyone else what the grift is here. The cluelessness, the gaslighting, and the utter nonsense they spent years spreading for clout. Some of us recognize it for what it was.
We need to keep telling people and reminding people so that everyone else knows it’s bullshit too.
