PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Pariss Chandler built a community for black tech workers on Twitter that eventually became the foundation for her recruiting company.
Now she fears it could all come crashing down if Twitter becomes a haven for racist and toxic speech under the control of Elon Musk, a serial provocateur who has shown he can loosen content rules.
With Twitter driving most of her business, Chandler sees no good alternative as she watches the uncertainty unfold.
“Before Elon took over, I felt that the team was working to make Twitter a more secure platform and now they’re not there. I don’t know what’s going on inside. I’ve given up on that,” said Chandler, 31, founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a job board and recruiting website. “I am saddened and appalled for Twitter, both for employees and users.”
Those concerns are weighing on many who have come to rely on Twitter, a relatively small but powerful platform that has become a kind of digital public square for influencers, policymakers, journalists and other thought leaders.
Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, took over Twitter last week in a $44 billion deal, making his unpredictable style immediately felt.
Just days later, he had tweeted a link to a story from a little-known newspaper that made a dubious claim about the violent attack on the husband of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at their home in California. He quickly deleted it, but it was a troubling start to his tenure for those concerned about the spread of misinformation online.
Musk has also signaled his intention to loosen the railings on hate speech and possibly allow former President Donald Trump and other banned commentators to return. He softened the blow after the deal closed, however, vowing to form a “content moderation council” and not allow anyone who has been banned from the site. return until it establishes procedures on how to do so.
However, the use of racial slurs quickly erupted into an apparent test of his tolerance level.
“Guys, it’s getting ugly in here. Not sure what my plan is. Stay or go?” Jennifer Taub, a law professor and author with nearly a quarter of a million followers, said Sunday as she posted a link on her Facebook page in case she left Twitter.
For now, Taub plans to stick around, given the opportunity it provides to “laugh, learn and empathize” with people from around the world. But she will leave if it becomes “a cesspool of racism and anti-Semitism,” she said in a phone call.
“The numbers are going down, down and down,” said Taub, who has lost 5,000 followers since Musk officially took over. “The tipping point might be if I’m just not having fun out there. There are too many people to block.”
The debate is particularly charged for people of color who have used Twitter to network and raise their voices, while also dealing with toxicity on the platform.
“As a Twitter user — as a power user in many ways — it’s been of great use, and I’m very concerned about where people go to have this conversation next,” said Tanzina Vega, a Latino journalist in New York. York. who once received death threats on Twitter, but also built a vital community of friends and resources there.
A software engineer, Chandler hoped to challenge the isolation she felt in her white-dominated field when she posted a question and a selfie four years ago: “What does a Black Twitter in Tech look like? Here, I will go first!” The response was overwhelming. She now has more than 60,000 followers and her company connects black tech workers with companies large and small.
She also received hate mail and even some death threats from people accusing her of racism for targeting black techies. But she also had connections with Twitter employees who were open to her concerns. Chandler said those employees have either left the company or are no longer active on the platform.
Chandler’s company also uses Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, but none can replicate the kind of vibrant community it runs on Twitter, where people mix professional networking and light banter.
Instagram and TikTok are fueled more by images than by text exchanges. Facebook is no longer popular with young users. LinkedIn is more formal. And although some developers are trying to rush out alternative sites on the fly, it takes time to develop a stable, user-friendly site that can handle millions of accounts.
Joan Donovan, an Internet scholar who explores the threat misinformation poses to democracy in her new book, “Meme Wars,” said it’s not clear whether Twitter will remain a safe place for civil discourse. Still, she called the networks people have built there invaluable — for users, their communities, and Musk.
“That’s the exact reason Musk bought Twitter and didn’t just build his own social network,” Donovan said. “If you control territory, you can control politics, you can control culture in many ways.”
In his first hours at the helm, Musk fired several top Twitter executives, including chief legal counsel Vijaya Gadde, who had overseen Twitter’s content moderation and security efforts across the globe. And he dissolved the board of directors, leaving him accountable, at least on paper, only to himself. On Friday, Twitter began multiple layoffs.
European regulators immediately warned Musk of his duty under their own digital privacy laws to control illegal speech and disinformation. The US has far weaker rules governing Twitter and its 238 million daily users. But advertisersusers and perhaps lenders could curb it unless Congress first tightens the rules.
“If advertisers go and users go, it may be that the marketplace of ideas sort itself out,” said Cary Coglianese, an expert on regulatory policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school.
That could make Twitter just another magnet for extremists and conspiracy theorists — a concern that prompts some to encourage their network of friends to stay in order to counter those narratives.
Chandler said she can only “walk on eggshells” and take a wait-and-see approach.
“I personally will stay on Twitter until there is no reason to stay. I don’t know what the future will bring, I’m hoping for some kind of miracle,” she said. “For now, I’m not going anywhere.”
___ Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale.
