The Case for Banning X
In 1941, Orson Welles wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film Citizen Kane, often cited as the greatest film ever made.
The story is a rather thinly veiled biopic of William Randolph Hearst, the American media baron, who at one time dominated the then all-powerful newspaper business.
Hearst filled his papers with sensationalism and lurid stories; something we have grown used to now, but at the time was a radical departure from the tenets of print journalism. In doing so, Hearst was able to build a massive media empire and accrue a great personal fortune — after all, the more readers he was able to snare, the more he could charge his advertisers.
In 1896, Hearst hired the famous western artist, Frederick Remington and sent him to Cuba to send back images of the then burgeoning rebellion against Spanish rule on the island. After only a few days in Havana, Remington wired Hearst -“Everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return.” In reply, Hearst told the artist, “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
And he did. Hearst’s non-stop coverage of the war inflamed the public, ultimately culminating in the Spanish- American War. Without Hearst’s non-stop ‘coverage’, it is unlikely that there would have been enough public support for a war against Spain.
Why did Hearst do it?
Because it sold newspapers. That was his only interest.
Which brings us to Elon Musk, the Charles Foster Kane of our own time.
Last week, Britain erupted in race riots in the streets — the kind of thing that, frankly, is almost never seen here. The rioting was driven almost entirely by social media, and to a large extent, by Tweets by a British right wing fanatic (now in hiding in Cyprus to avoid arrest), Tommy Robinson. Musk carried Robinson’s incendiary Tweets (and all those that followed, of which there were many). He unleashed a deluge of lies and anger.
Musk and Twitter (X) served to pour gasoline on a fire that Musk himself had started. And the UK is not alone. Daily, hourly, in fact, minute by minute, Musk’s X is filled with some of the most incendiary ‘tweets’, often from Musk himself, which guarantees a large audience, related to evens in the US. Just today — CIVIL WAR! STOCK MARKET CRASH! and so on. Like I said, incendiary. This is no journalism, but this is what people read and believe.
This serves only one purpose and that is to drive traffic to Twitter.
Since Musk bought (and over-paid for) Twitter, the rankings of the site have been falling. What he needs is a good war — Civil War, Race War, whatever. That’s just the kind of stuff that drives up traffic, and when traffic goes up, so does ad revenue. After all, the users don’t pay for X, the advertisers do. So the incentive is to attract and hold as many eyeballs as possible — regardless of the consequences of what he is publishing — as events in the UK bore out this week.
Is there case to ban X? I would think so. Like cigarettes, Twitter is dangerous to the health of society. Maybe this is something to think about. Hatred is a kind of virus, and Twitter is the vector that delivers it to the public.
