“This is an absolutely massive story of foreign ops shaping our political and cultural discourse,” Dave Rubin wrote. “Will the set of influencers who fell for it look in the mirror?”
It’s ironic, of course, that the 2016 screams of “foreign influence” on the Trump campaign have now been replaced by actual evidence of foreign influence — mostly aimed against Trump.
But there’s a bigger story here.
The United States, for all its size and power, is prone to the whims of public opinion — and its communications are largely open to outsiders.
It’s hardly surprising that some of those outsiders will seek to take advantage of our nation’s freedom of expression.
For many years, and continuing today, that external influence has been manifested in foundations, grants, donations, lobbying and — hello, Biden family! — outright bribes.
If you can redirect a multitrillion-dollar government by spending a few million on campaign contributions or “consulting” contracts, that’s a pretty good deal.
But fake X accounts are even easier, and even cheaper.
It costs virtually nothing for a malign operator to set up accounts, farm engagement and accumulate enough followers to be — or at least to seem — influential.
Causes that are not actually popular can be made to look like they have genuine momentum behind them, even if that “momentum” is just a few nerds pecking keyboards in Third World countries.
And X is an ideal outlet for this scam because lazy journalists — and there are a lot of those — often rely on it for easy-peasy cut-and-paste clickbait stories. //
But Musk on Friday didn’t censor people for lying. He revealed them as liars.
Rather than repression, he chose illumination.
“Know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” as it says in the New Testament.
Or perhaps, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
Musk chose transparency over “security,” and in so doing he ripped the masks off tens (hundreds?) of thousands of fake accounts that have been doing real harm to America’s political discourse — without silencing anyone.
