Will Daily Wire Force Elon Musk to Make Good on His Free Speech Rhetoric?

Patrick Pleul/Pool via AP, File

If you woke up Thursday morning to the news that Twitter had rescinded an offer to stream Matt Walsh’s documentary What Is a Woman?, take a deep breath. The situation is changing fast. Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boering published a Twitter thread early Thursday morning outlining Twitter’s overreaction to two instances of “misgendering” in the film.

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The film was released one year ago today to coincide with the beginning of the sixth month of the liberal liturgical calendar, also known as Pride Month. According to Boering, Daily Wire decided to stream it for free all day on Twitter on June 1 this year to celebrate the documentary’s enormous impact and drive the discussion forward. However, you can’t ignore that the plan is also a fantastic bit of trolling.

When Twitter abruptly balked after viewing the film and realizing some people use a transgender individual’s correct pronoun, Daily Wire reminded the company that it had removed “misgendering” from its hate speech policy. Boering noted enforcing such a policy places Twitter on the side of the most radical elements in society, the ones most vehemently opposed to Twitter’s commitment to free speech.

According to Boering, employees working on the deal insisted that misgendering was removed because the policy did not need to be that specific. They assured him that misgendering is still considered abuse and harassment. Daily Wire was given the option to edit the film or lose technical support and limit the film’s reach. Daily Wire declined to make the requested change and was told that not even their Twitter followers would be able to see the movie. Employees claimed this is part of the platform’s “speech not reach” policy.

Unfortunately for them, their boss has another interpretation. Musk responded to Boeing’s thread early Thursday afternoon, asserting that rescinding the offer was a mistake by several employees:

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His tweet continued to note he views using an individual’s preferred pronouns as good manners. However, he also sees ostracism and threats of violence for using the wrong pronoun as rude behavior.

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However, the gremlins are still in the system. To kick off pride month, programmers added back the “hateful conduct” flag on tweets that limits their visibility. It also prevents users from quote tweeting, retweeting, and replying to the tweet.

Walsh also got flagged for sharing one of the scenes in his documentary that Twitter objected to.

Perhaps this is new CEO Linda Yaccarino’s first foray into transforming Twitter’s business, as she said she was excited to do after Musk announced her appointment. If so, it appears to have fallen flat with Musk, who remains the company’s executive chairman. He also remains the chief technology officer, so it is unclear how an algorithm was inserted for the hateful conduct tags without his approval.

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For those who have not seen the documentary, Walsh interviews many transgender activists, including doctors who advocate for the medical transition of minors. For this reason, he asserted that Twitter’s refusal to air a film that gives voice to both sides is particularly galling:

Daily Wire will still stream the film on Twitter tonight at 8 p.m. EST. The platform’s hosts will also hold a Twitter Space to discuss the censorship before they launch the stream. Whether Twitter will provide the event page it initially offered or suppress the feed when Daily Wire launched the documentary is unclear. According to Walsh, the film’s title was trending earlier and abruptly removed from the top trends list. If it is suppressed, this is likely all a user will see unless they decide to view the content:

Screenshot from Twitter

Musk has a real opportunity to demonstrate that Twitter is a place where contentious cultural issues can be discussed openly. Restoring the event page would deliver on his public promises about the future of Twitter as it evolves into a more comprehensive platform. If he fails to course correct here, how can we be assured that his vision of X, the everything app, won’t become the same dystopian social credit tool that China’s WeChat is?

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Will you lose your banking or purchasing privileges if you call Dylan Mulvaney a man? Or question man-made climate change? Punishing wrongthink through disappearing people online seems acceptable to the Twitter employees who made “mistakes” today. It will take more than a tweet for Musk to correct that corporate culture.

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