What does Elon Musk's Twitter takeover mean for women?

By Karla Cloete

Edited by Imaan Moosa

Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual violence and online harassment.

Billionaires, monopolies, shareholder lawsuits… What does it all mean for the average Twitter user? Or more so, for the average woman who lives life online?

Twitter is already known for being a dumpster fire of misinformation, and hate speech, the source of most people’s endless doom scrolling and the reason so many have found themselves in need of a digital detox from ‘the hell site’. Certainly, there are darker corners of the internet, but the platform is hardly what it set out to be. With Elon Musk’s 44 billion dollar takeover on the imminent horizon, despite placing the bid on hold among shareholder lawsuits, there is much to wonder about regardless if the deal falls through.

Elon Musk bought 9.1% of Twitter shares on April 4th, announced his intent to purchase the company on April 14th and by the 25th Twitter accepted for 44 billion and total control of the platform.

"Twitter deals temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk said on Twitter on 13 May. He reportedly plans to conduct a sample study of 100 users.

Image from Financial Times.

The speed of these dealing is cause for concern. Musk has been condemned and hailed as a “free speech absolutist”.

Digital rights watch is one of many parties concerned about how Musk will change the platform- saying that power is the actual goal behind Musk’s takeover.

“While free speech is important, you have to account for asymmetries of power and other barriers that stop people from speaking freely,” Lizzie O’Shea said as the chair of digital rights watches in an interview with the Guardian. “Musk’s style of free speech absolutism will tilt the scales in favour of the rich and powerful who can silence or bully critics. What Musk really seems to want is freedom from accountability.”

“Free speech absolutists are the best friends of hate speech,” independent New Delhi journalist Shivam Vij tweeted.

So far we know that musk plans to bring in human authentication, allowing editing, decreasing spambots and absolutely free speech, but only time can tell what he will do with the platform and how it will affect the nearly 200 million users. Musk claims that content moderation is the enemy of free speech, but one CNN writer says the real threat is corporate monopolies like the one Musk is attempting to create.

There are other open-source alternatives for those fleeing twitter, but as CNN reports silicon valley execs are making it incredibly hard for people these other outlets to attract a large enough user base for them to be meaningful alternatives. These monopolies might buy start-ups in order to absorb them into their fold rather than having to freely compete with them.

Image from the Boston Globe.

“To fix social media and safeguard freedom of expression for the future, we need lawmakers to act. Not billionaires,” said Evan Green, director of Fight for the future, in her CNN piece.

Whether it be Musk or some other more shadowed billionaire we should all be concerned when individuals become the gatekeepers of our private information and the rule makers for platforms that influence and undermine governments, and the health, well-being and safety of millions.

Yes, first and foremost twitter is a dumpster fire of hateful rhetoric and discourse, but it is also the primary source of news and tools for advocacy for millions- what happens on Twitter matters.

Content moderation makes up an important part of an online activists tool belt- without the ability to report and remove hate and harassment many marginalised communities can’t function online or organise effectively.

“Every voice has the power to impact the world,” Twitter said of itself in 2018. But when the voices of powerful individuals allow for the silencing and harassment of women and marginalized communities it becomes abundantly clear that the power to impact the world belongs only to those who already have it.

According to Amnesty international online abuse and violence proliferates on twitter with little oversight or intervention: “Twitter is failing in its responsibility to respect women’s rights online by inadequately investigating and responding to reports of violence and abuse in a transparent manner.”

“Online abuse is unacceptable for women in politics, just as it’s unacceptable for a woman anywhere to suffer that kind of abuse,” the first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon said.

Image sourced from Social Samosa.

Their 18 months of qualitative and quantitative research investigation found that women online experience: threats of sexual assault and violence, discrimination, harassment, doxing and other violation of privacy. This didn’t just happen to journalists, politicians and activists in the public eye. Women outside the internet spotlight weren’t immune to harassment either. Women who belonged were part of minority groups- both religious or ethnic, were LGBTQ or disabled were more likely to experience these abuses on multiple fronts. Being a woman or a marginalised person online means choosing between safety and sanity or being active and authentic about what matters to you- a choice you shouldn’t have to make. Unchecked online freedoms mean women need do not have the same freedom of expression that others enjoy online. As per Dick Costolo, former Twitter CEO:

“We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years…We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day. I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it.”

Image sourced from Amnesty International USA.

For women being vocal online comes with fear not only for their mental health as they are threatened with murder, rape and violence, but also for their safety as their personal information like their addresses and family’s names can be leaked online putting them in real-world danger.

The up-to-the-minute nature of Twitter and its use of hashtags make the platform uniquely prone to abuse. Abusers and trolls will often weaponize trending feminist hashtags to target women and disrupt these communities and campaigns.

Of course, no one is immune to the reign of the internet trolls, but there is ignorance in ignoring the propionate gendered impact it has.

“Female journalists and bloggers throughout the globe are being inundated with threats of murder, rape, physical violence and graphic imagery via email, commenting sections and across all social media…” said Dunja Mijatović, former Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Representative on Freedom of the Media. “Male journalists are also targeted with online abuse, however, the severity, in terms of both sheer amount and content of abuse, including sexist and misogynistic vitriol, is much more extreme for female journalists.”

Laura Bates was an online organizer of the Everyday Sexism Project until she started receiving 200 abusive messages per day:

“I found it difficult not to be scared about my safety initially. The psychological impact of reading through someone’s really graphic thoughts about raping and murdering you is not necessarily acknowledged. You could be sitting at home in your living room, outside of working hours, and suddenly someone is able to send you an incredibly graphic rape threat right into the palm of your hand.”

Image sourced from Amnesty International Australia.

As per Miski Noor, who managed the Black Lives Matter Twitter page:

“There are people who dedicate their existence to sending messages to fuck with my mental health and black organisers’ mental health to tear us down. There are people who always focus on ‘you’re an immigrant, and you’re queer, and you’re trans, and you’re Muslim, or you’re disabled’. They know that we hold these identities and they are actively trying to destroy folks. [Abuse online] is not just a ‘thing’ that’s happening, it’s a tactic, it’s a strategy that they’re using to stop us from building [power]. It’s just the nature of Twitter – the way that it allows hateful folks to just fester [on the platform] to the point where it’s like, “oh, this is what it is”.”

Telling women to get off Twitter is not a solution – it robs us of advances in online safety and accountability for everyone. The trolls might not be after you today, but they may come for you tomorrow. Letting billionaires collect the social media platforms that influence our lives and liberties like Pokémon cards is a threat to our democratic freedoms.

Until governments can step in to prevent the monopolising of these companies and they take accountable steps to curb the worst parts of their platforms, the virtual dumpster fires continue to burn high and bright without any sign of stopping.

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