The thorny nationwide debate about Twitter’s future skidded into Silicon Valley’s largest native authorities this month as Santa Clara County grappled over whether or not it ought to abandon the more and more contentious social media platform or journey it out with new proprietor Elon Musk.
The county has over 40,000 followers on the platform and considers it a robust instrument to get data to its roughly 2 million residents. But District Attorney Jeff Rosen — who oversees the biggest prosecutor’s workplace in Northern California — was fuming, noting there had been an “explosion” in hate speech on the platform after Musk’s October takeover.
The county determined to remain. The D.A. determined to go.
The debate raises critical questions on how native governments weigh the deserves of a platform that has rebranded itself a bastion of free speech whereas constraining a few of its earlier policing of controversial content material and returning customers beforehand banned for supporting white supremacy, antisemitism and disinformation about elections and COVID-19.
“Every American has a moral obligation to fight against hate speech. There are many ways to do that, large and small. Here’s one way: Quit Twitter. My office – the largest prosecutor’s office in Northern California – is quitting Twitter,” Rosen wrote in his Dec. 5 goodbye.
But in Santa Clara County, Twitter is a crucial a part of folks’s every day lives, and it will get extra engagement than different social media websites, even Facebook, county spokesperson Maria Leticia Gomez stated Wednesday.
“These are all the factors that went into our decision,” Gomez stated. “People look to the County as a reliable source of news when misinformation is disseminated. Without our presence, that reliable source goes away, and we leave a void in the space, potentially costing lives.”
When Rosen deactivated his Twitter account, he joined a cohort of Twitter’s customers who’ve criticized Musk’s new route for the San Francisco-based firm, claiming that his push for extra free speech will result in extra hateful rhetoric spreading on the platform. Some early research have prompt that’s certainly occurring. But Musk’s supporters say the technique will permit for a broader set of voices to precise political beliefs on a platform that has been accused of censorship.
On Tuesday, amid controversy for that and different strikes, Musk introduced he would step down as CEO as soon as he finds a alternative.
After the District Attorney’s transfer, Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith contemplated following swimsuit, stated Gomez, the county’s spokesperson. The choice would have impacted not solely the county’s most important account, but in addition its library, probation, workplace of emergency administration and well being division accounts, the final of which commonly broadcasts details about greatest practices associated to the pandemic.
But after inside conversations — primarily across the platform’s means to rapidly convey essential data within the face of disasters like earthquakes and wildfires — a call was made to stay, Gomez stated. She was amongst those that advocated for its continued use. In a textual content message, Smith stated the county doesn’t help “the way Elon Musk’s running Twitter,” however acknowledges departments depend on it for communication.
In response, a number of of the county’s Twitter accounts posted a message over the past week: “The County is aware of the issues that have arisen on Twitter and shares concerns about the increasing hateful rhetoric. However, as a government agency, we need to maintain our presence to share information with the public, especially if it can save lives during an emergency.”
As for the District Attorney’s transfer, Gomez stated the county “does not have a say in what elected officials choose to do.”
In a press release, Rosen stated he “carefully weighed the utility of Twitter against the fact that its guardrails have come off and it has become a platform for hate speech.”
He added, “I cannot stand with victims of criminal hatred and – at the same time – support a for-profit app used too often to denigrate their faiths, their ethnicities, their genders, their sexuality. Technology should uplift humanity, not feed its most craven impulses.”
In his departure from the platform, Rosen urged different district attorneys to depart Twitter too. Spokesperson Sean Webby stated his workplace shouldn’t be conscious of some other DA’s exiting the positioning, however stated one, whom he didn’t establish, has inquired.
“As Americans, we have the freedom to loudly express our political opinions and strongly disagree with each other,” Rosen wrote in a Dec. 5 assertion. “However, when that speech crosses the line into hatred, racism and anti-Semitism, all of our precious and hard fought freedoms are undermined and our democracy is weakened.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”