A right-wing platform under the baton of Elon Musk?

First modification: 05/27/2023 – 00:54

On Elon Musk’s report card, a professor would probably write “could have done better, but meant to.” The live Twitter announcement of Republican Ron DeSantis’ candidacy on Wednesday, May 24, was technical chaos: sound cuts, strange noises, disconnections. The social network that Elon Musk bought for 44,000 million dollars failed to measure up to broadcast such an event.

However, the controversial billionaire managed to get more than 100,000 people to converge on his platform at the same time for one of the main events on the American right-wing political calendar.

The return of the extremists and the service of the anti-Semites

For many commentators, this great 2.0 meeting around the appearance of Donald Trump’s main conservative rival confirms the great turn to the right that the social network has taken, as foreseen by Elon Musk. “Twitter has gone far right,” he claims.The Atlantic‘, Meanwhile he ‘New York Times‘ points out that this is the culmination of Elon Musk’s operation to win over the most conservative Americans. “It seems as if Twitter wants to take the place of ‘Fox News,'” the magazine notes.Vanity Fair‘.

The platform that Elon Musk offered to Ron DeSantis, a politician who is playing the populist card against Donald Trump, is just the latest sign of Twitter’s swing to the right.

The new owner of Twitter began by allowing the return of a good number of right-wing and extreme-right users who had been banned by the previous management of the portal, starting with former President Donald Trump. Subsequently, Elon Musk published a series of tweets that bordered on the conspiracy so typical of the extreme right.

Finally, the Tesla CEO attacked George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist who is a favorite target of anti-Semites. For them, George Soros is the embodiment of the “rich Jew” trying to pull the strings behind the scenes. By claiming on Twitter that this billionaire “hates humanity,” Elon Musk “is incentivizing these extremists,” said the Anti-Defamation League, one of the leading US NGOs fighting anti-Semitism.

And the American far right returned the favor. Tucker Carlson, the former ‘Fox News’ star known for promoting the racist ‘great replacement’ theory, has announced that he will launch his show on Twitter. Starting May 30, ultra-conservative website ‘Daily Wire’ will host all of its podcasts on Twitter; it will be possible to listen on the social network to the transphobic theories of the commentator Matt Walsh and the Islamophobic discourse of Ben Shapiro.

Ideologue or businessman?

All of these signs suggest that the platform has become toxic to American liberals. “There is no longer a reason to create a ‘right-wing’ alternative social network since Twitter took on this role,” says Charlie Warzel, a journalist for ‘The Atlantic’.

On the right, users insist this is nothing more than a fair rebalancing after years of “witch hunts” against them on social media. The right-wing idea that Twitter was a haven for the American left before Elon Musk took over “is not based on any serious data or study,” says Meysam Alizadeh, a researcher at the Digital Democracy Lab in Zurich, where he works. on the use of social media for political purposes.

However, this expert also believes that one should not jump to conclusions about Elon Musk’s intentions to establish a “Fox News 2.0” with his social network. It is true that the measures taken by the new captain of the Twitter ship “have led to an increase in far-right hate speech, as two recent studies have shown,” admits Meysam Alizadeh.

You want to make the site more attractive to curators, which can be profitable financially

“Right-wing celebrities who have Twitter accounts also saw their number of followers increase, while liberals saw their audience drop or stagnate,” this researcher also points out.

However, “if Elon Musk really wanted to create a new ‘Parler’ [un clon de Twitter que intentó y fracasó en su intento de convertirse en la red social de la derecha estadounidense, también tendría que observarse una discriminación sistemática contra los usuarios liberales y demócratas, lo que no es el caso”, afirma Meysam Alizadeh.

En su opinión, el presidente de Twitter actúa menos como ideólogo que como hombre de negocios. “Está claro que quiere hacer el sitio más atractivo para los conservadores, lo que puede ser rentable económicamente”, explica Meysam Alizadeh. En efecto, los contenidos que generan muchas reacciones son los predilectos de la publicidad… y los tuits que obtienen más reacciones “son los que más polarizan la opinión, los cuales suelen venir de colaboradores de extrema derecha, por lo que cuanta más presencia tengan, más atractivo puede resultar el sitio para los anunciantes”, resume este investigador.

Aunque no hay que ir demasiado lejos y ahuyentar a los usuarios liberales. Para Meysam Alizadeh, convertir Twitter en un santuario para los internautas de extrema derecha no tendría mucho sentido desde el punto de vista económico; los anunciantes perderían el interés.

Sin embargo, en sus acciones y tuits, Elon Musk parece dirigirse únicamente a los conservadores. Aunque tal vez no necesite esforzarse mucho para retener a los liberales estadounidenses, ya que, después de todo, “no hay alternativas reales”, concluye Meysam Alizadeh. Y la herramienta sigue siendo demasiado importante políticamente para que los líderes de la izquierda del panorama político estadounidense se permitan retirarse por completo de esta ágora virtual.

Este artículo fue adaptado de su original en francés