The title of a new MSNBC video segment poses the question: “Would scrapping Twitter benefit American democracy?”
The answer to that query is actually quite easy: Yes. But probably not for the reasons MSNBC viewers think. The toxic civic, social, and political effects that social media has inflicted on the American polity predate Elon Musk’s taking the wheel at Twitter, and are larger than any one single internet platform.
Of course, there’s a reason MSNBC is only asking this question now. After the obligatory assurance that “people like you and me . . . are all lamenting” that “Musk is wrecking Twitter,” the host of the segment posed the question to his guest, the Silicon Valley investor-turned-left-wing-activist Roger McNamee: “Is it necessarily a bad thing . . . that Twitter might disappear?” McNamee, to his credit, was candid about the real reason for his concern. “What Musk is doing, is he’s essentially going in and imposing his worldview [and] just thumbing his nose at what was the Twitter establishment,” he said, adding that the struggle over Twitter’s leadership is about “who gets to control voices in this country.”
In a sense, that’s true: The fault lines in the vitriolic debate regarding the Musk takeover largely fall between those who think that more censorship of right-wing voices is good, and those who think said censorship is bad. But that’s not actually the fundamental reason that Twitter is bad for America. For progressives, the only reason that Twitter suddenly presents a threat to democracy is the prospect of their losing control over the facilitation of political speech on the platform. The deeper threat Twitter poses to our shared way of life is much more nonpartisan: an incentive structure that rewards hysteria and partisan bottle-service over nuance and serious intellectual engagement, echo chambers over cross-ideological conversation, and one-sentence dunks over good-faith debate.