Instead of Twitter taking Kiev’s side by boosting its trolls’ accounts and hashtags, it’s now finally moving towards becoming a neutral host of civilized debate, which aligns with Elon Musk’s noble mission. Be that as it is, this is still admittedly being implemented imperfectly as proven by the continued existence of certain troll accounts that explicitly violate the terms of service but have yet to be removed. Nevertheless, the progress achieved thus far is visible and prompted senior Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak to publicly complain.
Here are the few points to analyse:
- ◦ The SBU-backed fascist NAFO seems to have disappeared from the twitter timeline and trends lately. Ukrainian presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak complained that related trends in his side’s support have seemingly disappeared from that platform. He twitter under frustration
War in Ukraine” disappearance from Twitter trends. Radical curtailment of tweets mentioning ru-aggression coverage. Users aren’t allowed to register or log into accounts with Ukrainian phone number. @elonmusk, I wonder if will we ever see “Twitter Files” about Fall/Winter 2022?
This follows Musk’s declaration of war against bots and other accounts that manipulate his company’s algorithm, which is precisely what NAFO has done through its coordinated and inauthentic behaviour all this year.
NAFO isn’t just a collection of random trolls, but the most toxic network on Twitter that also regularly violates the terms of service, which it had done with impunity prior to Musk’s far-reaching reforms. His noble mission to restore a sense of civility to social media by finally enforcing Twitter’s rules without exception, coupled with the exodus of hyper-partisan pro-Kiev employees and his removal of trolls, has truly been game-changing.
- ◦ There’s a growing number of folks among the US-led West’s Golden Billion who are becoming increasingly skeptical of their side’s official narrative about the Ukrainian Conflict, but they’ve been unable to obtain alternative information from others due to being blocked by them via Secateur. That’s because the app automatically blocks everyone who follows the accounts that the user targets, in this case NAFO trolls, but some who follow them aren’t trolls themselves but just curious about their posts.
Therein lies the importance of what Musk has just done by seemingly removing the algorithmic amplification that his company’s prior hyper-partisan pro-Kiev employees had previously given them behind the scenes.
Instead of Twitter taking their side by boosting their accounts and hashtags, it’s now finally moving towards becoming a neutral host of civilized debate.
Provided that Musk’s far-reaching reforms remain on track and aren’t reversed, then there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic that he’ll succeed in his noble mission of restoring a sense of civility to the online debates that his platform hopes to host. Deplatforming those NAFO accounts that violate Twitter’s terms of service, banning related bots, and removing his company’s prior behind-the-scenes algorithmic support for this SBU-backed fascist troll network will improve average users’ trust.
- ◦ Not only that, but the impact on shaping global perceptions of the Ukrainian Conflict is another outcome that also shouldn’t be forgotten. After all, folks might be more willing to debate with others if civility finally returns via Musk’s reforms.
- ◦ That would be a major development too since the respectful exchange of contrarian opinions could work to erode the false narratives that some have been brainwashed into believing. It’s precisely this outcome that NAFO is most afraid off.
- ◦ In the event that “moderately” pro-Kiev folks are able to politely debate more with those who think differently, then there’s a credible chance that they might realize that they’ve been misled by their side.
It remains to be seen just how much this could change average Western perceptions of the Ukrainian Conflict, but there’s reason to believe that those who were brainwashed into supporting Kiev might reconsider their views upon learning more of the truth from their contrarian interlocutors.
-Andrew Korybko
Source -Twitter
