Palestinian Terror and Twitter: How Elon Musk’s Acquisition Changed the Game

It’s worth noting that the way the terrorist attacks on Israel are being covered and viewed today, and likely the international response to what is happening, would be significantly different if Elon Musk had not bought Twitter.

Prior to Musk’s acquisition of the platform, fewer than 500,000 people had blue-check status. Blue checks get their tweets positioned first under a tweet when they reply to something, what they’re tweeting about gets greater weight in determining trends, and their tweets are positioned first in trending topics.

The pre-Musk blue-checks were granted to accounts deemed notable by progressive Twitter staff, and they were overwhelmingly given to progressive figures in media, politics and activism.

There were significant disparities to who was able to get them based on political views. A freelancer who contributed to The Mary Sue or The Daily Beast could get one, but a freelancer who contributed to The National Review or Commentary could not. Staffers in AOC’s office had them. Staffers in Ted Cruz’s office did not.

The blue-checks are a lot more hostile to Israel and supportive of Palestinian terror groups than Americans at large. Because their fringe viewpoint was allowed to dominate this platform, they shifted the Overton window on Israel within media and academia over the past few years.

Additionally, Twitter before Musk had editors who removed or deprioritized tweets deemed inflammatory, edited and curated the trending topics and helped shape and control the narrative according to their values.

If Musk hadn’t fired Twitters editors and moderators, you would not be seeing Palestinian terrorists taking selfies with the corpses of murdered women this morning, because Twitter’s staff would be running crisis PR for Hamas and shaping the narrative on its behalf.

I don’t agree with everything Musk has done. I think he doesn’t keep people around who tell him when he’s wrong, and I think his staff cuts have been too deep on the product and UX teams. But him wresting this platform from the progressive monoculture has been a huge win for truth.