Autumn Johnson
newsbusters.org
Elon Musk seems to be toying with a plan that would allow Twitter users to “select” which version of Twitter they prefer.
Musk was following up on responses to his Saturday tweet stating that the platform would implement a “content moderation council” with “widely diverse viewpoints.”
When it was pointed out by several verified users that Facebook’s similar Oversight Board failed to balance the censorship of certain viewpoints online, Musk mused that users might prefer to simply choose the version of Twitter they like best.
“…Being able to select which version of Twitter you want is probably better, much as it would be for a movie maturity rating,” he tweeted Saturday. “The rating of the tweet itself could be self-selected, then modified by user feedback.”
Ron Bassilian, a former Republican candidate for California’s State Senate, responded that transparent content moderation rules would go a long way.
“This doesn’t need to be difficult,” he tweeted. “The vast majority of complaints are that there’s no transparency. A simple set of transparent rules, as well as an appeals process, can fix so much.”
Jim Hanson, President of Security Studies Group and conservative commentator on Twitter, expressed concern that the left would overwhelmingly use tweet ratings to silence conservatives.
“Studies show the political Left is much more active in complaining to negatively affect things they dislike.” Hanson tweeted. “This will simply become a heckler’s veto. People have mute & block functions. The desire is not to avoid content themselves, [b]ut to stop things they dislike from being seen.”
